Growing up, the only form of self-publishing I was aware of was vanity publishing and that only because it was the route my great-grandfather had taken. Up until very recently, whenever I thought of self-publishing my immediate thought was, “You mean I have to pay someone to publish my work?”
After all, wasn’t the whole point to being a published author that somebody else paid you to write? Having to self-publish at a vanity press was like admitting that my work wasn’t good enough to be accepted by a real publisher. Maybe that was the case, maybe it wasn’t.
Self-published books weren’t widely available when I was growing up, especially not since I did the majority of my book shopping at a used bookstore and the rest of my reading from a various selection of libraries. My opinion on self-publishing never had the opportunity to change. Even now, I don’t go out of my way to read something self-published. Most of my reading is done off of recommendation or by pulling books off of shelves and oohing over the cover. Well, that and fanatically following authors from one series to the next. (more…)