Seth Harwood’s adventure in self-publishing was technologically driven. Unable to get traction for his novel, Jack Wakes Up, Harwood skipped text altogether and podcast his novel one chapter at a time. He did it on the cheap, recording in a home “lab” (equipped with the latest in sound-baffling technology that the untrained eye might mistake for bed sheets pinned to the ceiling) and mixing the sound files on his laptop. Harwood’s efforts paid off. His podcasts garnered a large following and yes, Jack Wakes Up was published in 2009 by a division of Random House.

Scott and Harwood’s paths to traditional publication were radical and shrewd. They both leveraged then-emerging technologies to deliver their writing directly to their potential audience. For free. Which is quite different than selling a printed book to a wary stranger on the street or in the subway, where the buyer is taking a chance with unfamiliar material. Scott and Harwood, on the other hand, had repeat customers, as it were. People came back and the audience grew. For the authors, this result is especially satisfying because the numbers speak not to successful marketing but to writing that kept readers coming back for more.

Even as I was writing the preceding paragraphs, another writer friend, Shya Scanlon, told me about his own brilliant plan to give away his novel, Forecast. He intends to line up forty-two online literary journals (including Flatmancrooked), one for each chapter, each linking to the next. So to read the entire novel, a reader would jump from lit journal to lit journal. How could a publisher resist? Scanlon’s scheme is sure to draw readers to journals they might not otherwise have known existed.

(Hmmm. My novel happens to have forty-two chapters also…)

When I began this article, I intended to reaffirm the advantages of the old school Agent>Editor>Publication route. Namely that the vetting process itself serves to hone the work itself, ultimately resulting in better writing—and a better novel. But now I’m not so sure. The publishing houses have, to a significant degree, outsourced the vetting process as well. Agents have long since become the established front line, but in an ever-tightening market, they are under the gun as never before to find the next Stephenie Meyer. And the pile of submissions and queries is higher than ever before.

Agents aren’t editors; they want to see refined work, not potential, meaning that the task of editing and refining is thrust upon the writers themselves. Sure, writers could hire a freelance editor directly, but as valuable as such services may be, the cost is out of reach for the majority of aspiring writers. Instead they must rely on feedback from their writing groups, class peers, and volunteer readers.

When I began this article, I intended to reiterate the flaws usually associated with self-publishing: poor editing, sloppy production values, and undercooked prose. I still saw publishing vs. self-publishing as an either-or dichotomy, despite the real-life examples I’d lined up in advance. And on some levels, that dichotomy is valid. There are plenty of badly self-published books out there, and their authors have indeed committed career suicide by jumping into print before the material was fully developed, fully seasoned.

When I began this article, I intended to justify my own decision to hew to the straight and narrow, the traditional route. Now I wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. All along I’ve presumed that publication was the goal, but that’s not quite right, is it? The goal, the ultimate objective is to get the work out there. Into people’s hands. Or laptops. Or iPods. For better or worse. To succeed or fail on its own merits. Or simply to reach those few to whom it speaks most powerfully.

Maybe that’s the real adventure.

(Special thanks to David Henry Sterry for his suggestions regarding
the writers mentioned in this article.)

Read Part I

By Andrew Dugas