It feels weird to say, but it's nice to realize I'm not alone in dealing with the issues of publishing. I don't have any trouble with the writing, really. I love to write. But the publishing grind gets me down. You have to write to market, you have to be full-on social media, you have to spend X amount to make one-tenth of that in profit. It gets crazy. Add in all the people who are just in it to game KU and make all the money, and it's no wonder some of us are depressed about the whole thing.
When I first learned about self publishing, I guess all I thought about was that finally people like me, people who'd been writing for years or who always planned to write a book, could publish without all the hassles of trying for an agent and hoping the agent could sell a book to a publisher. It was a process that took years and more luck than people want to believe, and I was always too insecure to try it. And I think it would have been mostly folks like me, if Amazon hadn't come up with KU, which is so easy to cheat for big money. :(
This is the reason I keep bring up the need to find a better way of engaging with readers, aka 'publishing'. Squeezing self-publishers has become a huge business. Most of the platforms now employ some form of pay to play, which is practically predatory. The fact that some self-publishers are beating the house doesn't forgive the system, much less legitimize it. They control visibility, pricing, reviews and indirectly, product design, which includes book length. Serials are a prime example. Due to the nature of the acceptable pricing alternatives, not even Amazon could make serials work. And, once again, (because your mileage may vary can't be stressed enough here), just because a handful of self-publishers have cracked the code doesn't make the business model workable. Shorts and serials are extremely difficult to promote due to platform constraints, not because of anything intrinsic about the format itself. Yes, they are a niche product, but low demand does not equate to no demand.
Writing is hard. Writing fiction is really hard. Writing good entertaining fiction is really really f*cking hard. The ability to publish doesn't automatically make us all equally talented. It's the ability to market and game and hat that separates winners and losers now - not the ability to tell a story. In the aggregate, we've finally lived up to all of the jeers traditional publishing has been throwing at us. The elephant in the room is that most Indie work is just not very good, especially once we consider the scammers and hatters. And we all pay the price for every reader that gets burned. Amazon's category lists are a useless clusterf*ck, for both publishers and readers alike.
So, when we look at reports stating that reading is on the decline, I think we have to ask: is it because of a genuine disinterest in written stories, or is it because there's very little worth reading these days. Or, is it because with all of the other entertainment options out there, wading through the morass of sh*t just isn't worth the trouble anymore?
I've backed off from publishing. I just don't see the point of burning good ideas and hard work with the current system. The old mantra was that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, but when it comes to the current state of promotion, it's a daily sprint with no foreseeable reprieve. Amazon has worked to minimize the influence of third-party promotion sites, such as Bookbub, in an effort to make self-publishers more dependent on AMS. The reality is that they are going to squeeze us more and more, because there's a never-ending crop of 'get rich quick' wannabes jumping into the fray every day.
I'm not being Chicken Little here. Squeeze the platforms back, get all you can, as fast as you can. But I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that the Indie world is due another massive disruption, quite possibly driven by the distribution channels themselves. We can either be forward thinking and help define what that disruption will be, or we can wait to get steamrolled. Again, there are enough scammers, hatters and newbies to keep these distribution channels going no matter how onerous their terms become.
So yeah, I totally agree. Publishing is a mess right now, and that includes traditional publishing. I’m sure many have thrown their hands up in disgust. When we attempt to monetize Art, unfortunately, the first thing to go is usually the Artist.
