Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

[logophile]

A common thing I see everywhere where mainstream publishing happens (authors, agents, and editors among others) keep saying that self-publishing is great for non-fiction, but that fiction is a dead weight. As often as I've heard this, it just doesn't add up in the numbers I see from my fellow indie authors who are currently published in various places.

It seems to be that those mainstream people who write and publish fiction like to discourage those who would rather spend their time writing and publishing than sending query after query in the hopes of winning the book contract lotto. This isn't to say mainstream publishing is a bad choice, as I rather like many mainstream published books. However, it does make me question if the stigma of self-publishing was created more out of fear than a pure lack of quality.

Personally, I have a cover artist I pay well, two editors I use and pay for the privilege of using, and a layout designer to who sets up all my interior pages and my cover to send to my printer. I've done everything I can to ensure the product I produce and sell is as top quality as possible. I think that's the key. Self-publishers should take pride in their work and not think that self-publishing is a shortcut. It's not. It's taken me two years to get Rachmaninoff where it should be for release, and I don't regret a moment or dime spent. :)

What about the rest of you? Do you read self-published works? Are you self-published? Why did you choose to self-publish, if you have?

Comments

Re: *curious*

[logophile]

I write erotic romances. Usually m/m or bisexual polyamorous centered stories. If I wrote straight romance, I could have gone to any number of traditional romance publishers, but choosing to write for erotic content with homosexual or bisexual content limited me to the e-presses. From exploring self-publishing, I know the costs that go into producing a quality e-book (which was not what I was seeing in the e-books I downloaded from various presses), and I decided that those e-presses were not doing enough to warrant 60% of my earnings.

Tomorrow I plan on making a post about what I've done in order to self-publish as well as publish other people's work in a post. :)

[marahmarie]

I think the publishers who won't publish your work have no idea the money potential they're missing out on. They should see who gravitates to what online and judge from there and forget remaining completely "traditional", since romance between men and women, novel-wise, is completely played out and has been for about 10-20 years. I think when and if publishers ever get with the times, you could make a killing. :)

[logophile]

The problem is that, right now, erotic romances of any kind are only the digital medium. As such, the authors of these works just don't make much money. There is a blogger/author who has been collecting sales date on the e-presses that I would submit my work to here (and another author has done the money comparisons here), and, as you can see, these e-press don't sell many copies and the authors don't earn much money.

The best is Ellora's Cave, but their contracts ask for lifetime copyright (which is the author's lifespan + 70 years). These e-presses also do more business with their heterosexual lines than their homosexual or bisexual ones, and they release more of them, so the GLBT books get buries.

I just can't get into writing the same old boy-meets-girl-and-falls-in-love, vanilla crap that Harlequin and their like spew out weekly. :)

[marahmarie]

"I just can't get into writing the same old boy-meets-girl-and-falls-in-love..."

Yep, I hear you. I don't blame you for that, either. It might be the easier sub-sect of the genre (or whatever you want to call it) to get published in, but that doesn't make it any more exciting, does it... *nods off*