[Fishbowl Helmet]

"You are your own quality control. You are your own best critic."

This. Right. Here.

This is also where a lot of the valid criticism of self-publishing comes from. Poorly or not-at-all edited works with terrible covers. If you want to be treated like less-than writers and publishers, act like and produce less-than works and covers. You can't demand equal respect as a writer-publisher while promoting half-assed attempts at writing, editing, and cover design.

When I see a terrible cover it makes me think the author doesn't care. When the sample text is full of errors it makes me think the author doesn't care. If the author doesn't care, why should I? Slapping up a quick one-off for some money looks like a quick one-off for some money. A professional effort looks like a professional effort. Whether self- or trad-published.

You want to be taken seriously, put in a serious effort. Your work's not done when you type "The End".

 

[cinisajoy]

I do believe that if you represent yourself as a published author to do a non-fiction book then your book should be professional.   This means proof-read your books so you don't have glaring errors.
If you have glaring errors expect over-critical critics.  

I am sorry I just love that term.

Now in fiction, do what you want.   And for the record I sampled 50 Shades.   I found it lacking about 49 shades.

 

[Hugh Howey]

Until the stigma is completely gone and the critics start criticizing equally, I'm going to continue being a cheerleader.

Utter garbage is published in all sorts of ways. Traditional and self. Who cares? Seriously. Who?

There are dumb websites going live every second of the day. They don't get in anyone's way. I didn't stumble over those websites to get to Chuck's blog or to get back here. Let people publish whatever they want. If they don't get any readers, who is harmed? Anyone?

This is just more gatekeeping. It's more cheerleading for gatekeeping. I think everyone and anyone should be able to publish whatever they like. They just aren't allowed to expect people to love it.

Of course we should all publish our best work, but who gets to decide if it's good enough? I'm not going to be that person. I'll leave that to others.

 

[Rob Lopez]

Let people publish whatever they want. If they don't get any readers, who is harmed? Anyone?

This is just more gatekeeping. It's more cheerleading for gatekeeping. I think everyone and anyone should be able to publish whatever they like. They just aren't allowed to expect people to love it.

This.

 

[vrabinec]

You! Yeah, you! Quit publishing that [email protected] and start writing like ME!

Hey, if you want me to write like you, you better fix your hyphens. They're...irregular.

 

[Terrence OBrien]

Its none of my business what people upload to Amazon. I don't care what they upload. That is the business of Amazon and the author.

I suspect we will be seeing a lot more calls for other people to do something. Nothing will happen. The market will continue to roll along just fine.

 

[Usedtoposthere]

Hey, if you want me to write like you, you better fix your hyphens. They're...irregular.

*sob*
That was a JOKE, vrabinec!

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Until the stigma is completely gone and the critics start criticizing equally, I'm going to continue being a cheerleader.

Utter garbage is published in all sorts of ways. Traditional and self. Who cares? Seriously. Who?

How can the stigma ever leave if sub-par efforts are hoisted into the air with cheers?

Who cares? We all should.

This is just more gatekeeping. It's more cheerleading for gatekeeping. I think everyone and anyone should be able to publish whatever they like. They just aren't allowed to expect people to love it.

Of course we should all publish our best work, but who gets to decide if it's good enough? I'm not going to be that person. I'll leave that to others.

I disagree. Completely. It's not gatekeeping at all. Why? Because there's no one stopping a self-pubbed author from publishing. Criticizing a clearly sub-par cover isn't gatekeeping. It's pushing others to make a better effort. Gatekeeping is someone standing between the author and readers claiming special privilege and power to prevent the author from reaching readers. Keeping the gate. Guarding the door. Not allowing the hoi polloi inside. Calling out bad or no editing for what it is is clearly not gatekeeping. Telling a writer-publisher their cover is bad isn't gatekeeping. None of these prevent the writer-publisher from actually publishing. What they do, hopefully, is help to create a constructively critical environment which will help to push writer-publishers into making a better effort rather than a minimal effort.

As said, it's not about trying to be just as good as the worst of trad-publishing, but being better, doing better. Showing that self-publishing is just as good, if not better in some areas, than trad-publishing, not countering every argument with, "Well, trad-publishing does it too." What a whiny non-rebuttal that is.

 

[Ty Johnston]

If you want to be treated like less-than writers and publishers, act like and produce less-than works and covers.

Who is to be the judge of these less-than works? Who is to say a certain work should not be presented for public viewing and potential purchase?

