Publisher v. Indie v. Small press

March 14, 2011 Uncategorized

Fire Season has been out for two months, and in some ways I am beginning to wonder if it would have been easier to go self-published rather than indie press. The reasons aren’t obvious until you run into them, but almost certainly would affect other authors with small press, or startup publishers.

If you self-publish, there are a whole range of awards, dedicated book blogs and a resurgence of interviewers dedicated to the field of self-publishing.

If you are published by a publisher, there are a range of formal awards, dedicated blogs and media dedicated to mainstream publishing.

It seems that everyone should fall into one of the two, surely.

The problem is with the definition of “publisher”. Some locations define it as a publishing house with five authors, others as one with at least twenty mainstream books. For Ragged Angel, mine is their first mainstream book. This means it is neatly disqualified from most awards/reviewers. However, saying it was self-published and entering it into that category seems disingenious: I don’t own the ISBN, didn’t pay for publishing, and the book was worked on and released by a publisher which has released several previous niche books and already has distribution. It falls neatly in the gap.

The space in between the two for small press seems to be very small indeed.