In a moment, I’m going to say a word, and I want you to think of the first thing that comes to mind. No right or wrong answers, no judgements. Just simple word association.

Ready? Ok. Let’s go:

Self-Publishing

Alright, how’d it go? What fluttered up into your psyche just then? Did that word make you cringe? Did you scrunch up your face? Did it bring to mind images of poorly designed bookcovers and misspelt text that made you want to swiftly exit stage left?

If the answer is yes, they hey, I hear you. I was right there with you. For years! Until an unlikely conversation with an unassuming poet changed my mind for good.

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You might have heard me mention Little Demons in the past; the short story collection I’ve been working on and subtly name-dropping for the past 12 months. Last year, I put this project on the back burner while I focused on writing “The Novel™” because a novel felt like a far better use of my energy, and far more likely to lead to something substantial.

I dismissed the idea of a short story collection as ‘not the best use of my time right now’, because short story collections by unknown authors are not really publishable. At all. No one wants them. No one wants to pay for them. And they’re sure as hell not going to get you a publishing deal or start the career of being a fully-fledged, published author that we all dream about.

But recently, I had a little mental turnaround regarding the whole ‘getting published’ thing.

I used to think of self-publishing as a step down from traditional publishing. That publishing your own work meant you weren’t good enough to get traditionally published. That you tried and failed, were forced to do it yourself because you fell short, and self-publishing was a backup for not quite making it.

And then had a conversation with an unassuming poet about something called a ‘chapbook’.

“What’s a chapbook?” I asked. “That sounds cool.” “Oh, it’s a small, self-published collection of poems, usually no more than 20 pages, that poets make when they’re starting their careers.” Hmmm, I thought, “Kind of like an EP?” “Yeah, that’s it. Something you make yourself, so you have something physical to give to people, at events and online, to get your name and your work out there”.

And that’s when it clicked!!

Something you make yourself, so you have something physical to give people to get your name and work out there.

Of course that makes sense! I’ve even done it myself. Back in Brighton, when I was playing in a metal band and loving every minute of it. We made our own music. We put on our own shows. We shot our own videos and printed our own band shirts. And recorded an EP at a friend’s studio which we sold on a rickety folding table at the back of shows, because no one else was going to do it for us.

We wanted to make music, and we made music. We made something ourselves to put our work and our name out there.

Gear one, clicking into place.

So if musicians do it, and poets do it, why the hell don’t writers do it?

Oh, wait, they do. It’s called self-publishing.

Gear two. Click.

Before this little revelation, I saw self-publishing as a fallback option, a reluctant plan B. Instead, I should have been thinking of it like an EP. Something you make yourself, when you’re so small no one cares what you’re doing.

Bands don’t wait to land a record contract before recording their own music. If they did, they’d never get anywhere. You have to do it yourself, because no one else will. You learn and grow and get better whilst you do it. And often find your sound, your voice, and your audience, too.

So why not do the same thing for writing? Why wait for someone else to say whether you’re good enough? Imagine if The Clash, or Nirvana, or [insert name of badass punk band here] had done that! Think how much aweseome, epic, genre changing music would have been lost to the ether if Dave Grhol or Johnny Ramone had waited for someone else to tell them they were good enough.

You do it yourself because you want to. You do it yourself because you can.

Click, click. Things are starting to make sense.

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Traditional publishing is not some golden seal of approval from the literary gods, saying you’re finally good enough to be considered a writer. Sure, it does lend a certain air of professionalism to one’s name. And the money that comes from trad publishing is nothing to be laughed at. Neither is the marketing power, or the technical support and expertise that comes from traditional publishing deals. But let’s take a step back from the misty dream of signing a book deal for a moment, and have a quick think about the Why of it all.

Why do traditional publishers exist?

What’s their goal?

What do they want, and what are they looking for, when they decide if they’re going to publish a book?

Sure, they want to make great books. People who work in publishing do so because they love words as much as the rest of us. But they also want to sell great books. They want to make money from great books. Because they’re a business. And that’s what businesses do.

Publishers are looking for books that will make them money. They want to print the next big thing so they can make money off the next big thing. That’s not meant to throw shade on the publishing world. I own and adore hundereds of traditionally published books, and still hope one day to have my own name on a Tor paperback best seller. But that’s just the way business works. You make a product because you think you can sell it. No audience, no demand, no deal.

So if the thing you’re writing isn’t going to make money— if it’s not marketable, not packagable, not appealing to the kind of audience that spends money on books, or you’re just not big enough yet to have a name people will flock to— then it can be the most well-written thing in the world, they’re still not going to publish it.

The weird things, the short things, the things that don’t fit into one category or another, and only have a very small audience that’s going to find them appealing. Trad publishers aren’t going to be interested. Not because the work is bad. Not because you’re not good enough. But because there’s no money in it.

Enter; self-publishing! A way to make the weird possible. A way to create the things that the industry as a whole says won’t make money, but gods damn it, we want to make anyway.

Like Thousand Year Old Vampire. Or the Midst podcast. Or Grant Howitt’s One Page RPGs. Or Critical Role streaming 4-hour DnD videos before live play DnD was even a thing!

None of these incredible creations would have been picked up and bank rolled by traditional publishers when they started. Because they’re weird and niche, and the market is unknown, and the profit potential is nonexistent. And if any of these creators had let that stop them, we wouldn’t have these amazing works now in existance, which have only proved after they’ve been made by the artists themselves that there is an audience for the weird thing they’re doing. That they are good enough, and were good enough all along.

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Self-publishing is no longer a case of photocopying typewritten pages and handing them out at your local beat poetry reading. Amazon print-on-demand has made it incredibly easy to lay out, upload, and start selling a book at nearly zero cost to the author. Which has its many merits, but also means there is a very low bar for self-published work in the POD sphere.

Well, no bar, really, as there’s no quality control. All you need is an internet connection, and you can print a book with your name on it.

So yes, that means there are a lot of subpar books getting printed out there. But that doesn’t mean the whole system, the whole industry, is subpar. Doens’t make every book published through print-on-demand bad. The same way every EP produced in a band’s basement isn’t shit. A lot of them are. If you’ve ever heard For Your Lungs Only, Alkaline Trio’s 1998 debut, you’ll know what I mean. But some of them are pure gold. And if Matt Skiba had let that stop him, because “most EPs recorded in basements are shit”, well, the pop-punk scene would have turned out pretty damn different.

Self-publishing brings with it its own challenges. Standing out from the crowd will be hard, marketing will be hard, and actually making money will be incredibly hard.

But money isn’t the point. Creating the thing is the point!! So don’t worry about what’s publishable. Or sellable. Or whether you’re good enough.

Just make what you want to make, because you want to make it.

What could be more Punk than that?

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