DIY Book Publishing?

I know someone who published their own book. I never read it because I'm a snob. The minute I realized it hadn't been published by a brick and mortar publisher my mind discounted it. Maybe I'm not much of a snob because most people I know felt the same. We liked the person, but weren't falling all over ourselves to buy a copy.

But someone I know did and in hushed tones over coffee told me it was an interesting story, but there were a lot of mistakes and worse, technical problems that kept them from being able to enjoy the work.

You can read all about vanity publishing or self-publishing and the like all over the Netuniverse. I never fell victim to those poetry contests or vanity anthologies because the minute I got to the part about sending money, I balked. Why? Because I believe people should be paying me to read my work, not the other way around.

Why wouldn't I self publish? For the same reasons why I don't think once I've got a solid novel on my hands that I won't do it without an agent. I need guidance, I want someone whose expertise I can depend on. That means agents and editors and people to market or design the cover. I'm not going to do any of these things by myself because I know I simply cannot do it better than the professionals and I don't want to waste my time trying.

I have the same feeling about colouring my own hair. Yes, I can do it myself but it never looks as good and I have to worry about scrubbing the damn colour stains out of the soap scrub ring in the bathtub. My fingers get all coloured and so does my neck and my ears. In essence I can't leave the house for days.

Whereas if I go to the hairdresser yes it's more expensive, but in the end I walk away from it feeling like a million dollars and it doesn't exactly cost a million dollars so I believe everyone is happy.

The idea of not having enough faith in my work to believe I can find an agent to represent me and a publisher who will pay me for the right to publish my work doesn't even occur to me. I know there will be rejections by the boatloads. I know at times I'll feel discouraged and hurt and might want to reconsider what I've chosen to do at this moment in my life.

But in the end, ask yourself, do you believe in your writing? Do you believe people should be able to experience the story you are telling? If the answer is no, then why bother. If the answer is yes, then you owe it to yourself to give that story the best of everything.

I'm obviously going to have read this post again for myself some day in the future and I might think for a moment, jesusmaryandjoseph - was I a sentimental idiot.

But in the end, I'll still believe I'm doing what I'm meant to do. I would keep writing even if I thought I'd never be published. If there were never going to be any Edgars or a NP4L or a big fat advance check. I'd keep typing.

So, if you stumble upon this blog I hope the one thing you learn is, you owe it to your craft to do the best you can in every way.

But write well first. Everything is easier after that.