Standards.

[icebluenothing]

Of all the myriad ways in which Life Is Horribly Unfair, one that vexes me the most is this:

Are you an artist? Do you sell your own work directly to the public? Then you're an entrepreneur who should be rewarded for your creativity. It's a long, uphill road, but we're with you all the way!

Are you a musician? Do you sell your own work directly to the public? All right! There's that punk, fighting DIY spirit! Screw the labels, man, they're nothing but leeches anyway!

Do you create comics? Do you sell your own work directly to the public? Let me buy you a drink! Indy all the way!

Are you a writer? Do you sell your own work directly to the public?

..... Ha! Loser! Not good enough to get published, huh?

Comments

[kespernorth.livejournal.com]

It's not just that he gets it often, it's a fact of the publishing industry. Self-publishing a work makes even small presses treat you like the lowest little bit of slime on Earth. They seriously look at it as a sign of desperation and poor quality writing, sight unseen.

[luchog.livejournal.com]

Well, considering the industry, it's not entirely unwarranted. There is quite an amazing lot of self-published crap out there. Just like there's an amazingly lot of crap music, crap comics, crap art. The only difference is, publishing crap books hasn't got the street cred that 'zines do (or at least, did in the '80s.

Add to that that it's much harder to get writing out there. Art has a long tradition of self-production. Music and comics are very easy to publish on the web. A lot of new comics start out as webcomics, and only go hard-copy when there's a sufficient readerbase; and the distro channel for music is huge, what with the number of iPods and other music players.

Unfortunately, until the e-reader market grows considerably, that won't be true for writing. On top of that, reading books is steadily losing popularity, and has been for a while.

And if that's not bad enough, there are a huge number of self-publishing scams out there; and even the legit channels are bloody expensive compared to art, music, or comics.