/lit/ - Literature

>>6771136
Because I suck.

>>6771136
Because it costs money i dont have.

Its also kinda embarasing for me.

>>6771136
because self-publishing doesn't get any attention unless you pander even more than the pandering required to get traditionally published.

It also costs money and I'd rather be paid to publish my works than pay to publish them. If they're not good enough for me to be paid for them yet, I'll just keep making them better instead of try to self-publish them, which will only lose credit with publishing companies if I flop which is almost inevitable even if what I write is good, and won't make me any money/help me receive attention anyway. Self-publication isn't an alternative option to traditional publication, it's basically publication suicide.

Let me elaborate. I have no discernible talent in any art-form at all. Certainly not in writing, not in music. Can't draw. The only thing left is film and photography, but you need money for that and considering I've spectacularly failed with everything else, I don't think it's worth flushing additional money down the toilet (especially since I've bombed uni as well and am now facing the possibility of at best having a shitty job for the rest of my life). There's a distinct feel you get at a certain age where you can't ignore the failure anymore. Up to a point you can kid yourself and blame it on "finding yourself" or even brushing it off as under the "productive" hobbies provision. But at some point, and it's sort of building subtly underneath it all, but one day you will wake up and not be able to look yourself in the mirror anymore without seeing a complete failure staring back at you. This is not to say that I'm buying society's "you have to be productive" blahblah "capitalist" agenda. It's different. I mean you could eventually develop a whole philosophy as a defense mechanism for your failure, but boy it's really fucking hard for me to buy that. It’s come to a point where I'm embarrassed to look my family in the eyes, not because they are judgemental, precisely for the opposite reason, they are understanding and non-judgemental. So, I have even a harder time selling them any kind of bullshit. They've done "the right thing" throughout and I haven't. You'll also have all these philosophical obfuscating bullshit question-marks around that as well, "what does "the right thing" mean". You can play around with that, but be assured that there comes a moment where you can tell with a snap of a finger that you haven't done the right thing at all.

>>6771189
Nigga, Van Gogh started drawing/painting at age 27. it's never too late, your just lazy.

>>6771142
/thread

>>6771189
is this your first nihilistic crisis?

>>6771189
You're confused, you think you have to be an artist, or a worker, or a creator basically, there's a million things to choose from and you can do them at any time of your life, you're just lazy, or you think you can't do things, which you can, just like everybody else. Stop kidding yourself.

My name has been stained, I mean that in the sense that if I was to have any artistic success, my criminal background (touched my stepfather's daughter when I was 14, she was 6) would come up and make things actually worse. I am 25 now and work at MacDonalds anyways, I have no real life experience that anyone would care to read about.

>>6771154
It depends on your goals, you wanna be the next J.K. Rowling, self publishing is fine if you care about the art-form.

>>6771302
I don't think anyone of consequence is going to hold things you did as a 14 year old against you. Especially if your art is badass asf. It's just an excuse you're using to not work hard and accomplish things.

There are things you can write about other than life experience. Like mounted robot-dinosaur knight wars. Or space travel. Or far-eastern russian fishermen, it's whatever man.

>>6771154
>If they're not good enough for me to be paid for them yet, I'll just keep making them better

Self publishing doesn't make you improve?

>>6771306
The odds of becoming a JK through self publishing are negligibly low. How many authors have been traditionally published because of their self-published works? It would likely only hurt your chances at becoming the next JK, since your book is not likely at all to receive any attention even if it's good, and publishers will use the knowledge of it flopping in self-publishment to assume that your book isn't going to make them any money.

>>6771302
that Duggar guy did that, and look at him now.

he had a good run, anyway.

>>6771319
How would self publishing help your writing in any way that criticism from anonymous/non anonymous sources would?

It's essentially the same as having people read your work, except you pay money and it's more difficult to edit because you already published it.

>>6771333
You dont have to pay lulu.com to publish your work, you just provide/format and they distribute it to platforms like amazon, ibook, and all kinds of others.

>>6771302
write about how touching a 6 year old as a 14 year old has had a negative impact on your feelings of ability to accomplish your goals and reach your dreams as an adult.

>>6771336
>It's essentially the same as having people read your work
>it's more difficult to edit because you already published it.
>publishers will use the knowledge of it flopping in self-publishment to assume that your book isn't going to make them any money.
Even if there's a free way to self-publish, these points still make it a terrible idea.

