Self Published Authors Are Not Always Publishing House Rejects

I've always written.  When I was 12, something I wrote got me in trouble; not because it was controversial, but because it wasn't clean, LDS, happy unicorns eating cotton candy.  The upheaval caused by that story didn't stop me from writing, it stopped me from sharing.  A few intimate friends still knew I wrote.  Now, I am still guarded.

All those years, though, I wanted to be published.  I wanted to share my words with others who needed to hear them.  I entered a few contests where I got lots of compliments, but never won.  I feel I am in the good-writer-but-not-amazing-writer category.  Some where, maybe egotistically, around 8 on a scale of 1-10.  I feel a lot of novelists who get published are around 7-8, too, but they know people who know people.  I know no one.  The ones who get discovered without knowing anyone are 10s and frankly that's only about 1% of published novels.  That's today, though.  Tomorrow I'll believe I'm a 2.

I didn't want to be published for fame and money at first, but people start to fill your head with the idea that legitimacy is the only purpose to publication and as you get older, your idealism and reality try to meet; thinking you could actually pay the bills by doing what you love.

Then you hit 40 and realize you may never pay the bills with what you love and that people hate their jobs so that they have something to write about.

You also might realize that you love writing, but you hate selling your novel or trying to convince some arrogant publisher's assistant to let said publisher read your novel by reducing yourself to a 3 paragraph query letter.  Yeah, I sent out a few.  Of course I got rejected.  It didn't hurt my feelings because this is the thing about writing BOOKS.  You take 300 pages to get your point across FOR A REASON.  Agents and publishers want a hook to sell your book; this makes sense, but they don't really want to hear about the book.

In a self-loathing as well as self-righteous sort of way, I suppose, I think most self-published novels are crap.  I think the majority are not well written or well edited.  Something must be wrong to they would be published by a major publishing house, right?

And yet self-published novels are becoming hits.  Some of them are poorly written; filled with salacious erotica adapted from fanfic (don't knock it until you've tried it.  These are people who aren't afraid of being hackneyed pulp writers, and yet their ideas are new, fresh, beautiful, creative, and all the things that we are told are not what makes good writing.  It can be the MOST ARTISTIC WRITING in the world!) and some are great, but go completely unnoticed.  You are responsible for your own marketing, but if you are struggling to pay your bills, there may not be enough to justify a comprehensive marketing plan so you plug away, hoping you'll get lucky.

Some do. Some don't.

But I remembered the days I wrote and it wasn't about the money.  I just wanted to share my words with people who needed to hear them.

So I turn to self-publishing not because the big houses won't have me, but because they don't even know who I am.