Why I Don't Want To Self-Publish // Part One

Recently I talked about query writing, and I mentioned I wanted to write a post about why I don’t want to self-publish. This is that post.

I have come a long way since my younger days when I considered self-publishing as nothing more than a platform for untalented writers. I have since read self-published gems like Sierra Abrams’ THE COLOR PROJECT. And let’s not forget that Hugh Howey’s WOOL and Andy Weir’s THE MARTIAN were originally self-published. There was a good stretch of time, about a year, when I strongly considered that route myself, when I still wanted to have my books out there, but I had lost faith in my ability to make the cut.

People don’t realize how big a deal it is, doing everything by yourself. If you want to do your due diligence, you are probably going to need to hire a professional cover designer and a professional editor. That costs money. You can cut corners with those, if you want, but you are going to risk hurting the final result. I’m going to say something unpopular and discouraging here, and it won’t be the last of it’s kind in this post: you are not as good at editing and writing and cover design as your mom says you are. I have read too many samples of self-published works that were rife with typos and lazy formatting and bizarre grammatical errors. Most readers are not willing to spend their time and money on those.

Unless you are sticking with digital publishing, you are going to need to pay for print copies. You also need to either a) figure out how to format a novel well, which is not as easy as you think, unless you know about formatting issues like widows and orphans (and I’m not talking about the Baudelaire kind), or b) you need to hire a professional to format your novel.

This isn’t meant as a harangue on self-published authors, since there are some who do their due diligence, but because there is no gatekeeper in self-publishing to tell people, “Hey, wait a minute, you don’t know what you’re doing,” most books don’t get vetted. Suddenly if your mom says you have written the next Great American Novel, then that’s good enough, might as well stick a barcode on that baby.

But back to the issue of money. If you’re going to do it right, it can take somewhere between two and five thousand dollars. You might, might earn back that investment. Let’s say you spend two thousand dollars, and let’s say you charge twelve dollars for each book, if you’re doing print. You are going to have to sell upwards of one hundred sixty-seven print copies before you start to see any kind of income, and that’s not necessarily factoring in the cost of printing all one hundred sixty-seven of those copies, because the initial two thousand won’t cover that many, so it’s actually going to be longer. Also, as you make all this money to pay back your two thousand, you have to remember that taxes for self-employed people, which is the category you fall under as a writer, are twice as high, because right now your workplace pays half of your taxes, so the money will basically evaporate. That means it’s going to be longer before you earn out, and even longer before you start to make any sort of appreciable profit. I could go on. But I hope you see what I mean. You can curtail some of these expenses by sticking with digital or using a platform that does not require you to pay for your print copies, but you’re still going to have to pay for editing, cover designing, book formatting, and promotion, which you shouldn’t skip.

Something a lot of people don’t realize is that you don’t pay a traditional publisher. The publisher buys your book. Like, with money. Essentially, they’re paying for the privilege of editing your book with you, designing the cover, printing it out, etc... I would much prefer a setup where I don’t have to pay to do things I could otherwise get payed to do. Simple math.

And here’s where too many authors get scammed. You never ever ever pay a reputable literary agent out of pocket. After your book sells, they get a percentage (usually 15 to 25%, depending on the agent and what kind of deal it is—print, foreign, film, etc…) before you get your cut. True, most advances are not worth bragging about, and after taxes and your agent’s percentage get taken out, what remains is less than impressive. But it is still preferable to footing the bill.

Let’s get even more depressing. Self-published books normally don’t get placement in bookstores, which doesn’t have to be a major deal now that Amazon has become a huge marketplace, but you would still be losing sales opportunities. You would also be passing up on the chance to see your book in a bookstore, freak out, and take a million photos. So, there’s that.

You’re not going to want to hear me say this, but I’m glad younger me heard it over and over, so I am going to say it. With self-publishing, there is a very real danger of jumping the gun and harming your career. Let me give you some limited perspective. If you rush and query an imperfect manuscript, generally the worst that will happen is that you won’t get published that time around. Not a career wrecker, unless you’re unprofessional about it. With self-publishing, unless you are getting feedback from unbiased people who are knowledgable about writing craft, you are not necessarily going to get an honest view of your book. I cannot stress it enough: you need someone to tell you when your book isn’t good, and you need someone who knows how to help you make it better. Everyone does. If you rush yourself and self-publish a low quality manuscript, you have shot yourself in the foot. Your chances of getting an agent after that are a lot lower. Now that they’ve seen how you’ve performed as a writer, they’re less likely to risk their time on you. Not to mention that self-publishing as a method of breaking into traditional publishing is inadvisable, because unless your book is a smashing success, it is almost impossible to get an agent interested in an already-published work.