>>6771341
1) No, it's not the same. In one of these situations you are under more pressure and receive much harsher critique, and you can receive revenue and be part of the very bustling self-publishing community.

2) You'd better be prolific if you have any hopes of success. Failures are the ones who spend years and years poring over the same story trying to perfect it before letting the world get a taste, not the ones who produce and get out there and get some recognition, however little.

3) Publishers aren't that stupid. I have worked with some. It takes a long time to get traction. Who looks more appealing to publish and work with: the guy with enough drive to self-publish and produce more material after that, or the guy who only shares his work with /lit/?

>>6771365
there is so much straw man here that it's obvious you're a self-publisher trying hard to justify your decisions. You have heavily exaggerated things and made things up to make arguments against self publishing look bad.

Self published critique does not necessarily = more pressure or harsher critique, someone who knows what they are doing is perfectly capable of gaining that without deciding their work is finished and seeing what people say about it after publishing it.

Editing work that's been critiqued does NOT = not being prolific or working on the same book for years. straw man. don't put words into people's mouths or apply things to their arguments that don't necessarily apply.

Publishers aren't going to ignore the success of self-published material if you have any, that would be asinine. They don't care about your "drive", they care about what you have, and whether or not it can make money. Whether or not your material has been shared on a chinese cartoon website, well, I don't see how that's relevant at all or why you've brought it up, just looks like a straw man meant to re-define my argument into something that looks dumb.

If you're going to defend your claims, you should be able to do it without resorting to fallacy, or else it makes your claims seem even weaker when you try to defend them illogically.

>>6771449

Are you a grill?

>>6771449
Right, did you forget the part where I said that I've worked with publishers? That means I have published work. The one making justifications for their decisions here isn't me. I'm trying to help you out since I have industry experience and you're talking shit. What i said may not be technically, philosophically, logically unassailable, but one of us here is advocating putting your material out into the market and learning how to be an advocate for yourself, and the other - namely, you - is saying that authors should wait to be discovered and paid for their work rather than marketing themselves and pounding the pavement right now instead of some nebulous future time when you'll be "ready" or "good enough" according to some undefined metric at some undefined time. That doesn't make any sense.

Dance around the point and bullshit all you want, I know I'm going to have a hard time convincing you. I just don't want you to infect any other young authors with your defeatist, establishment-serving mentality.

>>6771153
>it costs money
>>6771154
>It also costs money
>>6771341
>Even if there's a free way to self-publish, these points still make it a terrible idea.
There are a shitload of free self-publishing services online like amazon KDP and others. The only context in which it isn't free is if you go to a vanity press and pay them print copies of your book for you, which tends to be a waste of time anyway.

That and your reputation or lack thereof means as much or as little as you want it to since you can use pseudonyms to self-publish. You can write all sorts of nonsense under a pseudonym/pseudonyms and only "come out" as that guy if it becomes successful enough to warrant taking credit for it.

>>6771302
>muh experiences

Experiences is pretty much irrelevant. Look at DFW's debut.

>>6771189

How old are you?

Just know that you're alone in that exact predicament.

I self published- I'm well read, I've written about 500 words a day on average for about 2 years, and I apply a metric fuckton of philosophical basis to my writing. And I use a pseudonym.

I've sold one copy in 20 days but I'm actually ok with this, because I feel like the average reader would pick up maybe 15% of what's happening.

>>6773337
What sort of subject matter do you deal with and what are you charging?

>>6773364
>What sort of subject matter do you deal with
My only published work is a 1st person (almost stream of consciousness) novel about a young adult who feels lost in the translation of postmodernism into the internet age; he's violent, socially aware albeit conservative, and constantly reinventing his own identity.

Concrete context: rugby player and bad student at an elite American university; there is some reference to his tendencies to wrote, and a sort of postmodern love story as a tertiary plot device.

>what are you charging?
$3.09 on Amazon

>>6773397
Who are your influences?

>>6773408
DFW obviously. Can't anybody on this board think for themselves?

>>6773408
Joyce, Nietzsche, the concept of dasein, the famous study called "universe 25", I'll have to think of some more influences.

Oh shit forgot to mention the character is reading Ulysses in the book and randomly associates his experience with the story. It's not like a parallelism thing, kinda more like a selective exploration

>>6773416
I've never read any dfw

>>6771849
This post is one big fat argument from authority paired with yet even more straw man.

