Self-publishing isn’t quite it…

After getting another chapter written today, I ran errands, did some reading, and went dancing. The East Coast Swing lesson was fun. I didn’t really learn any new moves, just a few moves put together in a way I’d not seen before. I got them down pretty easily and they worked well with most partners.

During a break between dances, one woman asked me if I’d had work published or if I was self-published. The question was phrased with the sort of distinction you might imagine in the voice of someone asking if you were a “chef,” or a “short-order cook.” I explained that I’d had forty books published, eight of which hit the New York Times Bestseller list, and that I’d been translated into at least 10 different languages. But, I also noted that I’ve been self-published with a bunch of stories in the digital realm.

It occurs to me that we really need a new taxonomy to deal with the degrees of self-publishing that are and will be going on. For example, the Trick Molloy stories I’ve serialized to the web are self-published, but they’re a professionally produced story that could sell if there was a market for it. My novel Talion: Revenant was, for years, unpublishable because no one wanted to take a risk on a book of that length by an unknown. Once I stopped being unknown, a publisher took it as is. And if I were to up and write a sequel to it, and chose to publish that book myself instead of shopping it around, would that mean the book was unpublishable otherwise?

Clearly not. And yet it would rightfully be described as self-published and lumped in with all other self-published novels—the vast majority of which are dreadful.

But with advances in technology making the price of printing books much lower for short runs; and websites that allow folks to subscribe to a book much in the way that Poe and others pre-sold their books; there is less and less reason to stick with the traditional model of publishing. Add to this the fact that traditional publishers are looking for novels that will sell tens of thousands of copies because their overhead dictates that only such titles can be profitable. A small publisher (an author) can structure a project such that if he obtains financing through subscription, he can lock in a profit even before the book is printed.

What to call it? Professionally Self-published? Patronage Publishing? Boutique Publishing? Auto-publishing? I don’t know. I think I like Auto-publishing just because it demands explanation. Artisan Publishing? That would get the artsy folks all happy, and does have an air of elitism about it. I’ll see how that one feels in the morning. (And you can offer your suggestions in the comments.)

The simple fact is that as we move into the future and as low-cost publishing provides authors with many more options for distributing their work, perhaps the question will reverse itself. Perhaps the odd situation will be to have someone else publishing your work. That day may be a long time coming, but it is coming.