When I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed baby writer, self-publishing was anathema to everything good about literature. It was the realm of hucksters and charlatans, a last resort for writers who were too incompetent to get a real book deal.
I don’t believe that anymore, but I can’t deny that the thought is still ping-ponging around in my head like that old DVD screensaver. While self-publishing has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years, it’s still a hotspot for headstrong failures ignoring the gatekeepers who told them they were bad writers, for snake oil salesmen looking to make a quick buck off of people who don’t know any better, and now, unfortunately, for endless AI slop bringing down our collective IQ.
But there’s also a small subset of authors deliberately choosing to self-publish, not because they had no other options, but because it’s the path that best aligns with their goals and priorities.
It’s no secret to anyone who knows me or reads this newsletter that I don’t like how the publishing industry operates right now.
I don’t like that debut authors are rarely given a chance, and even when they are, they’re given next to no support. I don’t like that new authors are chosen not by the merits of their book or the quality of their writing, but by how many TikTok followers they have and how many trending buzzwords they can shove into their query. I don’t like that established authors are advertised as “debuts” when they jump genres, especially when their new books sound no different from their old books. I don’t like that the publishing industry chases trends at the expense of good books, pushing the fast-fashion mentality on fiction and churning out mediocre, single-read books. I don’t like that trope bingo is more important than good stories. I don’t like that agents, editors, and writers co-draft trope-soup books designed to sell, not to matter or to last. I don’t like that editors are telling authors to cut every metaphor and em-dash out of their manuscript because “it’s a sign of AI writing” and authors are expected to roll over and do it. I don’t like that authors are contracted into publishing at least a book a year, pushed into publishing under-cooked and under-edited drafts as finished books, and forced by their publishers to play the social media game or lose their next book deal. I don’t like that all this happens while authors are paid mere pennies, forcing them to keep their day jobs or live off of a spouse or parent’s income.
Maybe some of these are simply one-off horror stories, extreme edges of a risk-averse and money-hungry industry, but most seem to be norms right now, norms I want zero part of. I’ve spent years studying and learning the rules of the publishing game, and I’ve decided I don’t want to play.
So I’m self-publishing my first novel.
More accurately, I’m creating a publishing house and publishing my novel under that. I keep wanting to call it a fake publishing house, but much like The Lit Nerds, once I create it, it becomes real. Everything was fake until it wasn’t. Everything started with an idea and a dream.
I’ll be honest: it’s been hard to reconcile my negative beliefs about self-publishing with my conviction that this is the right thing. It’s hard to not see this as a failure somehow, even though I never chased the traditional publishing route with any real enthusiasm. (I briefly queried a couple agents but didn’t pursue it.) I know, in the world of traditional publishing, my novel is a hard sell. It’s a cozy, happy story about a heterosexual couple in Fictional Small Town, USA. There’s no trauma, no therapy buzzwords, and no one is having a trendy identity crisis. There’s no taboo edge to it. There’s no smut in it. And on top of all that, it’s a Christmas novel that I plan to make into a series of not Christmas novels. I as an author am a straight Midwestern white woman with no sellable background of trauma or marginalization, who despises social media and has strong opinions about what I will and will not do with my writing and my image.
But I believe in my book. I’ve spent years studying the craft of writing, and (in my very biased opinion), I wrote a book that I think people will enjoy, maybe even love.
I’m not in this for the money, or the fame. (No writer should be, even going the traditional route.) Sure, it would be nice, but more important to me is the integrity of my work and my image and my audience. I’m not going to add dragons because Romantasy is trending. I’m not going to make TikTok videos because it might sell four extra copies. I’m not going to chase every reader who’s ever cracked open a book in the hopes that they might be my audience. I’m not going to sell out. I know how pretentious that sounds, and I’m okay with it.
Anyone who’s heard me talk about publishing knows how much I value gatekeepers: In an ideal world, there should be someone standing between you and things you don’t want to read, someone you trust to say, “Yes, spend your precious time on this, it’s good.” It’s why I started The Lit Nerds. I couldn’t find a literary gatekeeper with the same values I had, so I became one. And I’m proud of what I’ve built.
The part of my brain that has my favorite creative writing professor’s voice is balking at publishing my novel without passing it through any gatekeepers first, without a stamp of approval from someone I’m not friends with saying, “Yes, this is good, people should read it.” I don’t think that will ever go away. But I’ve realized: If I have so many problems with some of the work these current publishing gatekeepers are promoting, why should I consider their stamp worth anything when it comes to my own work?