Also, this precludes that every single self publisher has exactly the same goals in mind, which is far from the truth. Not everyone has a goal of being a professional author, or of having writing as a career, or of how such a career should unfold.

I try to present myself as a professional, and I deal with other writers and editors and publishers as professionals, but that's because this is my day job. When I deem it necessary, I'll call someone out on spouting BS or the like, but it's not my place, nor should it be anyone else's, to go around policing indie writers. That's why they're "indie," so as not to answer to anyone else.

Would I like every single indie publication to be presented in its most polished, most professional manner? Sure. But that's not realistic. You can't have it both ways, indies and gatekeepers at the same time and in the same place. Sorry, folks. It doesn't work that way.

 

[Ty Johnston]

How can the stigma ever leave if sub-par efforts are hoisted into the air with cheers?

And where exactly is this happening?

I see the occasional "congrats" posting for a new novel and the like, but I'm not seeing blogs and kboard posts and Amazon posts or Facebook posts or anyplace where sub-par works are being cheered on.

If anything, the blog posts and such I see which do champion self publishing almost always include a point of telling writers to publish only their best works.

 

[sarahdalton]

There's already an air of critiquing, especially on this board. We often share book covers and blurbs, find beta readers, give advice on where we might be going wrong.

 

[SLGray]

There's already an air of critiquing, especially on this board. We often share book covers and blurbs, find beta readers, give advice on where we might be going wrong.

Which is why it seems a little weird to me that there'd be objection to a post that's suggesting we ... do exactly what's happening on these boards.

If people really didn't care about what other people were putting out, then no one would answer requests for feedback, would they? They'd just say, eh, it's your book, if you think it's good enough, then it is.

I understand not volunteering criticism if it isn't asked for or specifically not asked for. I get that. I don't get why suggesting that criticism is a good thing gets up people's noses though.

 

[Hugh Howey]

How can the stigma ever leave if sub-par efforts are hoisted into the air with cheers?

Does anyone do that? I cheer for the path and the freedom for anyone to publish whatever they want. The works I recommend to others are the works I find sublime. Everything else goes unmentioned.

But maybe what I pass over, someone else thinks is superb. And maybe what is unpopular today will be heralded twenty years from now.

You'll never find me encouraging people to throw a rough draft up on Amazon. But you'll never find me castigating those that do. Why do I care? Who are they harming? Is self-publishing really going to be defined by those who expend the least amount of energy? If so, are we going to define traditional publishing by Snooki and 50 Shades of Grey?

There are too many great books out there that need reading. Worrying about the poorly written and poorly edited books seems like a waste of time.

 

[Rob Lopez]

I understand not volunteering criticism if it isn't asked for or specifically not asked for. I get that. I don't get why suggesting that criticism is a good thing gets up people's noses though.

Because it just seems so redundant. It's happening already. The only change would be if someone were calling for unsolicited criticism, and since nobody's calling for that, then what's the point of the message?

 

[JRTomlin]

Which is why it seems a little weird to me that there'd be objection to a post that's suggesting we ... do exactly what's happening on these boards.

If people really didn't care about what other people were putting out, then no one would answer requests for feedback, would they? They'd just say, eh, it's your book, if you think it's good enough, then it is.

I understand not volunteering criticism if it isn't asked for or specifically not asked for. I get that. I don't get why suggesting that criticism is a good thing gets up people's noses though.

No, the post suggests that we go out and force our opinion on other people whether they want it or not. That is quite a different thing.

How can the stigma ever leave if sub-par efforts are hoisted into the air with cheers?

Who cares? We all should.

My cheers, or lack of them, make no difference whatsoever. Have you seen posts by people asking permission to hit 'publish'? I haven't. There will be great books and sub-par ones whether I like it or not.

I don't care because my opinion plain and simple doesn't matter. I won't waste either time or effort and I have better things to put my angst into than what someone else publishes.

 

[SLGray]

No, the post suggests that we go out and force our opinion on other people whether they want it or not. That is quite a different thing.

I don't see that call to action in the post, but we all read things differently, so, fair enough.

 

[Jana DeLeon]

You'll never find me encouraging people to throw a rough draft up on Amazon. But you'll never find me castigating those that do. Why do I care? Who are they harming?

Themselves only, and that's not mine or any else's problem.

I've never felt a stigma associated with self-publishing, but then maybe that's because I don't spend a lot of time listening to people with narrow minds.

 

[JRTomlin]

I don't see that call to action in the post, but we all read things differently, so, fair enough.

