The E Debate

I’ve been researching and listening to lots of debate recently with regard to the argument that self publishing would never be the preferred route to go, if given the choice of a traditional publishing deal. It seems the more and more I hear, the curiouser and curiouser the debate becomes.

Let’s face it – if any of us unpublished writers were truly given that choice today, right now, this morning, we would more than likely grab the publishing house, the editor and the future relationship that they bring. We would grab it firmly by the cojones, take it back home, cuddle it under our duvet and never let it out of our sight. We would announce to the world that we are in bed with Harper Collins, Orion, whoever... We would break out the bubbly that's been chilling for years, waiting for our overnight success, and we'd find it hard to wipe the smile from our face. Or would we?

Because it does seem that more and more people are actually making the other choice. Yes, choice. The choice thing has been quite a shocker to me. What? Proper writers really want to do this? I, like many, have always seen the self publishing option as a last resort. The stigma attached to it, I believed, would only ever see me as someone who had to publish their own novel. However, now, having looked into it, discussed it, raped and plundered the world wide web for information, read some really informative books on the subject , I now believe, that just like has happened in the music business with digital downloads, the tide is possibly turning in the publishing industry.

I’ve found several successful writers and by that, I mean writers of good books, who have found success by making the choice to self- publish. I’m not just talking about the John Lockes of this world or the Amanda Hockings - though their experience is uplifting – I mean people who walk and talk in our world, people we know out there in the blogosphere. (Hi Talli, Mel, Catherine)

So why? Why are people choosing the route? And what will happen to the industry if the trend continues? My worry is that the digital world will be overrun with books of questionable writing and this IS a problem. During my own research, I downloaded some books that had never seen a proper edit, had fairly dodgy covers and honestly, I could not read past page three or four. However, I’ve also downloaded some fabulous reads and believe that good writing will win out. Readers are a discerning lot and very capable of finding books that interest them, whether that be via a traditional method by browsing through a bookstore, or choosing an ebook. (Plus, the Amazon ability to ‘try before you buy’ often allows you to download that first few pages, which does stop a few buying errors.)

It’s clear that if you are contemplating self publishing, the worst thing to do is to consider it a last resort, and just upload those old manuscripts you have lying around. Instead, consider yourself an entrepreneur, launching a new business that has to work. You have a product you love and have faith in (your manuscript). You believe that the world should share in it. If so, treat it as you would if you’d invented a new wheel. Make sure the R&D (Research and Development) are thorough (i.e. make sure the ms is the very best it can be). Push it through the highest of standard checks (i.e. hire an editor, proof reader), make sure that the packaging will whet the buyer’s appetite (i.e. make sure the cover is one that someone would want to pick up on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstones.)

What are the downsides? Well, apart from the still existing stigma I mentioned above, there is the lack of an agent (though not always) and a publishing house.Those authors traditionally published claim both are vital. Also, there’s no advance, but the much higher royalty scheme should help compensate. Besides, from what I understand advances are not what they used to be, as industry margins come under increasing pressure. As a self published author, you won’t make it to that 3 for 2 section either. High street stores will not stock self published books. You also have to become your own self publicist and a good one at that, but again, I feel that this has changed in traditional publishing and many authors have to do this anyway.

Upsides? More control over your product (though not necessarily a good thing unless you really know what you’re doing). Instant publication i.e. once you’ve written that very best book it can be, had it edited, designed a cover – it takes hours, a few days at most before its out there in the world. So, little or no lag time... Better royalties, assuming of course you’ve done it right and are making sales.

So, bet you’re dying to know. Have I convinced myself? What I do know is that when I started to think about self publishing as an option for me, I didn’t have a clue what a minefield it is and indeed, how much work would be involved. Part of me was thinking ‘Why not just stick it up on Amazon and see what happens?’ WRONG!

Wrong, wrong, wrong at every level.

Either way? If Harper Collins phone and I head to the duvet smiling, or I decide to use Kindle Direct Publishing as a future route, my own new wheel still has a few kinks in it - I still have some work to do on that manuscript...

