publishing evolution #82: print on demand

1) I browsed through all of the sites listed in the post and was shocked at how expensive self-publishing can be. There is a basic package (that is still almost as much as my monthly rent) that offers quite a bit, including a full color cover, but the nicer packages are several thousand dollars each. Crazy! I had no idea. It's hard to tell from the website, but the books seem to be decent quality - when the author puts the effort in. Some of the books lacked appealing covers, but that is probably the fault of the author, not the companies.

I can honestly say I have never read, nor do I have any desire to read any of the books I saw in my brief browse through the bookstores on the self-publishing sites. Besides, my TBR list is already a mile long. It would take a strong recommendation from someone with similar reading tastes to mine before I added a self-published title to my list.

2) What do I think of self-publishing? Not much. I think it has a place in the publishing world, but not for people trying to make a living through writing. For recipe collections, family histories, personal biographies, etc, self-publishing is fantastic. It allows the author to print a limited number of books at a relatively low cost to distribute to family and interested friends. But, in my opinion, that is the extent of self-publishing's usefulness.

I found the following quote in the Writer Beware article, which is the perfect springboard for my thoughts on self-publishing.

If you’re a new writer looking to establish a career, however, a POD service is probably not a good choice, except possibly as a fallback option for a manuscript that has failed to find a home.

This is exactly why I don't make a habit of reading self-published books and would never self-publish anything myself. I don't feel that the majority of self-published books could have been accepted by a major publishing company. If you have sent your manuscript to all the major publishing companies and they have all turned you down, there is probably a reason for all the consolation letters. Write something new. Extensively revise your manuscript. Find an agent to represent you to the publishing companies. Don't self-publish, because that is just subjecting an unwitting public to a bad manuscript.