A couple of months ago I attended a talk by a local meet-up co-ordinator on self-publishing. It was an interesting semi-seminar; it didn't really tell me anything new, but it was still interesting to hear about this person's experiences with self-publishing.
I have mixed feelings about the process and the practice, I have to admit. The positives would include that I would retain creative control of all aspects of publication: if I chose a specific word with a specific spelling (or a specific mis-spelling) then I wouldn't have an editor making changes based on assumptions; I could be able to choose the typeface used (an incredibly important part of story-telling); and I would be able to decide on format, cover design, etc., etc. The negatives are that, dependent on who you speak or listen to, self-published books are deemed "lesser" by many because they have achieved publication without jumping the numerous hurdles put in place by publishing houses which frankly don't want to spend money on publishing books; and a self-published book is far more limited in promotional scope, because the author, as the publisher, won't generally have the same access to the same channels as, say, Harper Collins.
I already know how I'll style my novella, when I finally get my act together about it: I've designed the cover and the custom lettering for the title, and I've formatted the text in both typeface and layout, eliminating such grievous features as orphans and widows. It's basically 100 pages of story, ready to go...unless I rewrite sections. And that could absolutely happen. I don't want it to - I feel it's completed. But it could still happen. But it's difficult: I know exactly how I want it to be crafted, but if it were deemed worthy of publication by a publishing house, I'd likely lose that creative control. I'd have to choose: exposure versus creative say-so.
I read a blog recently that espoused belief that if you're an author, no matter how good you think you are, you should never design a book cover for yourself. A respondent said they'd trained in design and was confident in their own abilities, and the blogger pretty much told them that it didn't matter: they weren't trained in book cover design, and therefore shouldn't design their own cover. It's an interesting perspective; the blogger - who has self-published two novels which have done reasonably well, much to their credit - seemed somehow certain that designers weren't appropriately trained in book cover design and therefore should leave this area of design well enough alone. And sure, such a perspective is valid if the designer in question is a clothing designer. Or an industrial designer, perhaps. But the comment-making designer led with information which strongly implied they were trained in graphic design. There were no reasons to presume otherwise, and I wondered at the sense in the blogger saying "oh no, don't. Hire someone else", as if book cover design were a separate skill set altogether. It's not, in case you were uncertain!
As it turned out, the blogger then went on to speak highly of using sites which basically offer designers the chance to use their expertise to design for clients...who don't want to pay a whole lot for the work the designer will do. There are a few sites like that around: they ask designers who are often actually struggling to build a design portfolio or who are freelancing and don't have work to pay the rent to sign up, and then let people in need of design select the lowest amount to pay for the designers' skills and time. It's like saying to a teacher or a nurse "Okay. You want to be able to eat this week? I'll give you an amount I deem your skills are worth and you give me the best design. I might not select your design in the end, as I'll have others competing with you, too, and if so you'll have worked for nothing - all because I don't really want to go to a design agency and have to pay for the hours devoted to this project and engage professionals in their abilities and skills".
Does it sound as if I have an issue with this? I sure do. As someone who has worked for over a decade, I wouldn't ever wish to request anyone, trained or otherwise, work for me for free. It's unfair. Yet sites like these (and logo design competitions, as another example) basically encourage the diminution of skills that the person needing a designer doesn't have. It strikes me as a bit similar to the so-called 0-hour contracts so many people have to deal with: you're hired to work but given no guarantee of hours, so if you're offered no hours there's no breach of contract on your employer's behalf. However, if you can't work a set of hours of which you might have had a day's notice, you can be fired because you're not meeting their expectations. It's a very underhanded way to commit someone to a job you can't be bothered giving them any security in.
So no, I'm not a fan of sites that basically engage in crowd-sourcing and inspired competition. The practice diminishes the hard work, time and skills a designer puts into even having the ability to provide a service. It's a system of undervalue. And it really irks me.
You can possibly imagine how unenthused I was when the speaker at the self-publishing semi-seminar promoted the use of such sites. And of course I understand that often a self-publishing author won't have much money to spare in pursuit of their dream of getting their work out there. Except...well, you have to commit money to such pursuit. You can't take shortcuts. Or, you know, you shouldn't. If you have the skills yourself, then use them (you could of course hire someone. There'd be nothing wrong with that) - but if you don't have the skills you shouldn't be offering some paltry sum that you think is appropriate. You're not paying for a pre-finished product whose creation costs have been factored into the price you pay; and you don't know the extent of the work, the time, or the value of any other resources the designer may need to utilise. In reality, you pay for the resources, the time, and the expertise as well as the final product.
It's funny how you learn about such perspectives. People are more concerned with how they can benefit than thy are with how those providing the services they need might benefit. But also, people aren't concerned with making their work appear the best it can: I remember the speaker at this meet-up saying "fully-justify your text", which is well-and-good if you just happen to have a multiple-tens-of-thousands-of-words-long piece of text with just the right rhythm character-wise to have all lines optimally filled with whole words. In the far more likely case a story doesn't lend itself so graciously to such a format, hyphenation is the answer - preferably after at least the first three characters, or before the last four. An author may have to slightly alter words in order to eliminate large gaps between words so that spaces are consistent line-to-line. And on top of the typographic concerns, if stylistic choice dictates the use of certain glyphs to denote the end of the section or a chapter, they should be used at 300dpi - or the image becomes pixelated and loses its definition.
I hadn't actually intended this to be such a rant. Well, I suppose I had, really, actually, because such things really do annoy me; but I suppose the benefit to this rant is that it's a bit like a "what not to do" advisory. I hadn't wanted to engage in advisories in this blog, so much - so it's a non-advisory advisory, I guess. I hope at the very least it's something to think about - because realistically this sort of stuff should be thought about, whether for the writer's benefit or for that of the people employed to help craft the writer's vision. It shouldn't be about cutting corners or undervaluing. It should be about getting something out into the world with the care and attention it should receive paid to it - and that means recognising that it's far more than just a casual affair, and that the hardest, most important part is over. As it turns out, what gets written isn't the whole story at all.
