The Answer to the Question...

So I asked a couple of people the same question I asked the audience yesterday: Should I plan on publishing this novel myself? One of my advisors is a marketing exec down in LA and another is a successful SF writer with 15 titles of his own. What was their answer?

NO.

That's the short version. Here's the longer one, in the author's own words:

"Self-publishing is a bad idea. It's received a lot of hype lately because so many people are doing it, but what the various news stories -- like the one that was in *Time* a couple of weeks ago -- don't tell you is that the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

First, because few people buy self-published books, most bookstores refuse to carry them. I know a bookstore owner who put up a separate shelf and displaying self-published novels and collections (including some SF) by local authors. No copies were sold ... none ... and the owner took a bath on those copies he bought. Said it was one of the worst mistakes he ever made.

Second, once your book has been self-published (or put online) it pretty much takes it out of consideration so far as mainstream publishers are concerned. Their editors want to know that the books they buy haven't already been seen elsewhere, and the knowledge that your book has already seen print will give them reason to reject it outright. Yes, I know there have been exceptions -- John Scalzi's *Old Man's War*, for example -- but those are one-in-a-million.

Third, because so many people are doing this, the market for self-published books is glutted. Which leads us back to my first point.

The process of submitting a book to a publisher (or finding an agent first) is long and require patience. It's been made worse lately by the economic downturn; publishers are cutting down on new acquisitions. But you'll be wasting your time and money -- and your book -- if you go the self-publishing route. So I strongly advise against it."

I can't argue with people who know what they're doing. So, I won't be self-publishing "Flotilla". Continuing down the path of sending query letters and folding my feedback from the first draft into the second. Next phase of the project starts tomorrow!