Linda L. Richard recently interviewed author M.J. Rose for January Magazine. It's a fascinating interview, and I wanted to highlight one segment of it. (For those who aren't familiar with M.J. Rose, she's one of the smartest people in this business, an expert on marketing and the publishing industry in general. She's also a fine thriller writer.)
Q. Your first book, Lip Service, was self-published. It was an amazing job. It was beautiful, well-edited, really professional from cover to cover. A lot of people are interested in self-publishing. Is the path you took one that you’d recommend?
A. No. Not for fiction, no.
It was a different time in 1998. There weren’t many self published books at the time, and now there are over 100,000 a year. Plus I didn’t do it as a career move. I never intended to stay self-published. It was an experiment.
I did it because my agent had real interest in the novel but everyone kept telling her there was no way to market my kind of fiction. Since my background is in advertising, I told her I was going to self-publish a few copies, and market them online and then she could show the publishers how to market my kind of fiction. I had no doubt I could figure out how to market the book.
That’s a very different reason to do what I did than so many people now who do it now.
Q. In what way?
A. So many self published authors tell me they’ve self published after being rejected by one or two agents and/or one or two publishers who have criticized the quality of their work. Said it wasn’t well written, or original or needed more work. Those are the last writers who should be self publishing. When I ask them how they know their books are ready to be published, they say because their friends love their work, or their family.
I think no one who can’t get a quality agent should publish on their own. Agents are always looking for new authors and I believe if the book can’t interest an agent, the author would be better served working on his or her craft for a while longer. I had written three horrible novels before I got an agent with a fourth novel. And then Lip Service was my fifth.
My advice hasn’t changed for the last eight years. Self-publishing fiction is a last step. It’s only an option when you’ve tried the traditional route and rewritten the book a dozen times.
I say this because even wonderful writers published with top houses can’t break out. So much is published now and book marketing is so difficult. How much hope is there really for an average or less than quality book that's got no support behind it? Stores don’t want to give the self published books a chance, most reviewers don't want to to either. It’s not an uphill climb anymore: it’s a Mt. Everest climb times 100,000.
You won't get any better advice than that. Rose has been there and she understands the realities of the publishing industry today better than almost anyone else. For more of her thoughts, read her excellent blog.
Comments