Saturday, March 4, 2023

Notes on the State of Self-Publishing

How are self-published authors of fiction as a whole doing these days? I mean, in a big-picture way?

I have to admit that I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. No one's collecting the relevant data, with even anecdotal data scarcer these days than it used to be--and less accessible, thanks to what the "enshittified" search engines yield when we go looking. All we get are hucksters trying to sell self-publishing services, and elitist bullies punching down at anyone eschewing the traditional publishing route closed to 99.9 percent of us (however much said bullies and their duck-talking colleagues refuse to admit it)--but I would imagine that self-published authors, in spite of the hype, never seem to have actually met with much success as a group, are doing even worse than they were a decade ago for three reasons:

1. I suspect that people are reading less fiction than before--that other media are eating more and more into people's consumption of fiction. The smart phone seems to me a significant development here, making people able to distract them with anything else wherever they are, while actually being more conducive to TV watching or video game-playing than reading--such that it seems to me no coincidence that the Young Adult book boom went bust about the time that smart phone ownership among the young reached the point of saturation. Meanwhile the situation would only seem to have worsened since then--as people's habits changed, and younger persons, indeed, never had the chance to make a habit of reading. I suspect, too, that the pandemic and other associated stresses of recent years have left people looking for "lower hanging fruit" in their entertainment, with activities like gaming winning out over reading. (Reader that I am, I have to admit that even I often find it easier to get into some old video game, especially when tired or distracted.) And where all this is concerned it stands to reason that those writers most marginal within the market--the self-published--will take a particularly hard hit, especially when one remembers that the self-published did best in the light reading, "genre" fiction market, which depends so much on people having the habit of reading and casually consuming books as a matter of course in the way that all those entertainment alternatives make less likely.

2. E-books have done less well than hoped circa 2010. This was partly a matter of genuinely exaggerated expectations, partly a matter of the control publishers have exerted over the pricing of such books (diminishing a key attraction they have had), and partly, again, the smart phone--which very easily defeated the e-reader in the contest to be the one electronic device people carried around (just as, for example, the tablet has suffered). Of course, this can be seen as affecting all of publishing, but it has to be remembered that given the kinds of lighter fare they offered, and the reality that 99 cent e-books and nearly cost-free giveaways were one of the few things that the self-published could do when trying to compete with traditional publishing, they suffered disproportionately, sales of the more costly print editions to which the book buyer is less easily tempted simply not rising to compensate. (And again, that the self-published were doing best in the area of lighter reading was a problem, because people were a lot more likely to do that kind of thing on an e-reader than attempt heavier reading there. Few dare read War and Peace in any format; but I suspect fewer still dare to do it on a Kindle, and fewer of those who make the attempt persist in it up to the end.)

3. The Internet just keeps becoming more completely and securely gatekept than before, diminishing the chances of the self-published to be discovered. Consider, for instance, how the self-published novelist was supposed to give readers a chance to discover their book. They could not remotely begin to compete with the Big Five where marketing budgets were concerned. Very likely they had no "industry connections." The review pages in a place like the New York Times were closed to them. But there was social media. And there were a lot of book bloggers online. Of course, as is generally the case with this kind of thing one would have to work much harder for a much smaller return--and indeed, a great many of the usual idiots promoted one-in-a-million success stories based on such endeavors as if they were some sort of reasonable plan for the many, with the usual cruel result. But it was something. And now with social media and the search engines becoming less friendly to this kind of activity, there is much less of that something--to the particular cost of the self-published author.

In short, the fact of less fiction reading, especially of the habitual, casual kind; the softness of interest in the e-book; and the gatekeeping of the scene; have kept the marginalized, marginalized, if not worsened the situation to such a degree that I suspect fewer and fewer writers are being tempted to take this route.

Of course, as I said previously these are suspicions. And so while everything put up here is presented with an invitation to the reader to comment (if, given the way the game is being reached, this piece indeed manages to reach any reader) I will specifically say here that anyone with knowledge, experience or simply opinions about the matter is invited to offer their two cents in the comments thread below.

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