A lot of people self-publish their first novels. If self-publishing had been my chosen route, I would have done the same, because I thought TIB was awesome-sauce. I still think it’s a good book, but I also know that it needs work. The same for my second. But writing is a craft that takes years to develop, and the only way to develop it is through practice. No one really wants to hear this, but I am going to say it anyway, because I am so grateful that I finally understand. Your first book is probably not going to be good. Your second and third and fourth might also be subpar. It depends on how quickly you learn, as a writer. I saw some statistics once, and I wish I could find them for you, that showed your chances of getting traditionally published increase with each book, but the point where they start to skyrocket is on your fourth. Your fourth book. If you’re looking at that number and thinking, “Wow, that’s discouraging, I guess I’ll self-publish instead,” you’re missing the point. It’s not a numbers game. To learn the skills, you have to put in the time. More people get published on their fourth book, not because four is some magic number, but because that is how long it takes a lot of people to get good at their craft.

I know it’s hard, because you can get it into your mind that, oh, I finished a book, that must mean I know what I’m doing. It doesn’t. All it means is that you finished a book. It does not necessarily mean that your book is any good. Self-publishing lets you skip vital steps in your development as a writer. I know traditional publishing can be disillusioning. Because it’s so subjective, it’s entirely possible for a wonderful book to get rejected across the board, so I am not saying never self-publish. But, generally speaking, the gatekeepers are there for a reason. Agents and publishers are actually very good at their jobs. Most of them have been doing it for years, so they know how to spot talent. And while it’s not fun to think about, the rejection storm I received when I was querying TIB wasn’t because the agents I queried were mean or blind, it’s because my book wasn’t good enough.

There were times I was tempted to self-publish because I just wanted to have my book out there, because I felt this maddening need to be published that became, at times, all-consuming. It’s so hard to hear that you’re not ready yet, harder still to delay your dreams. But I learned valuable lessons from being told no so many times, lessons I needed to learn, and I’m grateful for that.

Query Writing

Part One// The Nitty Gritty

For those of you who don’t know what a query letter is, or how traditional publishing works, the first half of this post is for you. Let me walk you through what I’ve learned along the way, because I get asked a lot if I plan to self publish. When I say I want to be a published author, people tend to assume that’s what I mean. I think the general populace of non-writers has this nebulous concept of publishing—either you self publish, which seems to be what more people are familiar with, or you send your novel to a publishing house where an editor will be more than happy to print it out and send it to bookstores.

Not many people seem to be educated on how the process actually works, and that’s okay. But after a while, it gets a little disheartening, especially when it’s hard to tell if questions are coming from a lack of understanding or a lack of confidence in my ability, an “Oh, you want to write, that’s cute, but you’ll obviously never make the cut to be published professionally” approach. And I try not to take offense, when I sense someone is taking that specific tack, but it’s a little insulting all the same.

Let me clear the air. Eventually, I will write a post about why I would rather not self publish. Glossing over this topic today feels unintentionally rude to people who do self publish, which is sad, because I have beta read for self-published authors (Sierra Abrams and Brian McBride), and I have a lot of respect for them. So I will write a post about that soon, because it’s a personal choice, and I know it’s no one’s fault, really, but I’m tired of the question, after all these years. Right now, let’s just move forward knowing I would prefer to be traditionally-published.

The fun—and by fun, I mean not-so-fun—part of traditional publishing is that, to be considered by most reputable publishing houses, you have to have an agent. The agent is the gatekeeper, someone who thinks your manuscript is good and is now invested in getting an editor to buy it. This is great for editors, who are insanely busy, because they can at least know that what’s being sent to them has been vetted. Beyond that, it’s good to have an agent, because then you have someone in your corner who knows the business, who knows how to negotiate legal contracts, get you better advances, pitch to editors, and work out film deals, and more (not necessarily in that order).

Now that we’ve covered what agents do, let’s talk about query letters and why I’m writing one even though the whole process makes me want to tear my novel into tiny strips and use it as confetti. A query letter is, primarily, a short summary of your novel, like you would read on the inside flap of a book jacket. It gives agents an idea of what your book is about, and its job is to be intriguing. If it fails at that, then it is a sad, sad failure. (No, I don’t feel overwhelming pressure, what are you talking about?) Long story short, a good query letter is meant to convince an agent to read your book, because if they read it and like it, then they might want to represent it.

