Today we’ll hear from someone inside the traditional publishing world. This was emailed to me from a member of an established New York publishing house. Aside from working in publishing, he’s also been conventionally published himself. I know it’s unfortunate, but I’ve been asked to conceal his name. He doesn’t want to anger the publishing company that employs him. That’s fine, I understand. I’m just glad to have a viewpoint from inside the machine.

Anyhow, here is his insight, after being presented with my questions:

I totally agree with what you say about a self-pubbed work reaching critical mass via word of mouth, blogging, etc, and, most important, actual sales figures. If a self-pubbed author approaches a publisher and says I’ve hoofed my ass from Kalamazoo to Timbuktu to sell 100,000 copies of a book that explains everything about life, the publisher will sit up and take note.

As for part 2, in general, I think the gate-keeping system in place works pretty well right now. In every media there’s some sort of comparable set up of readers/scouts > agents > editors > publishers/producers/decision makers. Self pubbing or publishing on demand doesn’t really change anything. You’re either happy being self-pubbed or you still want acceptance/approval from established houses for reasons of greed or fame, and possibly on the rare occasion true belief that you have something that will improve the world somehow and want the greater distribution capacity a major house provides.

If this is all in terms of trying to get into a writing program, I’d like to think all that matters is the writing itself. Saying that one is self-pubbed might give credit in terms of the author’s willingness to work their butt off.

Thanks for the input, Anonymous.

Join us next time for the final part of our discussion, where we’ll wrap up our discussion and try to make some sense of everything. Thanks for reading.

In order to make this article itself a little more legitimate, I also emailed several people in various part of the publishing industry. A few emailed me back, and I’ll be interspersing their comments throughout the various parts. This part includes quotes from Cory Doctorow the author and blogger who’s had great success publishing his traditionally printed works with free e-books. The quotes are taken from his emails to me, and used with his permission.

Publishing Websites

Similar to the current publishing model, a website could be created with editors that read submissions and only “published” books on the website that met certain standards. On the surface this looks very similar to traditional publishing, however, there is one key difference: resources are only limited by labor hours, not limited printing budget.

Currently a small publishing house only has enough resources to publish a limited number of books per year, even if they would like to publish more. This is limited by editor hours and printing costs. If the cost of “publishing” an e-book on a website costs nothing, there are less limits to how many books can be published a year. No longer will good books be denied because the publishing house has already published their maximum quota for the year.

This method filters out craptent and allows the legitimacy of real publishing. However, there is still a significant overhead (the website must be hosted and editors must be paid), so content would still have to be monetized somehow, via a subscription or some other method. In order to charge for content a website like this would have to offer a great variety of content, as well as great accessibility: each book would have to support multiple types of e-reader formats, at least until the e-publishing format is standardized, which will probably be awhile.

An indie company willing to live on peanuts could probably still do something like the paid content site, apply standards and all that, but still give content away for free. As long as the site has a reputation for only publishing quality work, eventually their word will add legitimacy to their selections.

Obviously, the biggest downsides to this method are cost, monetization, and the risk that the editors will become the same type of gatekeepers as traditional publishing, which is something that must be avoided. Because of these risks, this probably isn’t a feasible option.

Popularity Numbers

“The answer is another indeterminate, I’m afraid. Depends on the publisher, and on the online reception… Say you put it online and no one cared, and the publisher loved it but was freaked about CC. Show him that you’ve have all of 7 downloads, it’ll put his mind at ease.

OTOH, say it was a raging success — 50,000,000 downloads, talk of the town. You could probably parlay *that* into a publishing deal, on the strength of the demonstrated market for the work.

So: depends on the work, the publisher, and the reception.” -Cory Doctorow

When a record sells a million copies, it “goes platinum.” A million is pretty high, but along the same idea, perhaps a target number could be set for a self-published e-book that, when reached, established “legitimacy.” This isn’t a bad method, since it shows that the work is popular.

However, a system like this would be extremely difficult to track unless there was a standard site these downloads had to occur. For instance, my free books are offered on my blog, on scribd.com, and mentioned on a few other random free e-book websites around the web. Do I just add up the total of downloads and claim that number? What stops me from spoofing downloads myself? The difficulty of regulating (or “proving”) something like this makes it an unattractive option.

Financial Records

“A book that made a lot of money would absolutely get a lot of respect in the professional world.” – Cory Doctorow

Although authors probably don’t write for the money (most are barking up the wrong tree if they are), it’s nice to get paid for creative work. If a self-published e-book was popular enough to drum up some sales, financial records could be a way of legitimizing work. However, with a solid financial record, traditional print publishing is much easier to obtain, so I don’t know why an author with demonstrated e-book sales wouldn’t just jump into a traditional publishing contract. Still, for an author interesting in proving herself legitimate, actually selling books is a solid way to go.

The main difficulties, of course, stem from trying to sell an e-book that has no corresponding print version. You’d have to ask Scribd.com (or some other publishing site), but I’d imagine the majority of the monetized self-published stuff on that site doesn’t get touched.

Reviews

A self-published e-book could be legitimized through reviews in journals and on blogs. If a book gets enough voices talking about it and praising it, surely it becomes legitimate publishing. However, finding reviews for a self-published e-book has to be a very difficult task, almost as difficult as the traditional publishing model, which might make the whole thing moot. However, there are sympathetic bloggers out there who are willing to take chances and review self-published e-books, so although this method could be as awful as finding a traditional publisher, pounding the virtual pavement is still an option.

Critical Mass and Internet Notoriety

“Put another way: it’s hard to monetize fame, but it’s even harder to monetize obscurity.” – Cory Doctorow

This is probably the most attractive option, the most likely, and it combines aspects of most of the above options. Building a good standing on the internet is the same as building a good standing anywhere else. It takes work, a lasting presence, a reputation for quality content, and time. Sound familiar? It should. It’s almost the same damn thing as trying to get published through traditional publishing methods.

However, there is one (very critical) difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing on the internet, and that is the barrier to entry.

However, because the barrier to entry is lower, the barrier to “success” is higher. It might be easier to put something up on the internet, but once it’s up, getting people to pay attention is pretty tough. It means the same type of shopping around as traditional publishing. However, the feedback is faster, and that, if nothing else, is the best part about the net over those six-month snail-mail wait times.

On the negative side, a traditional “substantial publishing record” takes more time to get started, but is probably still worth more once it’s done.

Either way, I’d just like to see critical mass and internet notoriety as an acceptable option, as far as the ivory tower is concerned. Most of the time, it means enough for the rest of the world.

That’s all for this post. Join me tomorrow for the opinion of Levi Montgomery, an author who self-publishes his own work, both on the internet and through print-on-demand publishing. Same mispeled time, same mispeled channel.