I hold books to different standards than the publishing industry. (Higher standards, I might argue on my spicier days, but ultimately just different.) Is my book perfect? Of course not. But I am both happy with it and proud of it. It is exactly what I want it to be. I wasn’t pushed to publish it before I felt it was done. No characters or subplots were shoehorned in for the sake of chasing trends. It wasn’t victim to the meddling hands of an editor or agent with terrible taste in books. It is mine, for better or worse.
I made the choice to self-publish with an eye to the future, too. This first book is my most normal and genre-fitting idea—it only gets weirder from here. If I was on the fence with handing a fairly traditional cozy Christmas romance to an editor, I knew I’d never trust one with my Terry-Pratchett-writes-Romantasy concept or my I-hate-performative-pastors-poets-and-influencers Nabokov-inspired dark academia fantasy draft. I want the space, time, and creative freedom to do those correctly.
More importantly, I don’t want to burn out. Writing barely cracks the top five of my priorities list, and it’s never getting higher than that. If I want to stop writing for a year and then suddenly publish something, I can. If I want to put out four books in a year (lol), I can. I am not dependent on the schedule and whims of an industry that sees me as nothing more than a walking dollar sign.
And who knows. Maybe someday my publishing company will expand and fill the world with all the extraordinarily written, captivating novels the Big 5 deemed too risky, or too weird, or too smart, the timeless greats that have never so much as even sniffed a TikTok trend. I have no plans for that currently, but hey, five years ago I had no plan to ever self-publish a novel either.
As much of an idealist as I am, though, I’m going into this venture realistically. My metrics for success, at least for this first book, are small and achievable. I’m mentally and financially preparing to go viral (wouldn’t that be nice), but I have acknowledged and accepted the fact that most of the sales of this book will probably be to people I know and friends of friends. Even big name published authors don’t usually gain traction until their third or fourth book.
I know that in most people’s eyes, I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not trying to get a “real” deal and the prestige that comes with that. I’m not marketing my book at all: not chasing an audience, not becoming an influencer, not paying for ads, not hawking my book at markets, cons, or events. And yet, I’m spending the time and money to make this book the best it can be: a professional cover and layout, editing and proofreading, the mark of a publishing house. If anything about this book looks or feels self-published, I will have failed. (Sometimes my neurotic attention to detail comes in handy.)
Perhaps naïvely, I truly believe that if I put out a good product, the right readers will find it.
I’ve sometimes told people who have asked about my writing goals that my number one goal is to be a white male author in the 1950s. Living life and writing good books. Salinger, Steinbeck, Nabokov, Kerouac, Tolkien, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Hemingway, Asimov, Ginsberg. I can’t imagine any of them playing the social media game or rewriting their book to fit a current trend. I want to create work with meaning that lasts.
I don’t think that sort of work is coming from the publishing industrial complex anymore. I had mild hopes ten years ago, but with the rise of AI and the Big 5’s wholehearted embrace of it, that hope has dwindled to next to nothing.
I’m fully aware that it is the height of hubris to place myself next to these authors and believe that I’ll earn a mention in the same breath with them. I know I’m not there yet. I may never get there. But I’m certainly going to try. And if I don’t set myself up for success from the beginning, what’s even the point?
Anyway, all that to say: After years of waffling, I’ve made the decision and I’m doing the thing. My author site and social media are live, and my book comes out this fall. Follow along if you’re so inclined: kristensommersbooks.com. It’s gonna be an adventure.
Stay excellent,
Kristen
If you’re writing those risky, weird, smart, decidedly untrendy short stories, poems, or essays, submit them to The Lit Nerds! We want to publish them.
The Lit Nerds is also holding a special submission call for Bad Poetry in honor of our favorite holiday, Bad Poetry Day. Check it out and consider submitting!
I’ve been reading a ton of romance as I worked through the final edit of my book, and here are a few of my favorites: Book Lovers and Funny Story by Emily Henry, Well Met by Jen DeLuca, The Lodge by Kayla Olson, Deep End by Ali Hazelwood, Managed and Make It Sweet by Kristen Callihan, and Not the Witch You Wed by April Asher.
Because romance novels and pints of ice cream go hand in hand, I recently discovered the Ben & Jerry’s flavor Dirt Cake, which is now my go-to comfort food. 10/10, highly recommend, especially while reading a good book.
Featured image by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash
Earthbound, But Aspiring 