{"id":10207,"date":"2016-03-21T20:19:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennytrout.com\/?p=10207"},"modified":"2016-03-24T12:31:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:31:25","slug":"dont-do-this-ever-ego-induced-amnesia-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/?p=10207","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Do This Ever: “Ego-Induced Amnesia” edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ros Barber will\u00a0never<\/em> self-publish.<\/a> It is beneath her. It should be beneath any “serious novelist” (a title Barber seems to self-apply), and she has taken to The Guardian to tell us why.<\/p>\n

Now, I understand that \u201cindie publishing\u201d is all the rage, but you might as well be telling Luke Skywalker to go to the dark side. Despite royalty rates of 70%, I think self-publishing is a terrible idea for serious novelists (by which I mean, novelists who take writing seriously, and love to write). Here\u2019s why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I should warn you that any time someone uses the term “serious novelist” without irony, whatever follows will be an orgy of public masturbation. Barber’s piece is practically NSFW in this respect.<\/p>\n

If you self-publish your book, you are not going to be writing for a living. You are going to be marketing for a living. Self-published authors should expect to spend only 10% of their time writing and 90% of their time marketing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait, I thought this article was about why Barber\u00a0won’t<\/em> self-publish. I\u00a0won’t<\/em> go downhill skiing, but it’s a comfort to know that my inexperience won’t hold me back when I want to write an article for a major media outlet about why downhill skiing is terrible and no cross-country skiers should do it. Somehow, Barber is the expert on how self-published authors divide up their time, despite her reluctance to do it in the first place.<\/p>\n

But if your passion is creating worlds and characters, telling great stories, and\/or revelling in language, you might want to aim for traditional publication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure it’s possible to be more insulting than Barber is here. Only traditionally published, serious authors can create worlds and characters, because clearly self-published authors draw words out of a hat and hurriedly type them up so as to return to their mindless, repetitive social media presence. Only traditionally published authors can tell great stories.<\/p>\n

Barber goes on to describe the very marketing behavior many successful self-published authors already advise against, and assumes that all self-published authors are equally guilty:<\/p>\n

Imagine we have just met. I invite you into my house and the first thing you do is show me the advertising blurb for your book and press me to check it out on Amazon. Then you read me the blurb for someone else whose book you\u2019ve agreed to promote if they\u2019ll do the same with yours. Then you tell me how many friends you\u2019ve lost today, and that I can find out how many friends I\u2019ve lost by using this app. Then you poke a reader review of your book under my nose. All within the first 10 minutes. Does this lead me to conclude you are a successful author, whose books I might like to buy? Or a desperate egomaniac with no thought for other people? One who may not be able to string a decent sentence together, since your sentences come out as semi-literate strings of hashtags:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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#Bestseller<\/a>: ARRANGED MARRIAGE https:\/\/t.co\/GYO5Sxgwa2<\/a> #IAN1<\/a> #amreading<\/a> #ASMSG<\/a> #romance<\/a> #IARTG<\/a> #BYNR<\/a> #PDf1<\/a> #readers<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Aditi Chopra (@atchopra) March 16, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n