The Gospels of Publishing

Under this title, Jim C. Hines would like to give you a commonsense message:

This whole Us vs. Them thing? It’s bullshit.

Hines is referring to the war of words between those who believe traditional publishing and e-book self-publishing are destined to be arch-nemeses in some kind of cartoon version of reality. Hines, who has been on both sides of the deal himself, believes they are not. It's clear that some people do well in each format, but regardless, the number of people doing well is vanishingly small. And of course Hines reminds us that being a (real) writer is a lot of damned hard work and there are no guarantees of success with either route.

I tend to agree with his notion that the low odds of success, large amount of work required, and high stakes of making wrong choices lead people to a level of passionate partisanship that likely exceeds reason. However, I disagree that the two parties are peaceful co-occupants of the landscape. Publishers have been largely reluctant to embrace upstarts such as online self-publishing and while they may invite some successful self-published authors into their exclusive clubs, they do still tend to project an air of being "the" gatekeepers of what ought to be published. The day I see a major publishing house set up a self-publishing arm (or support someone else's self-publishing enterprise in a major way) then I'll revise my opinion.