Something else to note, before we move on, is that rejection is a huge part of the process, and that does not necessarily have anything to do with whether or not you are a failure. JK Rowling received her fair share of rejection and was told not to quit her day job. Even if you have written an astonishingly good book, there are going to be people who don’t think it’s worth the paper used to print it. Go on Goodreads and look up reviews for your favorite novel. There will be people who hated it. So getting an agent is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds, because everyone has their own personal taste. This is all ignoring the issue of making sure, if an agent is interested in representing you, that they are a good fit for you and your projected career path. Nothing is as simple as it looks from the outside. So, before you ask an author if they are published yet, consider maintaining a healthy distance, enough to give you a running start if they decide to stab you.

Part Two // Query Woes

Now that we’re all—hopefully—on the same page, I can complain about query writing. It’s hard. Like, so hard. (Truly, I have such a way with words.) Back in 2012, when I began reading numerous successful query letters and researching how to write my own, I thought it was going to be a breeze. Coming into it, you think it’s going to be easy, and people will tell you that it should be easy, which makes it even worse. But then you actually sit down to write it, and you realize that it takes a lot of work to make something look effortless.

Here’s the thing. You have just spent a considerable amount of time writing, editing, and polishing your novel. At this point, you are so familiar with it that you no longer know how to see it like it’s new, which shouldn’t be a problem, but it is, because you have to step into the shoes of someone unfamiliar with your story to know how the summary comes across. They don’t know how awesome your book is—all they know is what you tell them, so you have to tell them the right stuff, and that doesn’t mean writing a query letter that says: My book is really good. Pls believe me.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jim, but I am a doctor writer, not a salesperson. If I had wanted to get into sales, I would have gotten into sales. Nevertheless, here I am, feeling like someone going door to door trying to sell vacuums to people who already own multiple vacuums.

I have to extract the essence of my story, all that makes it interesting, and condense it into as few words as possible (closer to 250 than 500). I have to make this letter cohesive and well-written and fascinating. And I have to communicate that I think my book has what it takes without sounding like a pompous nutcase. On top of that, I have to do this knowing I have failed twice before, which is even less fun than it sounds.

That’s why I’m giving myself a month to finish the query letter for HIRAETH, as well as the synopsis, which is longer and more detailed and spoils the ending. That one is less frustrating, although it still feels alien.

So if my next few posts read like they were written by a deranged person, you’ll understand why.

Life Update 3 // DRACONIAN

Ages ago, in the forgotten year of 2017, I started querying DRACONIAN, which you may know as DSS. I talked a bit about it in this post.

In that post, I reference a sweet, kind agent who offered me a snippet of personalized feedback for my novel. Although it was still, ultimately, a rejection, and although I didn’t do anything about it right away, it got the gears in my head spinning. I knew that I hadn’t been getting as much interest in my queries for DRACONIAN as I had with TIB. I felt like I was missing something vital, like I had taken a step backward in the quality of my writing. So after I got over a bit of burn out, I pulled myself out of my funk, sat down with my story, and made myself face what I knew was wrong.

A long while ago (everything was a long while ago for me), I read some writing advice that said something to the effect of, “If you know you have a weakness in your story, and you’ve done your best to fix it, so you know you’re not being lazy, it’s okay to go ahead and query. No book is going to be perfect.” I’m still on the fence about whether or not that’s good advice. In my case, it wasn’t, because it gave me an out. I tried to fix the problem. I found I couldn’t. So I let myself query a novel I felt supremely insecure about, when I should have been like, “No, no, we are going to sit here, right here. We are going to look at this problem, and we are not going to leave this Starbucks booth until we know where the story’s going wrong.”

Okay, so maybe that’s a little overdramatic.

Let’s talk about the sticking point in DRACONIAN. It happens to be the most unfortunate, I dare say most common one. My beginning wasn’t working. It’s bugged me for years, has always felt like a low-level criminal offense. In its earliest iterations, when I was thirteen, it was pure exposition, all the telling and none of the showing. It stayed that way until I was eighteen. In my defense, I think that’s when I did succeed in streamlining it and introducing a good sense of rising tension. Where the breakdown happened was a few pages in, during a scene where I have a revelation that reads as too clichéd, the beginning of every single fantasy novel ever. I spent so much time trying to think around the issue. For the sake of the plot, my main character has to learn a significant secret her parents have been keeping from her, not because this will then launch her into glory and fame and riches, but because the betrayal will hurt her more than anything else, and it will affect how she behaves from that point on. But the way I had written it, it came off as tropey. There was no way for any agent to know, upon reading the first few pages, that I was trying something different.

