We’ve been talking about publishing (or rather, not getting published), and G24 points out:

You don’t need a publisher these days any more than you need pulped up trees to print on.

I agree entirely, but I don’t think self publishing is the right road for me. There are lots of reasons for that, but the biggest one is this: I’d rather spend my time writing than marketing, because I’m bloody awful at marketing.

I think self publishing can work, but I think it only works for very specific kinds of writing and for very specific kinds of people. I think in most cases those kinds of writing are the ones that the mainstream publishing industry doesn’t serve particularly well – sci-fi and fantasy, for example, or erotica, or poetry, or books by famous bloggers. And I think in most cases those kinds of people are those so passionate that they’ll devote extraordinary amounts of time, effort and money for precious little reward.

One of the big problems with self publishing is that it can cost money. To do it properly, even if you’re online-only, you’ll need to be, or pay for, an editor, a proofreader, a designer, a publicist, a social media marketer and so on. If you can do all those things yourself, I’ve got nothing but admiration for you, because you’re much more talented than I am. And if you can afford to pay for all of those things yourself, you’re much richer than I am.

Another problem, to me at least, is that self publishing doesn’t give you the editorial process you get with a mainstream agent and publisher. I’ve spent thirteen-odd years being edited, and I can honestly say that with very few exceptions the editorial process has made my writing better. I don’t just mean proofreading here; I mean the whole process, especially the bit where the editor says “that’s a terrible idea. Why don’t you…?” In fiction, having the input of agents and editors who eat, sleep and drink fiction is enormously useful, I think.

I’m convinced that no matter how good the writer, they can benefit from a good editor.

Another big problem is that the money isn’t there yet. The Kindle Store, Apple’s iBooks and so on are good business for the companies that run them, because 1 million authors selling 100 copies each is a nice little revenue stream. But if you’re the author of one of those books, that’s bugger-all money.

The authors making money from ebooks are the ones whose books you see in ASDA – the Stieg Larssons and Stephenie Meyers. There’s a visibility problem with electronic publishing, which is why the ebook charts are dominated by writers with agents, big-name publishers and enormous marketing budgets. We’ve seen exactly the same thing with music: despite the democratisation of music from PC-based studios and Internet distribution, if you want to do big numbers you still need to have a big label behind you.

I don’t want to be online-only, incidentally: I like real, printed books, and my enormous rampaging ego would quite like to see my name on a poster in the window of Waterstone’s. And that means self publishing is even less attractive.

As Jane Smith points out on How Publishing Really Works:

it would be difficult to hire anyone competent to sell your books on percentage, as each bookshop visit would barely cover the travelling costs incurred even if every bookshop approached took half a dozen copies each.

Even if you do the legwork yourself you’re still likely to end up losing money because of those travelling costs, and because you will only be able to cover a very small part of the country.

Commercial publishers have their own sales and distribution networks in place. Their sales representatives frequently visit every bookshop in the country, and discuss their new and forthcoming books.

Commercial publishers also have publicity departments which routinely send out stacks of review copies to TV programmes, newspapers and magazines, to ensure that potential readers will get to hear about each book as it is released.

The self-publisher simply cannot match this vast sales machine, and so is unlikely to sell anything like as many books: few self-published titles sell more than one hundred copies, while most commercially-published books sell more than a thousand.

Incidentally, that also demonstrates just how much the odds are stacked against you: even with the backing of a decent agent and a good publisher, few writers sell lots of books. But the numbers are even smaller with self-publishing.

This takes me back to my first point, which is that I’d rather spend my time writing than marketing because I’m not particularly good at marketing. Having already spent the best part of two years writing something that, for now at least, mainstream publishers aren’t keen on, I think my time would be better spent writing something that will sell rather than doing a half-arsed marketing job that might generate a couple of hundred quid somewhere down the line. Self promotion, sadly, isn’t one of my talents.

Remember that book I was writing? I thought I’d post an update.

After a lot of work, eight drafts and two printers I’ve sent it out to some people, and I’ve had loads of feedback about it from agents and other publishing insiders. The dialogue is great. It’s really atmospheric. The characters are fun. The book is variously “quite funny”, “funny”, “very funny” and “extremely funny”.

Nobody wants to take it on.

Apparently it’s not the writing, but the genre*. It’s a comic thriller, and comic thrillers are the red-headed stepchild of the mainstream fiction business. Everyone knows they exist, but nobody wants them in their publishing house.

If I’d known that two years ago it might have saved me quite a bit of effort.

So here’s a top tip. If you want to write novels – that is, if you want to write novels that get published – then it might be an idea to do what Ian Rankin did before you start plotting. Rankin looked at what sold, and concluded that Books With Cops In was the genre for him.

