Why don’t you find a proper publisher?

Answering the inevitable question

I have been asked this quite a few times already, so I thought I would address it here with the usual levels of painful honesty, because – as we’ve established – writing stuff to a mailing list doesn’t count.

So. Why am I going down the self-publishing route?

There are a number of reasons. I will list some.

1. Fear

Fear is a biggie, isn’t it? It would be so easy to finish these books, pop them in a drawer (not literally – I am not profligate with printing and I don’t have an empty drawer) and never speak of them again. In some ways it is enough just to have written them. Unread and unpublished, they still hold all their potential. They could be lost literary classics! (They aren’t.) They might be bestsellers! (Also unlikely).

And so, my plan to write under a pen name was partly to take the pressure off. I could quietly write books, never speak of them, and then, if they were welcomed with universal scorn or total indifference, pretend they never happened. Of course, I have spoiled that now, by telling you all about them. But, see above for the reason why that doesn’t count.

2. Tiredness

I’m married to a traditionally published author. A bestselling, award-winning author, no less¹. I also know a lot of other children’s writers. And I have to say, I struggle here to be as diplomatic and polite as everyone in the industry seems to be, because the fact is, I genuinely don’t understand what agents and publishers think their authors are living on.

A while ago, I did a bit of a rant in the comments section of one of Tom Cox’s newsletters and I keep thinking I should delete it in case I get Alex blacklisted or something. But why aren’t we allowed to say that the industry is unsustainable? That it too often relies on a willing partner or a second job to keep authors clothed and fed?

The advances paid are vanishingly small for so many (and then ridiculously overblown for a lucky few), that unless you have a lot of privilege, you really couldn’t hope to make writing a full-time endeavour. And yet, while publishers are spending all their marketing budgets on ghostwritten celebrities, they’re wringing their hands about why publishing is not as diverse as it should be. Go figure.

In my daydreams, I like to imagine all the children’s authors and illustrators (and celebrity ghostwriters), downing keyboards and Wacom pens, and refusing to type or draw again until publishers provide a detailed breakdown of how much of their book revenue is being spent on sending the chief exec’s children to private school.

As you can see, I have got rather carried away with this section so I’ll stop there, but suffice it to say, I am tired and I don’t understand why authors aren’t on strike.

3. Control freakery

In 2004, aged 25², already fed up with trying to get tech pieces into women’s magazines and unimpressed with trad publishing’s attempts at doing the internet, I co-founded a web publishing company.

I think that probably sums up why I’d rather self-publish than rely on other people. Although I really do like the idea of having the support of a publishing team (and watch me eat my words if the right publisher ever did make me an offer), I just don’t want to deal with the gatekeepers in Point 2.

Me in the Observer wearing an MP3 Player as a necklace

Inevitable disclaimer

So, those are at least some of the reasons I’ve chosen to go down this road. However, I see this as an experiment. It’s an itch I need to scratch: can I find even a fraction of the success of other indie writers?

Because although I have insider knowledge of quite a few eye-popping sales successes, I have also seen some attempts go less smoothly. I know one author who tried the pen-name indie route only to discover their books just didn’t hit the right market demographic. They have since taken those books to trad publishers with great success and it’s been a thrill to see book one in Sainsbury’s.

So, I reserve the right to take every day as it comes, to adjust my attitudes and expectations accordingly and to do a massive reverse ferret if I so choose. God knows, life is hard enough without being expected never to be a hypocrite.

Next time: I’ll actually talk about the books I’ve been writing and where they are at in terms of publishing…

Quick links (which my stats suggest no one clicks on even though I personally click on every link in every newsletter I read, which is probably why I get less done in a day than I’d like, but well done to everyone else out there showing so much restraint.)

People are stalking the Baby Reindeer stalker. I finished Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer last night and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It reminded me of other shows that are pitched to audiences as ‘comedies’ (eg East is East), but which actually turn out to be stark and harrowing stories of abuse that leave you feeling depressed and disappointed in humanity. I don’t blame Gadd for wanting to turn his trauma into a tale. I have similar urges, and I think most writers do, but I can’t help thinking using actual text from tweets in the TV show probably wasn’t the best idea. In fact, it seems like a good way to poke the hornet’s nest³ and put a vulnerable person into the public eye. Maybe he’s hoping for a second series…

In this profile of Gadd, Zoe Williams claims that ONS figures show about 7m people have been stalked. This cannot be right, surely? But my brief foray into ONS spreadsheets has taught me that I am not the right sort of (ex) journalist to parse datasets. Other articles suggest the figures are more like 2m, which still means that, even if multiple people are targeted by the same person, there still are a LOT of people out there stalking away like it’s a career choice. (If you understand where Zoe has got her figures from, please email or leave a comment.)

Tired of reading a personal essay before every web recipe? Simply add ‘cooked.wiki/’ in front of the URL and it will strip out all the guff and leave you with the ingredients and the instructions. (To quote my journalist friend Gemma Cartwright, ‘I just want to make a cake, Susan, I don’t care about your last holiday.’)

1. You can subscribe to his Substack newsletter here.

2. I like to include my age as – yes – a brag, but also because it makes me laugh to think of me in my mid-twenties already imagining first that life was passing me by and second, that I could do better than the dinosaurs in ‘old media.’ I must have been truly unbearable.

3. Alex did once accidentally poke a hornet’s nest when opening a shed door. He got stung three times on the hand. But I feel duty-bound to say that European hornets are actually peace-loving insects, curious and timid, and far more like bees than their grumpier wasp cousins. (Unless you poke their nests, of course.)