Not all self-published work is crap.
Not all mainstream books are good.
Many self-published works are excellent.
Many mainstream books are dire.
All true. But the demarcation between the two is blurring. A reader doesn’t give a toss who produced a book they love. The things they do notice are rubbishy covers, unintelligible blurb, coarse, porous paper, bleeding (in the technical sense) fonts, crammed text – and those are just the production values.
Inside, a reader wants a story with great characters and a satisfying, if possible, stunning resolution. They don’t want flowery over-writing, rubbish spelling and grammar, weak plotting, unbelievable twists, gaping plot holes, characters’ names changing mid-book, solutions parachuted in, inaccurate historical detail, etc.
I read a lot, and across many genres, and nothing out of the above two lists is missing from either type of publishing. But beautiful books, well-written, well-edited, exist along the whole publishing spectrum.
It is no longer tenable to say self-publishing bad, mainstream good.
The idea STILL persists that self-publishers don’t use copy editors, proofreaders, cover designers and other professionals. Um, they do. At the recent London Book Fair, services for the independent authors were prominent and varied.
As in mainstream, there is self-published rubbish out there – the write-it-in-a-month-and-bung-it-up-on-Amazon stuff. But something that is often not recognised is that self (now known as indie) publishing has evolved from its homogeneous start and split into a variety of levels.
At the top end are the well-written, well-edited, well-designed books with professional covers (occasionally produced by the author but mostly by a professional book jacket designer), membership of a group/collective of authors, editors and technical experts, and awards and prizes to their names.
Indie genres are often crossover, something that the mainstream publishing sector may not wish to take a risk on. But these books are not to be dismissed and they sell in their thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands. Like mainstream, there are self-published authors whose books may only sell a few hundred, but who receive good reviews. While not bestseller books, they should not be dismissed either.
And I hear that traditional publishers and agents are combing the self-published lists themselves looking for likely talent to add to their lists. Two of my self-published writing friends have signed with top agents within the past few weeks.
Readers are a canny lot. They’ll ferret out the poor product, and consumer market forces will do its Darwinian thing. But whatever the diversity of the paths to publication, the results are all descended from the concept of the writer getting their story out there in an intelligible format to a receptive and willing reader.
Updated June 2021: Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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