As for me, I’m starting another one. I’ll tell you about it when there’s something worth saying.

* In most cases, anyway. A few agents told me that at 67,000 words it’s just too short; for mainstream fiction publishers apparently expect 80,000 words plus or they won’t even look at it. Unfortunately for me 67K is the right length for the story, and any more would make the story sag.

Update, June 2011: I decided to publish the book myself on Kindle, iBooks and so on. It’s called Coffin Dodgers, it’s doing quite well, and you can find out more about it here, if you like.

My friend Chris Mitchell runs Spike, a most excellent books-and-interesting-things site on the Internet. And now, he’s put together a most excellent ebook version with some of the best bits from Spike’s last 15 years. And a few things I’ve written too.

It’s a lovely thing to look at and and to read, and it’s free. Here’s who’s in it:

Chris Abani Peter Ackroyd Douglas Adams Scott Adams Keith Altham Paul Auster Tom Baker J.G. Ballard Iain Banks John Battelle John Baxter Samuel Beckett Bellow Thomas Bernhard Maurice Blanchot Jorge Luis Borges Angela Bourke Michael Bracewell Charlie Brooker Charles Bukowski Julie Burchill Jason Burke Bryan Burrough Albert Camus Paul Celan Bruce Chatwin Annabel Chong E.M. Cioran Diablo Cody Douglas Coupland Quentin Crisp Mark Danielewski Don De- Lillo John C Diamond Stephen Dorril Patricia Duncker Nic Dunlop The Fall Stefan Fatsis Tibor Fischer Mark Fisher Michael Foot Franz Ferdinand Athol Fugard Anna Funder Alex Garland Harry Gibson William Gibson Allen Ginsberg Graham Greene Peter Guralnick Half Man Half Biscuit Keith Haring Bill Hicks Tom Hodgkinson Gert Hofmann Nick Hornby Michel Houellebecq Gary Indiana Derek Jarman Linton Kwesi Johnson Ed Jones Gabriel Josipovici Kevin Kelly Naomi Klein Rem Koolhaas Kruder And Dorfmeister Andrey Kurkov Emma Larkin Abby Lee Wyndham Lewis Jack London Leo Marks David Markson Gabriel Garcia Marquez Bertie Marshall Cedric Mims Alan Moore Morrissey Patricia Morrisroe Cookie Mueller Ben Myers Jeff Noon Cees Nooteboom Angus Oblong Will Oldham P.J. O’Rourke Lawrence O’Toole Chuck Palahniuk Tim Parks Arvo Part Ulf Poschardt Richard Powers Thomas Pynchon Matthew Robertson Bruce Robinson Jacques Roubaud Robert Sabbag Peter Saville Alberto Sciamma WG Sebald Will Self Tupac Shakur Mark Simpson Iain Sinclair Michael Marshall Smith Sonic Youth Ralph Steadman Suicide Damo Suzuki Swans David Sylvian David Thomas Hunter S. Thompson Colm Toibin Amos Tutuola Stuart Walton Alan Warner Evelyn Waugh Belinda Webb Irvine Welsh The White Stripes Tony Wilson

If you download it — which you should — and you like it — which I think you will — Chris would be very happy if you could share the download link with others.

Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works is worth a read at the best of times (if you’re interested in publishing, of course), but her five-part demolition of a “self-publishing is the future” screed is particularly delicious. Part five has just gone up; here are parts one, two, three and four.

But the people that you perceive as barriers—agents, editors, publishers—are, in fact, there to help good writers get published well, and to ensure that the reading public has access to good books, professionally produced. There’s nothing stopping anyone from putting their work on the internet if they want, or from self-publishing in print or electronic format: the technology has been there for years. The real problem for writers who can’t get published isn’t that barriers to publication exist, but that their writing just isn’t good enough.

In the comments Dan Holloway quibbles with the word “good” – he reckons “saleable” would be better, and I think he’s right; whether it’s good isn’t as important as whether it’ll sell – but you get the idea, I’m sure.

A memorial library for Kurt Vonnegut opens in Indianapolis this November. Exhibits will include “boxes of rejection letters”.

I’d really like to see it.

Fancy a free book? Publishing firm Simon & Schuster is giving away a free ebook version of Loser’s Town, a Hollywood-set thriller by Daniel Depp. I’ve no idea what it’s like but it’s free, it’s a PDF so it should work on anything, and all you need to do is provide an email address, so you might as well get it while you can.

Here’s the link.

In other news, the new Tim Dorsey novel is much cheaper as an ebook than it is in print: the latter is £11 to £14 plus postage, while the Kindle edition is eleven dollars flat. That’s around seven quid.