You bet there is a stigma to self publishing. Get over it. If you are a writer then you have a commitment and that is to the work. Publishing may go into deep freeze or they may be burning the house down to bring out your next work. Either way the work is what drives you to get it out there in whatever form you can. Art is never greeted with open arms and neither will your book. There may be a million reasons why reviewers and publishers and agents and everyone else view a self published novel as something less than standard. You cannot worry about that.
Your first responsibility is to write the book. Your second is to get it out there where people can read it. If you only want to see your name in print then that is not going to take you far. If you truly believe in your work then you will do what is necessary. That is why you only want to put out your best work because you will have to stand by it through thick and thin. This is not for the I want to publish a book before I die crowd. This is for the I want to give the world something new crowd.
In Our Time. Hemingway's small chap book of stories was self published by Ezra Pound in Paris on a rotary press. No one would publish the fellow with the strange stories. My first book was brought out by a printer in Chicago who had never published a book before. Hemingway went on as we all know and the very people who turned my book down bought it on auction years later. The point is you are part of the big struggle and you may well be trampled underfoot anyway, but use every tool at your disposal and then make up some along the way.
Being a writer is not for the feint of heart, but who knows, you might just buck the odds. Either way, it is the work that matters. Only the work.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Hemingways Attic...surviving as a writer
Your first responsibility is to write the book. Your second is to get it out there where people can read it. If you only want to see your name in print then that is not going to take you far. If you truly believe in your work then you will do what is necessary. That is why you only want to put out your best work because you will have to stand by it through thick and thin. This is not for the I want to publish a book before I die crowd. This is for the I want to give the world something new crowd.
In Our Time. Hemingway's small chap book of stories was self published by Ezra Pound in Paris on a rotary press. No one would publish the fellow with the strange stories. My first book was brought out by a printer in Chicago who had never published a book before. Hemingway went on as we all know and the very people who turned my book down bought it on auction years later. The point is you are part of the big struggle and you may well be trampled underfoot anyway, but use every tool at your disposal and then make up some along the way.
Being a writer is not for the feint of heart, but who knows, you might just buck the odds. Either way, it is the work that matters. Only the work.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Hemingways Attic...surviving as a writer
