Self publishing survey comments

These are a selection of the quotes provided by respondent to our survey looking at self-publishing. It's clear you feel that breaking into publishing, a world of tightly closed doors, is a daunting task.

Against:

• There are inherent paradoxes attached which inevitably make the whole process problematic.
• An expensive waste of time.
• I am a writer not a publisher.
• It's not the publishing - that's just a process - it's the Marketing. That what sells the book.
• I think it is for people who are vain enough to think their work is good, even when told it isn’t.
• Inappropriate for the serious writer. We must have the opportunity, as painful as it sometimes is, to have someone in the field pass judgement on a work's readiness for public circulation.
• I was always led to believe that self-publishing was the last resort of the untalented - and the quality of the self-published manuscripts I've seen to date bears this out!
• A well-written manuscript can always find a home with one of the many print and e-book publishing houses in the world.
• I would not consider self-publishing for my genre. My area is crime and thrillers.
• Self-publishing to a serious writer is an admission that his work did not meet the needs or standards of legitimate publishers. That's hard to swallow but must be faced, as there are too few publishers and too many writers. Secondly, self-publishing entails self-promoting, anathema to the serious writer. Perhaps the next generation of writers and readers will accept self-publishing the way this generation has begun to accept cell phones.

For

• Creative writers are being shut out because of the difficulty in getting old-line publishers to accept their work. Self publishing and POD are the only available outlets.
• It seems to me that it is a bit of a lottery getting a publisher, so take your copy and make the reality happen.
• I have been searching for an agent/publisher for my novel for nearly 3 years. I gave up in the end and so self published. I'm hoping to find an agent/publisher for my other work and if that fails I may just self-publish again.
• I think personally that self-publishing is a terrific new tool. It should be utilized to it's fullest potential. It is almost impossible for every new writer to get professionally published. This is a great tool. It gives us all hope.
• This summed up an opinion expressed by a number of, predominantly female, respondents:
• some publishing competitions require entrants to submit an autobiography, together with date of birth and photograph - fairly obviously, it was thought, to weed out anybody winning who is over 30, lacking a degree in media or philosophy, and not marketably photogenic.

How do you think the entry of organisations such as Amazon and Macmillan affect self-publishing?

• Perhaps if they could change the image of self-publishing being 'the last resort' etc, it would help.
• However, I do fear that it could lead to all new writers having to go this route.
• Could improve its credibility.
• There are just too many crooks out there.
• They are just stealing yet another small corner of the market.
• It'll mop up all the suckers.
• Lowers the bar while raising the competition.
• Amazon and Macmillan will not lift the credibility of self-publishing. The quality of most self-published books is poor and that's why they were rejected by publishing houses.
• I don't know about Macmillan, but Amazon's costs are steep.
• Perhaps once these publishers enter the fray, "Predatory Publishing" would be a more fitting moniker. Why, in fact, should they absorb all the production costs when a hungry new writer will foot a good portion of the bill?
• It will also have a detrimental affect on the number of smaller bookshops.
• Amazon is great but there's always the age-old problem of making people aware of the product and that's as big a problem as ever. Self-publishing, if done properly, is a serious business and anything that helps is a good thing.
• The larger they are, the more interested they seem to be only in successful and best-selling authors. I worry about the fine authors who cannot afford to self-publish, yet who deserve to be successful.
• They give it a kind of respectability … I can't see it ever becoming mainstream.
• Good news.
• I think it is a tremendous boost.
• It gives unpublished writers a chance to get into the market where nobody seems to take on new authors at the moment.

(Some minor editing, in the form of spelling corrections has been applied to the comments.)

The Future of self-publishing survey results