Knowledge Resources Discussion #5: Self-Publishing and Collection Development
3 December 2023
Self-publishing and independent presses often get a bad rap. They are associated with "vanity presses" (publishing houses who, for a fee, agree to publish anything—usually without editing or oversight—meaning literally anyone with the money can publish a book) for many people, but that's simply not the entire story.
At the same time, self-publishing and indie presses have greatly expanded the arena for possible collection development, and that's a good thing. But what about the selection principles? An established publishing house has editors who vet for accuracy, they offer materials for review, and all sorts of good things. What is the authority of a self-published work? Accuracy? Even by someone who should know the content? How relevant is it to your community? How do you know?
(Obviously, many of the above questions are nonfiction-specific. In terms of fiction, you can ask questions about the quality of writing, the authenticity, or the value as an accurate window/door/mirror for specific groups.)
After watching all of the interviews, reflect on what you found different or interesting from the videos. You should also specifically address the following questions:
• How does what these authors/publishers have to say about publishing compare with what you have learned so far in this course? What differences are there?
• How do these conversations change what you thought about collection development and self-publishing and indie presses?
• How do these videos relate to your chosen type of library?
So, as someone whose returning foray into books as an adult was through self-published fantasy fiction and has read a fair few editorials and books and twitter threads on the particularly narrow inclinations of the trad publishing landscape, a lot of these interviews actually didn't have a lot of new information for me! Lots of nodding along and going "yep, sounds about right," to S.D. Simper's and William Kuhn's gestures towards the abysmal ratio of PRH's queer books and to the collective sentiment that "actually self-publishing is like 3 or 5 different disciplines rolled up into 1." It's also not a surprise that editors play an important part in how the final draft of a book is, but the notion that they (or the bigwigs in publishing?) can force authors into terms that involve extremely significant creative decisions like adding or removing a romance into a book is actually wild.
Simper mentioned how the change in reading habits has led to traditional publishers releasing more novellas; another shift in that vein that I've personally enjoyed is how that trad pubs will actually acquire and republish self-pubbed books if they get enough buzz, which in some cases seems to be wholly beneficial for both parties, like the The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, which got a "professionally" designed cover, minimal edits, and the opportunity to be part of a four-book series. In other cases, though...another self-pubbed series that I had stumbled across, The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin, had this trio of excellent, gritty yet vibrant covers that perfectly conveyed its vibe. The covers of the two out of three books picked up and traditionally published by Orbit? Generic abstract fantasy symbol book 1, generic abstract fantasy symbol book 2. So a lot of wild stuff out in the flooded frontier of self-publishing, obviously not as much as indie-pubs; and while there aren't nearly as many eyeballs on those books, authors at least retain the dignity of their creative freedom.
Back when I browsed r/fantasy regularly and when twitter was a functional site, I would stumble across a lot of highly-regarded self-pubbed SFF, almost never by professional outlets like Kirkus or Publisher's Weekly, but from fellow authors. Not so much these days, which probably makes trying to put them on a library shelf through traditional collection development processes an upwards battle. And that's a real shame, because since the vast majority of ebooks can be bought on Amazon, I usually don't even notice a book is indie or self-pubbed unless I read the copyright page. So the non-trad pub = lower quality argument or lack of "professional" reviews isn't a predisposed consideration for me—but it probably is for public libraries with longstanding collection policies. A handful of new self or indie pubbed books cross my hands at work relatively often though, so they've definitely made some headway in recent years.