I was pleasantly surprised by the content of Anne R. Allen’s post, “3 Questions to Ask Before You Jump on the Indie Publishing Bandwagon.” For one thing, with a title like that and the use of the word “bandwagon,” I really thought this was going to be another post from someone who’s just trying to dismiss self-publishing as an all-around bad idea.
It’s really not, though — she’s not trying to dissuade anyone, she’s just presenting literally that: three questions to ask first.
The main kind of preparedness she’s talking about is something I don’t see a lot of people mentioning: emotional preparedness. Namely, are you sure you’re ready to deal with snarky comments and bad reviews?
“There are some unspoken benefits to the old query-fail-query-fail-submission-fail-editorial meeting-fail, fail, fail system. It not only gives us numerous readers to help hone that book to perfection—it also teaches us to deal with rejection, failure and bad reviews.
If you choose to self-publish because you can’t handle the rejection of the query process, you’re setting yourself up for worse pain later on. If those form rejections in your email sting, think of how you’ll feel when very personal rejection is broadcast all over the blogosphere.
Emphasis above is mine, not hers. That was the sentence that leaped out at me — it’s an excellent point, and very well put.
Belated thanks for the shout-out. (Google alerts are sooooo slow these days.) I’m glad you got my point. Writers tend to be shy and thin skinned, and I think growing some emotional armor is as important as honing our literary skills. Thanks. Nice summary.
Oh, you’re welcome! Thanks for making such a good point, and making it so concisely.
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