Bad advice from the NY Times…
So you’ve written what you believe is the great American novel, penned the biography of your family relative and war hero, or created a theory of everything, and you want to self-publish it. There’s a lot of bad advice out there from marketing gurus to scam artists, all willing to share their secrets if you’re only willing to pay them.
Who can you trust? You might say to yourself, “Well, this fellow is associated with X, normally a reputable source, so their advice must be good.” Wrong! If X is some fellow whose gig on the side is selling his marketing books to would-be authors, don’t use him. If X is any POD publisher (POD = “publish on demand,” the oldest form of self-publishing beyond vanity presses) that advertises on cable channels, don’t use them! If X is any ancient and struggling POD that’s traveling along the road to oblivion (you can determine that by the number of books published recently…if they’ll tell you!), avoid them. If X is any of the tech giants (Amazon, Apple, or Google), run like hell away! And if X is the venerable NY Times, rest assured that they don’t give a rat’s ass about self-published authors!
Most of the advice on how to self-publish a book out there now is bad advice. Here’s a recent example: In the NY Times’s article “A Story to Tell? Self-Publish Your E-Book,” J. D. Biersdorfer uses a half-page of the 8/3/2023 business section to spew forth bad advice about self-publishing. He obviously knows very little about it. He recommends Apple and Google (bad advice), DIY covers (really bad advice), and generally guarantees that your self-published book will be a flop. While that might occur no matter how it is (“gurus” like Biersdorfer never tell authors that there are absolutely no guarantees for making your book into a bestseller, traditionally or self-published), following his bad advice will only hasten the demise of your book. (Generally speaking, the NY Times will have nothing worthwhile about self-publishing to offer authors interested in it.)
Many reporters worldwide know well that if they want to report on what war is like, they must talk to those who are participating in it. The same goes for self-publishing. J. D. Biersdorfer’s qualifications don’t meet that test. He writes computer manuals, maybe even good ones, but he’s not self-published a single book, at least none displayed on Amazon. And most of his manuals are about Apple products (which is why he mostly supports self-publishing with Apple, I suppose). Obviously reporter Biersdorfer has no good advice to offer any aspiring self-publishing author; indeed, one has to wonder about the Times’s editor’s moral underpinnings in allowing such an article, a completely biased travesty, to appear in the Times!
While Mr. Biersdorfer more than mentions Apple and Google, he doesn’t tell you that they’re not aggregators. What’s that mean? It means that neither service distributes the ebooks they publish! Your ebook only appears at the Apple or Google online store! (Amazon operates in exactly the same way.) While you can become your own aggregator, why bother? If you use an aggregating service (Draft2Digital/Smashwords is the easiest to use), your ebook, will be distributed automatically to many online sites selling ebooks around the world. You must pay a bit in royalties for this service, but it’s nothing like traditional publishers take for publishing your ebooks. Either Mr. Biersdorfer doesn’t know about aggregators, or he’s coddling Apple and Google. In either case, forget about Mr. Biersdorfer’s bad advice (here a lack of any useful advice!).
Here’s the best advice I can give authors who are considering self-publishing: If there’s a charge for the advice (in the case of the Times, you’re paying an exorbitant cost for that paper), be wary and take all advice offered with a grain of salt. There are ways to self-publish that are efficient, easy-to-use, and produce a quality product. Do your homework, though. Too many people out there are waiting to steal your money! Once you have a manuscript properly prepared, formatting, publishing, and distributing your ebook is a lot easier than what Biersdorfer says. In fact, once you’ve written and edited a manuscript, most of your work is done. Why do more?
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Good advice (or a lot better than the NY Times’s Biersdorfer, at least). My advice for authors thinking about self-publishing is free! Go to the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page and download my short course Writing Fiction. (The parts containing self-publishing advice are generally applicable to book publishing in general, not just fiction books.) My qualifications? I’ve traditionally and self-published (from old PODs to ebooks) since 2006, producing a number of titles that I’m proud to call mine, including those traditionally published ones. Unlike the Times reporter mentioned above, I’ve done it all, so my advice and opinions are based on hard-earned experience. Because I receive absolutely zero benefit for this course beyond offering authors a helpful hand, this little course provides a better launch pad than the NY Times or any how-to article or book on the subject that charges you for the advice! Peruse my advice and please let me know what you think of the course.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
