“For every jerk that I have met, there have been five others that are actually nice, helpful people.”
I was never one of those kids that needed to fit into somebody else’s cool club. People can say that it’s because of the way I was raised, but that’s cliche isn’t it? I know enough followers whose parents are hardcore leaders to know that our decisions go way beyond conditioning. Some of us NEED to fit in when it comes to social cliques and clubs.
For the longest time I couldn’t grasp why people who were brilliant and attractive felt the need to follow a group of mediocre clones, but it happens every single day. This is why it doesn’t surprise me when I see good writers act like a student that desperately wants to get hazed into a fraternity or sorority. People can have tons of books sold, millions of adoring fans, but the instant someone pens an article discrediting their choice of genre or method of publishing it’s as if nothing that they’ve done has merit.
You will never get everyone to like you. Even if you could swap places with a J.K. Rowling, you would only inherit the hundreds of haters that dislike her books or the things she tweets about. Everybody is a critic it seems, so why let these people define you? Why get huffy when a generally unknown “authority” issues a blanket statement about self-publishing? They don’t know you, or perhaps they do but skip over your work to spray that machine gun conveniently. Why give them the power to ruin your day?
Survival of the fittest?
Like it or not, to survive as an indie publisher, you will need to get down into the mud with the rest of us pigs to hustle for your food. I make this crude analogy because it has been the Wild Wild West and with every person that treats this as a business, there are 100 more casuals putting up their creations. Your $1,500 worth of editing, book cover art, and marketing is thrown onto the same shelves as someone who uploads a rough draft and you are only separated by the amount of books you sell. But that’s the price of admission. If you have a problem with those odds then you shouldn’t self-publish.
I know the game that I am in, and I trust that with enough learning, pushing, and cultivating, I can get my books in front of the people that will enjoy them, hopefully that is you. If I am called a hack by a random critic with an ax to grind … I will still be writing. The beauty about publishing independently is that for every jerk that I have met, there have been ten others that are actually nice, helpful people.
“Once you start thinking about it in a mercenary frame of mind, then you’re finished. You’re a joke, because there are too many mercenaries out there already.” – Tommy Shaw
Indie Publishing has become a bit of a cool club since the time of this writing, and though the rebel in me makes me want to run for the hills, it is still a better place to be than on team judgement whose membership has to be in the trillions. So stop listening to the negatives, and reading articles full of nonsense metrics and falsities. Focus your energy on writing, learning, and improving, you know … the things that you can actually control. If I read another “I have written a million agents and none wants me so I self published but now I worry that I will get no respect,” post my head will explode. What a strange attitude to go into an entrepreneur’s arena with.
There’s an analogy about people being sharks or goldfish and it seems to be very prominent in all of the arts. Not all sharks are loudmouthed, racist, lobbyists with blog followings, and not all goldfish make forum posts opining their “failed attempt at making a living writing.” Some sharks are damn near invisible. They eat up everything, make a boatload of cash and have enough readers to keep them going for life. That’s the type of shark that can give a damn about what another has to say about their writing or their method of publishing.
Being a goldfish will get you turned out in this system just like in any business. You will get ripped off by cover artists, wannabe editors, terrible marketing websites, and your fellow badly behaving authors. You don’t have to be aggressive but you have to believe in yourself and be ready to back it up. How do you feel about your chances, really? Writing is an art, we’re selling art, and like a painting you will have people who love it and others who want to put a knife through it. The difference comes with the artist and whether or not they will in turn fold to the people with the knife, or put their focus on those that enjoy their work.
So stand by your work my fellow writers but realize that nobody owes you a living or acceptance of your work.