Why self-publish?
As I wrote in my introductory post, I have four books out there and a novel-in-progress struggling to be born in first draft. The four in the wild are self-published as will be the new one when it is eventually rewritten and edited and polished late in 2026 or thereabouts once the distraction of a round of radiotherapy is out of the way. But why self-publish as a deliberate strategy rather than attempt the so-called traditional route?
The glib answer centres on the worker owning the means of production, and there is truth in that, albeit that it is, in the end, semi-illusory. A better answer lies in thinking about why I write at all.
My first audience is myself. I would, naturally, be disappointing to write something only for it to speak to nobody except me, but far worse would be to produce something that doesn’t even speak to me.
I write for my own satisfaction, entertainment and enlightenment, to give shape to the notion in my head. I write because the creativity is the point and I would write anyway whether or not I published. But once a book is done then something else kicks in, the same thing that leads people to create zines that no one reads or put their music on Bandcamp for a handful of listeners, a punk aesthetic if you will. It is the Rick Rubin thing of doing the best you can to realise an idea, then releasing it into the world and moving on.
Creating something and putting it out into the world is not about planning an author career or curating a personal brand or aspiring to a constructed and fetishised identity of ‘author.’
That does not mean not being serious about creativity and craft; as Samuel Delany said, If you’re going to do it, be serious about it, man, but it does mean paying close attention to what it is that you take seriously. There is nothing wrong with finding validation in commercial success, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to make some money out if it, if only to recover my costs, but that isn’t why I write.
A lot of what I see about creativity and creators and publishing (of any kind) strikes me as absurd, either for its empty pretension, its self-delusion or both. It tries to elevate the act of writing into a vocation and thus, by extension, sanctify the participants in the rite, elevate them to somewhere above the hoi polloi; and that’s bullshit.
Write it, craft it, release it and move on.
More chuntering next week.