When I finally sat down to address the problem from a new angle, I don’t know if I owe the subsequent revelation to timing, brooding, or pure happenstance. (I have this theory that stories are the sum of the times and places they were written, that where and when a scene is birthed changes its genetic makeup, that until you have written a thing, it is in flux, rich with infinite possibilities, infinite directions you could take that depend on the thinnest threads of fate and chance. Like, if you’re in the wrong place when you write something, you’ll miss some great revelation, and you won’t do it right. Or, if you write it too soon, you won’t have a vital, game changing thought that was scheduled to occur to you two months later. It’s at this point that I have to shut down this line of reasoning, because I can follow it in circles until I’m in the throes of an existential crisis, migraine and all. So, moving on.)

Somehow, (don’t look at the existential crisis, Liz, don’t do it), I finally thought of a way to restructure the beginning, to erase the aspects of it that had led to my querying woes. Of course, you know that whole, I’ll just tug on this one thread, just one more tug, one more, and then suddenly the sweater you were holding is gone, replaced by a pile of yarn. That’s what happened with DRACONIAN, but in a far less destructive way.

Altering vital details in the beginning has affected how the rest of the story plays out. Addressing those changes has, in turn, caused a cascade of differences down the line. I’ve kept a journal with extensive notes to track every stray thought that crosses my brain as I do this (it has two dragons on the cover), because there are so many balls to keep in the air. I’m about two-thirds done with the first pass now, but I don’t know how much work remains. I expect I’ll have to go through the whole thing at least two more times, so I catch all the errors and inconsistencies I’ve introduced.

I have been moving at a glacial pace on this story, usually only tackling it for (in a good session) four hours every Thursday. To which you are probably asking, if you haven’t read my pre-NaNo post, “If you were so frustrated with your slow progress, why wasn’t this one your NaNo project?” Two things. Firstly, I’m not frustrated, not generally. I’ll get to that later. And secondly, burn out is a hideous thing, and I was starting to feel it creeping up behind me. I decided I needed to set DRACONIAN aside and duck out for a month-long fling with some other stories.

The consequence of this hands-plunged-in-all-the-way-up-to-the-elbows-deep-clean edit is that my book is stronger, and I’d like to think richer, than it was before. My world building has improved; my characters have grown. I’ve shored up plot holes I’d never noticed before. My insecurity—it’s almost gone. DRACONIAN isn’t done yet. It might not be done for another six months. It might be done in two. Who knows? But I can see the bright shiny spark of what it’s supposed to be, now, and I’m entranced. Even if this book never sits on store shelves, this effort will have still been valuable. It has taught me so much about editing, so much about patience and determination and endurance. I’ve relearned, through this experience, how to love writing for the sake of writing.

As for the whole querying question, before November, I had fully intended to keep DRACONIAN as my main project, the one I prioritize finishing. There are now a few reasons why my plans have changed.

For one, it could be a while until it’s done, and it’s become such an intricate, loving revision, that I don’t want to rush it like I’ve rushed it before. I owe this book the time and effort it requires. That means that it’s going to have to become one of my side projects, at least for the moment.

Another thing is, and maybe this is a silly reason, that having already queried this one, I might want to put some distance between those efforts and renewed ones. I know people revise and re-query, and I know there are still so many agents I never queried with this project. But it’s also harder to jump back on the bandwagon with a book you’ve tried and failed with once before.

My last, and I think most compelling, reason is this: HIRAETH is suddenly so much further along, and while I have renewed confidence in DRACONIAN, it pales in comparison with how I see HIRAETH. HIRAETH feels like the one in ways that my previous two didn’t. As I mentioned in this post, I still have scenes to add and, realistically speaking, it will probably be a few months before I’m ready to query, maybe longer. Even if it was ready, I don’t think I’d send out queries until midway through January, so they don’t get lost in the holiday mix. But I want to take it and run with it.

That being said, I will still fight to get DRACONIAN to you someday, coffee beans, even if that means I have to print it out on rolls of toilet paper and leave them on your porch in the dead of the night.


That’s it for today, coffee beans. What are some stories you’ve wrestled with for years? What are some of your greatest revision triumphs? Are you currently in the query trenches/planning to jump in soon?