Guest Post by Anna Stothard

I woke up in a panic last night thinking that I’d forgotten to return the telephone call of a friend, then realised (with a sense of impending insanity) I’d been dreaming about a character in the novel I’m writing. I didn’t need to call her back, I owned her, but I still couldn’t fall back asleep.

From Lewis Carroll’s Alice to Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov to my own meagre efforts, the army of fictional creatures populating my bookshelves have had a more profound affect on my world than 90% of the real people I’ve met. Is that a terrible thing to admit? Maybe. Honestly though, I’d rather have known the fiction of Holly Golightly than the reality of most acquaintances, the memory of Jay Gatsby over the memory of quite a few ex-boyfriends.

Done right it’s a baffling power, to design a character, but how is it done? Dickens was inundated with letters begging him to save Little Nell when The Old Curiosity Shop was coming to an end. Some of my most intense memories of the last family holiday I went on revolve around the thoughts of Yossarian from Catch 22 (many apologies to my family about that, I know it’s rude to read at the lunch table).

Like most writers I’d love to know the magic animating ingredient that makes a hybrid of observation, imagination and autobiography come alive on the page and last in the minds of readers. We’ve all probably conjured characters in our heads only for them to fall flat on their faces the moment they hit the page, missing some indefinable something so they just drag their feet and don’t do what their told until we’re forced to brutally dispatch them back into nothing. And then sometimes, bliss, we hit on a character that we feel like we could push out into the world and she’d exist without us. Even then we (by which I mean “I”, others are probably much less anxious) lie awake at night obsessing over whether the figments of our imaginations are too nuanced or too predictable, too unlikely or too obviously based on feral uncle Malcom or that colleague at work we hate. Or, much worse, that our carefully crafted and seemingly inventive protagonists in fact reveal a lot about ourselves that, in other circumstances, we’d rather people didn’t know.

One of the most surreal problems I’ve stumbled on as a young female writer sending young female protagonists out into the world is that people insist that my characters are thinly veiled versions of myself. “You must really hate your mother,” a woman informed me sagely at a wedding reception recently, having read my latest novel, The Pink Hotel, about a young English girl travelling Los Angeles returning love letters and photographs to the men who knew her errant and recently deceased mother. I smiled sweetly at the wedding guest and let her believe that I would be capable of half the seduction and deduction that my character achieves in the course of her journey, but of course she did raise and interesting point.

Nabakov is not Humbert Humbert, Charlotte Bronte is not Jane Eyre, Thomas Harris is not Hannibal Lector, but elements of the writer necessarily exist amongst reams of observation and imagination in the making of a character. That must be part of what makes characters come alive. My character is not based on me, Mrs Know-it-all Wedding Guest, but I can begrudgingly admit there is some crossover. I’d love to know if anyone else has had this problem, being accused of the neurosis or flaws that your character has?

When Breakfast at Tiffany’s was first published, Truman Capote described a “Holly Golightly Sweepstakes” of women guessed to be the “real” Holly when of course there was no such thing. Capote later insisted that Holly was an amalgamation, a “symbol of all these girls who come to New York and spin in the sun for a moment like May flies and then disappear”. Biographers have added the author’s mother to Holly’s inspiration-mix (a rural Southern belle, Capote’s mother was originally named Lillie Mae while Holly’s birth name is Lula Mae) plus the author himself of course (who suffered from the “mean reds” as Holly does). Occupying some perfect place between a symbol and an ideal party guest, a thousand observed arched eyebrows, childhood memories, flirty smiles, little black dresses, martini-nights and witty conversations must have bubbled into the making of Holly.

Thank God for Yossarian and Little Nell, Lolita and Holly and all the rest, I hope I write a character as great as that one day. In the mean time one of the perks of being a writer, penning stories for ourselves or the local newspaper or the web or a publisher, is surely that we never have to choose whether to be a management consultant or a lawyer, an Olympic swimmer or a mother. We can be everything we want, including other people. What other profession can say that? Our alter egos are not “us”, but we can try a thousand lives on for size.

Anna Stothard is the author of The Pink Hotel published by Alma Books