To be specific, I'm talking about sections like this which I agree you may interpret differently, but I do see a call to action, but what I don't see is an implication that you should wait until someone asks:

Don't celebrate mediocrity. Don't encourage half-assing this thing for a couple of bucks. This is scrutiny time.

That sounds to me like a call to action.

And

It's time to play hard or get off the field.

This post has a tone of both self-righteousness and entitlement that I just plain don't like and don't agree with, but as you say, people read things in different ways.

Edit to fix an oops.

 

[Ty Johnston]

I don't get why suggesting that criticism is a good thing gets up people's noses though.

I don't believe anyone has suggested criticism isn't a good thing, or that it can't be a good thing. What people are frustrated with, or at least what I'm frustrated with, is being reprimanded for not doing something that in all actuality is being done already. And yes, Wendig and others aren't calling me out personally by name, but when they lump all indie authors underneath some kind of giant, fictitious umbrella, yeah, that includes me.

Besides, I've already got someone to tell me to do things I've already done. She's my wife.

 

[dkgould]

Maybe I'm reading this article differently than everyone else, or maybe it's because my personality tends to focus criticism inward rather than out, I don't know. But what I got was not that we should be judging each other's work or preventing others from publishing, but being honest about our own. Sure, quality varies. Goals vary. And yeah, the "indie culture" is a mish mash of conflicting advice. But that's because it's a big umbrella. There aren't any hierarchies yet. For better or worse, those are probably coming. Right now it's chaos, a land rush, with someone's lone memoir that was written for their children up in the same spot as someone else's 10th best seller that was written primarily as part of a business. I don't think the article writer was saying don't congratulate Grandma on finishing her biography. He was saying that if we're really serious about being professionals, we shouldn't accept simply finishing the manuscript and pushing the button as enough from ourselves.

This is probably going to sound extremely old fashioned (I swear, I'm not my grandparents.). I've had a lot of jobs. Some really important. Like human life important. Some not so important. Like pouring drinks and joking with incoherent patrons not-important. And everything between. I could have been cruddy at several of them. Could have let things slide. Not finished a few duties. Not taken out the trash at the end of a shift. Not cared about the people I was working with. Not sent court documents on time or taken collect calls. I still would have gotten by. Most people would. I wouldn't have been fired. Maybe not even disciplined. But the thing is, I grew up believing that any job worth doing is worth doing well. Including this one.

Sure, I could look at some other books (regardless of how they were published by the way) and then look at mine and say, "eh, it's better than those." and publish it. Probably make some money too. Get some mixed reviews, but who cares if it's selling right? It melts into what's already out there.

But the thing the article writer is saying is that's not good enough any more. He's not saying dun those other books because you don't like them (although if someone asks for criticism you should be honest. There are lots of ways to be honest and forthright without being cruel by the way), he's saying you should hold your own work to another standard. He even says traditionally published books shouldn't be your standard either. That the way to be a professional, at anything, is to strive for the vision in your own head. For each book to be the best that it can be. Not okay. Not passable. Not even good enough. But your best. If I hold my book up to what I intended to say in the first place, if that book is the honest-to-goodness best that I can translate that vision, then it's ready and I can sleep easy at night. Is it going to be perfect? Of course not. But at least I can honestly say that I'm not "testing stuff out" on the reader or just publishing it because "it's better than X book and that one made a ton!"

Maybe my best is grammar school English level. Maybe it's Shakespeare. I hope that my beta readers and editor would let me know if it's the prior, but I don't think that was the point of the article. The key is that I'm not treating the reader like a chump. I'm not phoning it in. I'm being honest about where that book falls in the gamut of published books (all of them). If I'm writing for larks or my family, then this article isn't really about or for me, and that's okay. But if it's my job, if it's the thing I'm going to spend the better part of my life doing, day in and day out, the thing that says "Deirdre was here" long after I'm gone, shouldn't I hold myself to a higher standard than good-enough-to-get-by? The land rush is settling. Sure, it's not over yet, but the Law is coming. Sadly, whether we like it or not, there will be "gatekeepers". Hopefully of our own making rather than imposed upon us. Reviewers or advertisers like Bookbub or successful author-turned-publisher or Consumer Reports or whatever they turn out to be. But they are coming. As long as we can produce more high quality stories than poor ones, we can keep them at bay. The better this whole thing works in "anarchy", the farther away the arrival of those "gatekeepers". Every time I produce a disappointed reader rather than a happy one, the closer those gatekeepers get. And that's the ONLY thing we can control. Whether we, ourselves as individuals, produce happy readers or bitter ones.