The Lies They Told the Self-Published

I'm not quite sure how things stand here these days, but back when self-publishing exploded circa 2010 the writer who endeavored to go this route was beaten over the head with the "advice" that they absolutely must make great and strenuous efforts to publicize their book if they are to have any hope of anyone reading their book at all.

As with most of the advice directed toward the self-published this was less about guiding them toward a course that would let them have the fairest possible chance than crushing their hopes of self-publication being a viable alternative to the traditional publication channels out of which they had likely found themselves already completely shut out (because the means are beyond them, or the process so distasteful or unbearable)--or to foist on them very expensive services of dubious value.

As one might guess, the advice tended to be dishonest, in the small as in the large.

Consider how such writers were enjoined to get their work "reviewed."

The truth is that they did not need "reviews." A merely good review, after all, would not necessarily do much for them, while a bad review would be damaging--quite enough, perhaps, to neutralize the effect of many positive reviews.

No, what they needed rather than reviews was claquing--not reviewers, but claqueurs. Big publishers can arrange these--and do so all the time, going by the raves one sees all the time on the covers of mediocre works. They do not necessarily have to work all that hard for it--the established author likely to be treated much more generously than the newcomer for a multitude of reasons, as their failings are given the benefit of the doubt, and the critics jump on the bandwagon, in a way that cannot happen with a "nobody," who was likely to naively send out their work to such obscure reviewers as they could get to look at it, and merely land luke-warm responses--and, reflecting how much more they needed the claquing than did the already established, the less than luke-warm sales to show for them.