I don’t think I could throw a rock at this article and hit a fact, just a bunch of tired stereotypes. While Dean kills a bunch of sacred cows of publishing over on his blog, perhaps the sacred cows related to self-publishing, should be revisited if that isn’t too uncomfortable for people.

This must be what it would have been like to read something written by a Dinosaur about how swimmingly great things were going, right before the ice age.

I am an indie author, to those who don’t like that term cause it makes me sound like more than a bottom feeding reject, “self-published.” Or, excuse me… self-PRINTED.

The truth of the matter is that I think trad publishing is fairly stupid. You’ve pointed out yourself it’s an illogical business model, yet you’re like “whoo hoo let’s keep doing it.” Having been raised by a family of entrepreneurs (which is probably rather similar to being raised by wolves), I really can’t participate in an illogical business model.

I want creative control.

I’m sure you’re aware of indie musicians and indie filmmakers. No one denigrates what they are doing to the level you have attempted to denigrate the indie author in this post.

Why is it SO important that everyone agree that self-publishing is what “fake writers” do? You’ve claimed yourself to be independently minded and so you went against the grain with regards to agents. Well some of us are opting out of the entire convoluted system.

And because there seems to not have been much of a strong attempt to name some self-publishing success stories:

Jeremy Robinson

Pamela Aidan, who self-published her fiction as a business decision and turned down Simon and Schuster three times before finally accepting an offer. I’m assuming they finally pulled their heads out of their posterior regions and made her a decent offer befitting of the work she’d already done.

Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

Jeff Rivera

Still Alice was self-published by Lisa Genova

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was originally self-published online before it was picked up by a major publisher and became a best-seller.

Connie Shelton has been self-publishing her Charlie Parker mystery series for years under her own self-created imprint, Intrigue Press. She later branched out to publish other authors.

The well known Ellora’s Cave romance e-publishing house was originally an expanded self-publishing enterprise, as the founder was publishing her own work at the site as well.

I could go on for ages here. These kinds of stories used to be pretty rare but they are becoming less rare.

Having said all that, *I* am not interested in a mainstream publishing contract for my own work. I *like* self-publishing. The Internet is big. I will never run out of people to reach on the internet, and if I write good enough books, with systems in place like Amazon’s amazing filtering system that helps readers find other similar books, I will slowly rise in the ranks.

My first release, a paranormal romance novella called Kept, has at one point been number 592 in the Kindle store, and number 9 in vampire romance books (on the whole of Amazon.) I am a no name. Unless you’ve seen my loud mouth ranting and raving somewhere else on this topic on the Internet, it’s likely you’ve never heard of me.

I’ve sold over 4,000 copies of Kept in the Kindle store. My second book under this pen name is coming out next month in E and in May in print using Lightning Source for printing and distribution. (Yes I self-publish under more than one pen name and imprint, “Zoe Winters” is the most vocal of my writing identities). Now this may not be a number that makes your jaw drop on the floor but I’m just getting started.

I fully expect to have built a strong audience, directly interfacing with my readers online and with a backlist within 10 years. We’re in year two. I expect to start to hit critical mass by year five or six.

And while I don’t want to disabuse anyone of their stereotypes (actually, that’s a lie. I take great pleasure in disabusing people of their stereotypes), I have no intention of selling primary rights to anything to a traditional publisher. Unless doing so would make me ludicrously rich, I don’t see a reason to give up the two things I love doing most, which is writing AND publishing.

Please consider interacting with and learning more about the vibrant and growing indie author community before trotting out an understanding of self-publishing that is more than a decade old and even then, quite flawed. Stick to what you know.

My books are all listed on my website at http://www.LauraResnick.com. A printable booklist is on this page:
http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/About%20Laura/PrintableLists.htm

Laura Resnick