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Your comments from our autumn 2005 survey on self-publishing
What you think about self-publishing
These are a selection of the quotes provided by respondent to our survey
looking at self-publishing. It's clear you feel that breaking into publishing, a
world of tightly closed doors, is a daunting task.
Against:
 | There are inherent paradoxes attached which inevitably make the whole
process problematic. |
| An expensive waste of time. |
| I am a writer not a publisher. |
| It's not the publishing - that's just a process - it's the Marketing. That
what sells the book. |
| I think it is for people who are vain enough to think their work is good,
even when told it isn’t. |
| Inappropriate for the serious writer. We must have the opportunity, as
painful as it sometimes is, to have someone in the field pass judgement on a
work's readiness for public circulation. |
| I was always led to believe that self-publishing was the last resort of
the untalented - and the quality of the self-published manuscripts I've seen
to date bears this out! |
| A well-written manuscript can always find a home with one of the many
print and e-book publishing houses in the world. |
| I would not consider self-publishing for my genre. My area is crime and
thrillers. |
| Self-publishing to a serious writer is an admission that his work did not
meet the needs or standards of legitimate publishers. That's hard to swallow
but must be faced, as there are too few publishers and too many writers.
Secondly, self-publishing entails self-promoting, anathema to the serious
writer. Perhaps the next generation of writers and readers will accept
self-publishing the way this generation has begun to accept cell phones. |
For
| Creative writers are being shut out because of the difficulty in getting
old-line publishers to accept their work. Self publishing and POD are the only
available outlets. |
| It seems to me that it is a bit of a lottery getting a publisher, so take
your copy and make the reality happen. |
| I have been searching for an agent/publisher for my novel for nearly 3
years. I gave up in the end and so self published. I'm hoping to find an
agent/publisher for my other work and if that fails I may just self-publish
again. |
| I think personally that self-publishing is a terrific new tool. It should
be utilized to it's fullest potential. It is almost impossible for every new
writer to get professionally published. This is a great tool. It gives us all
hope. |
| This summed up an opinion expressed by a number of, predominantly female,
respondents: |
| some publishing competitions require entrants to submit an autobiography,
together with date of birth and photograph - fairly obviously, it was thought,
to weed out anybody winning who is over 30, lacking a degree in media or
philosophy, and not marketably photogenic. |
How do you think the entry of organisations such as Amazon and Macmillan
affect self-publishing?
| Perhaps if they could change the image of self-publishing being 'the last
resort' etc, it would help. |
| However, I do fear that it could lead to all new writers having to go this
route. |
| Could improve its credibility. |
| There are just too many crooks out there. |
| They are just stealing yet another small corner of the market. |
| It'll mop up all the suckers. |
| Lowers the bar while raising the competition |
| Amazon and Macmillan will not lift the credibility of self-publishing. The
quality of most self-published books is poor and that's why they were rejected
by publishing houses. |
| I don't know about Macmillan, but Amazon's costs are steep. |
| Perhaps once these publishers enter the fray, "Predatory Publishing" would
be a more fitting moniker. Why, in fact, should they absorb all the production
costs when a hungry new writer will foot a good portion of the bill? |
| It will also have a detrimental affect on the number of smaller bookshops. |
| Amazon is great but there's always the age-old problem of making people
aware of the product and that's as big a problem as ever. Self-publishing, if
done properly, is a serious business and anything that helps is a good thing. |
| The larger they are, the more interested they seem to be only in
successful and best-selling authors. I worry about the fine authors who cannot
afford to self-publish, yet who deserve to be successful. |
| They give it a kind of respectability … I can't see it ever becoming
mainstream. |
| Good news |
| I think it is a tremendous boost. |
| It gives unpublished writers a chance to get into the market where nobody
seems to take on new authors at the moment. |
(Some minor editing, in the form of spelling corrections has been applied to
the comments.)
The Future of self-publishing survey
results
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