The debate between advocates of both traditional and indie publishing is still very much on, and it is certainly something that often gets asked of authors, myself included. I’ve talked a bit about my reasons for going indie in the past, but a couple days ago, Brian Niemeier put out an excellent post on the topic.
In his post, he more accurately fisks a post by an author who tried to give the reasons why he would never self-publish, and thoroughly debunks them. There isn’t too much I can add that Brian didn’t already say in his post, but one important thing he touches on is that to go indie requires a great deal of self-promotion and marketing. The author of the original article states that a reason to not go indie is that he doesn’t want to have to waste time promoting himself, rather he wants to just write. Brian summarily explains that a traditionally published author (who isn’t already famous) has to do just as much promotion and marketing as an indie author.
As Brian titled his article, Analog Mindset, this is the problem that many writers have when looking at this debate. To be successful, one must be pragmatic, look into the various options, and not discount one approach out of hand. As Brian mentioned, while he is primarily an indie author, he has done work with a publisher in the past, and is very much open to doing more in the future. Because as much as many of us love to write, we will have far less ability to write if we cannot make a solid living out of it. And the only way to ensure that is to do whatever we can to make sure that we do succeed. If you want to simply get a book published traditionally for reasons of personal validation, go for it, and if you want to self-publish as cheaply as possible just to say that you’ve published a book, good for you. But for me, and many others who plan to make this our full-time careers, pragmatism, not an analog view of things, will prove key. Just a short comment I wanted to get out there, and now, back to work.
Source: Analog Mindset
Writing, Ascendant 