I agree in principle, but like many NYTs readers I find the article too woke.
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Yes, a âself-publishing consultantâ is an excellent source of unbiased information on self-publishing. 
And in any case I never claimed that black writers couldnât self-publish, just that the resources that facilitate self-publishing are not universally available.
Editing, book design, and marketing all cost some combination of money and time. The âentry pointâ to publish a book is low, but the investment needed to actually succeed is not.
Did you notice that all ten of the authors on your list are white? Also, all but two of them have since signed with traditional publishers.
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Finding independent statistics on self-publishing is difficult, but these folks look reliable:
https://wordsrated.com/self-published-book-sales-statistics/
90% of self-published books sell fewer than 100 copies.
Unfortunately, they donât break down fiction vs. non-fiction statistics. The two markets are completely different, so thatâs an important omission.
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I just did a quick search, I am not researching the topic. If I was I dig a lot deeper.
That is what Scrivener is for and its ability to publish direct to ebook formats.
Though it may be taboo to say it, but a lot of DTP software like InDesign are pirated and easily available. So cost of software is low. It just takes learning how to us it.
Or, you could hire someone at Fiverr to design your book cover. https://tinyurl.com/5njvsnpj
Or, design the whole book https://tinyurl.com/2p8hm3hp
I have a writer friend of mine in India, his book designer using InDesign charges US$10/hr and the whole book design including the front/back cover, indexing etc cost US$350.
The real investment to succeed is not financial but talent and will to overcome obstacles.
Yes I did.
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I briefly looked through this.
Here are some bits that looked interesting.
67% of top-rated, self-published books are written by women compared to just 39% of books that are traditionally published
Suggests that females are doing better by self-publishing.
- The global publishing market is expected to grow at 1% CAGR per year, whereas the self-publishing market is expected to grow at 17%
- The number of self-published books has increased 264% in the last five years
So it is definitely a growth market.
Of authors who have published their first book in the last 10 years:
1,200 traditionally published authors have earned $25,000+ a year 1,600 **self-published** authors have earned $25,000+ a year
If these numbers are correct then self-published are doing better. But that doesnât show maximums or total incomes.
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It also doesnât show the denominator. If there are about the same number of titles, then self-published authors are doing pretty well. But if there are 10x more self-published authors, then only 30% more successes is not impressive at all.
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True. Lots of missing data.
But it is a fast growing sector and with such a low cost entry point, a lot of what is self-published is bound to be rubbish.
But self publishing is no longer a stigma.
And I know respectable scholars who self-publish in their respective fields. They are not going to be on the NYTs best selling lists. But they are tops in their field.
And they are not writing fiction, that may be a factor.
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Here is a more reliable source on self-published Black authors.
Seventy-one percent of African-American fiction is sold by indie and self-published authors with 96 percent of the unit sales being ebooks.
One driving factor seems to be cost, that self-published books are less expensive for the readers to purchase as opposed to books from the big 5.
And here is another about non-white readers.
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Just to clarify that in this thread I am speaking in my personal capacity, not as a representative of Literature & Latte. In the (so far unlikely) event that moderation is necessary, Iâll ask someone else on the team to have a look.
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As I said, non-fiction and fiction are completely different. Highly specialized non-fiction has always had a limited audience, and has often relied on author (or institutional) funding.
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These would seem to support the central point of the article you originally linked: that a market of Black readers exists that is not being well-served by the big houses.
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But they are being served by indie writers.
And it may not be so much that the big houses are trying to fair but rather cashing in on an existing market. By that I mean how Heath Food stores used to be the counter culture but then capitalists (Iâm not anti-capitalist) saw they could be profitable so they bought them up, and now you have entities like âWhole Foodsâ which has in some/many ways by going main stream co-opted the original intent of health food stores and the counter-culture.
So they are doing it to increase their bottom line, and they charge a premium for it (as explained in the first linked article).
The reason people self-publish, and why I would do the same, is to maintain creative freedom, and avoid editorial oversight intended to increase profits at the expense of the authorâs vision. It might be more work to self-publish but in return you have full control of the end product. To some people that is important. To others not so much.
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As a former academic in the humanities, Iâll throw out this point:
University professors often will not teach texts that donât pass through the Big 5 publishing process. Full stop.
When I was a grad student and then later an adjunct lecturer, I had to spend a good bit of time defending the departmentâs myopic views on âThe Canonâ and which authors were taught or excluded from the conversation. Self-published texts never entered the room because the academy loves its gatekeepers.
For students majoring in literary pursuits, I felt reasonably certain theyâd encounter more wide-ranging viewpoints in their advanced classes or when reading for their own pleasure.
The larger problem, to me, affected the students who were taking a literature class as a core requirement. Because the syllabi for those classes leaned on âThe Western Canon,â those students were encountering texts theyâd already seen in middle school and high school here in the U.S.
