Yes, I'm a snob about this. Yes, I should probably be more open-minded. But to me, this quote from this article about the "huge boom" in self-publishing says it all:
Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.
Look, we're DESPERATE to find and publish good books. Look how many bad books we publish while we're waiting! So if your book didn't get acquired by a regular publisher, either you didn't try hard enough
or it's just not very good.
I hate this smug attitude that self-publishing is the lovely frolicking egalitarian way of the future. Yeah, a future overrun with terrible, unedited, poorly spelled, badly designed books that won't live on for a second longer than this blog post.
The people who write these articles or who tell me "But why shouldn't everyone have a shot at being an author?" are always people who have never read the kind of horrible crap I sift through every day.
You have no idea.
Self-publishing has its place. But that place, at least for me, is not on MY bookshelf.
2 comments:
it's kind of funny that you posted this. another blog i read, she has just self-published a book with this company. although i think it's more because other people had expressed an interest in reading some stuff she'd written, but she wasn't too interested in trying to get it published.
i'm kind of curious to read it, as she works for a newspaper her writing can't be too awful one would hope.
Yup. Me too.
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