They would then leave the university having only encountered one set of viewpoints and with the sense that literature doesnât have anything new or interesting to show them because they were only re-reading the same âboring crapâ theyâd already read before.
In contrast, studies have repeatedly shown that people who read tend to do better on various psychological tests and often have better interpersonal skills as well as better long-term memory and so on.
Whether writers of color had the funds and/or the time to learn the ins and outs of self-publishing or not isnât the issue to me. To me, if their viewpoints arenât being presented to in required core classes, then theyâre not a part of the conversation. And, they arenât a part of the conversation if theyâre self-published.
Without that Big 5 stamp of approval, they arenât reaching the readers who perhaps want or need to encounter their works.
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From the point of view of academia, Toni Morrisonâs Nobel Prize may be the most important event for black writers in the last few decades.
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The needle, finally, moved a bit after her Nobel Prize forced the academics to re-evaluate which books âcounted.â
I still canât imagine telling a former colleague, âPlease teach this self-published novel in your classes. Itâs well worth your and your studentsâ time.â Iâd get a not-so-subtle kiss-off for that, no matter how brilliant the prose.
Turning back to the failings of relying on âgatekeepersâ who overlook writers of color when making publishing choices. A lot of the undergrads I taught were either nursing students or business students and only taking a literature class because they had to.
Iâd argue that both disciplines require the ability to see a topic from a wide range of viewpoints and to analyze a wide range of possible causes and outcomes before making a decision on a course of action. To me, that requires some empathy and imagination since it takes us outside of our own interests.
And a more representative selection of textsâwhich perhaps could have given them a starting point on developing those skillsâwasnât offered.
As a side note, an earlier comment mentioned that some academics are self-publishing now. I am actually surprised to hear that because I expected that universities would not accept a self-published title as fulfilling the tenure-track publication obligations.
Perhaps outside of the humanities that approach might meet with approval. Or, it might be accepted for adjuncts, who really donât count anyway. But for tenure in the humanities, Iâd be really shocked if any self-published works would be acceptable in the departments where I studied and taught.
Very good observations of how Academic gate keeping works to create knowledge filters. This is a two edged sword. It can serve to keep out sludge or it can smother a Galileo.
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How many journals have page fees? How many universities support academic presses? A lot of non-fiction publication is funded via those methods rather than direct payment from readers.
I would expect that true self-publishing by self-funded non-fiction authors would be a lot more common in the business world than in academia. Among academics, it would almost certainly be confined to people who are already respected in their fields.
It has more to do with people working to create a paradigm shift rather than conforming to the âestablishment.â I will give you an example.
Previously in academia the study of astrology was considered a âwretched subject,â by the likes of Otto Neugebauer and David Pingree. It was a necessary evil in tracing out the history of science.
But in the late 1980s early 90s a group of Western astrologers who were also academically trained classicists in Greek, Latin and Hebrew formed what they called Project Hindsight.
They began a subscription based serial translation in two tracks of Greek and Latin/Hebrew works on Hellenistic and Medieval Astrology.
Later another astrologer/academic, Dr Benjamin Dykes inspired by their work, self-published a whole series of widely acclaimed translations from Latin, Greek, Persian, and Arabic classical works of Hellenistic and Medieval Astrology.
This led to the revival of the serious study of Hellenistic and Medieval astrology in the West, not as a âwretched subjectâ but in a more friendly way, as a worthwhile intellectual pursuit.
Dr. Campion (an astrologer) at the University of Wales is the director the universityâs Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture.
The Centreâs work is partly historical, partly anthropological and partly philosophical. It has a wide-ranging remit to investigate the role of cosmological, astronomical and astrological beliefs, models and ideas in human culture, including the theory and practice of myth, magic, divination, religion, spirituality, architecture, politics and the arts. Our work considers the ways in which people have tried to live in harmony with the cosmos.
Campion uses the previously mentioned self-published translated texts for his course work and they are the reference texts used by his PhD students.
And there are other institutes springing up like the Astra Project at the University of Lisbon.
If I looked I could find other academic settings in the West where astrology is now being studied in a more friendly way. (In India, the government, about 25 years ago, gave the green-light to have astrology taught in universities, but that is a different story.) But the above examples show that there has been a real paradigm shift, that astrology is no longer seen as a âwretched subjectâ but something worth studying. And we note that many of the academics involved are astrologers themselves.
So this came about by bypassing the gate keepers and self-publishing. It was not easy, but to those who did it it was worth the effort. Their work had an effect because no one could deny the quality of their translations, and as astrologers themselves, having a greater insight into the subject than lay academics could ever have.
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Yes, but some are more equal than others.
In principle what they do is correct. The execution may need some work. Plenty of sharp people in the comments section excoriating the author.
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