>I have been published so I'm right
I've had short stories and articles published as well. I don't use this information to claim that my arguments are true.

>implying refusing to self-publish = "waiting to be discovered"
more straw man. a writer can work really hard at contacting publishers and agents without self-publishing. It also doesn't follow that you're just "waiting" to be good enough. Is the only way you know how to argue is to re-define your opponent's argument into something it isn't? Illogical asf.

I don't even have anything else to respond to because this post is 100% an argument from authority and a straw man.

Other than:
>I just don't want you to infect any other young authors with your defeatist, establishment-serving mentality.
How is anything I've said defeatist? you made up everything about "giving up" and "waiting" and "being lazy" related to my argument, I never said anything that implies any kind of actions like that, which is part of the straw man, but I'm responding to the "establishment-serving mentality" part.

Serving the establishment is exactly how you get published as an unknown author, and exactly how you get a reputation behind you. My only stories and articles that have been published in literary/news magazines and semi-annuals have been ones that pander as heavily as possible to what publishers and audience want. The rest are ignored because I have no reputation, and publishers don't like to take risks.

>>6773523
So... you sold your soul in order to publish?

>>6773523
So youre saying that publishers don't know what is good or not? Isn't that half the point of publishers. I am confuse.

>>6771302

Woody Allen is fucking his daughter and nobody cares

>>6773432
i'll bite; what's the title of your book? is it on amazon?

>>6771136
Because self publish is like a litteral author suicide these days. Unless you have the marketing skills of a major company ceo and a network of fans ready to buy your masterpiece, there is no reason whatsoever to self publish unless you just don't give a fuck about selling it, and you are just happy to sell it to friends and family for the price of a pack of cigarettes.

don't forget the memes xD

>>6774588

so it's not actually like suicide, definitely not "literal suicide"?

unless you think that nothing happens when you kill yourself, which might be the case for you.

Literal adj.
1. Figurative

Why are the only prescriptivists these days the people who want "sexist" to mean "heterosexual?"

>>6773614
I don't see any reason believe in souls

>>6773626
I don't see how you got that idea from what I posted. It's a publisher's job to know what will make money and what won't. If the query letter says "experimental metaphysical journey of the mind" "aimed at adult male audiences" etc etc they aren't likely to look at it past that even if it's a fantastic book unless you have a reputation already as a successful author.

>>6774259
I am John von Dorf on Amazon. Review it if you like it pls.

>>6775216
I've read your preface now, and I feel it already weakening whatever follows. Is this some device, or a legitimate excuse?

>>6775233
A device and an excuse; as I said, I use a pseudonym, so it's not THAT personal, but I do share traits with John. I originally wrote a much much different intro, but the final draft is more of a device.

>>6773337
Why don't you want the people reading your books pick up more from what's goin on?

I have. Pic related is my latest effort.

>>6776160
It's not the lowest quality work of fiction, it's "minimalistic" and "avant-gardiste".

>>6776366
That's more of a review thing than a description thing.

>>6771249
Van Gogh was a technically shitter painter though, and I doubt that anon is willing to cut off his ear in a bid for posthumous fame.

>>6771136
don't let your dreams be dreams, anons

>>6771136
doesnt matter
wont happen
the world is on a constant trend of liberalizing and disassembling values
the structure we built empirically is now in its last throes

>>6771299

>you think you have to be an artist, or a worker, or a creator basically

What are you talking about? Isn't that what this thread is discussing? Dude that you're responding to is saying he sucks at being an artist in response to somebody saying "why don't you produce and distribute your own art?"

>>6771136
I did. Wrote book, put on lulu (POD), it's available through amazon, itunes, etc. Nobody has ever bought a single copy. That's what self-publishing is. Went on with my life. At least the days of having to spend thousands with a print run at a vanity press are over.

>>6776136
I do want people to read it. I just think the casual reader is going to read it very superficially. I guess if no one reads it, it's even more of a lost cause.

to everyone whose worked in publishing, if I go to a top liberal arts school and have really good connections to a lot of presses (one of my professors is really tight with danielewski too, which probably doesn't mean much for me at all, i know the whole "hey i have a student who has this thing you should read" will never work but he has some connections that could help) do you think the best route to take for publishing is by pushing my novel as a thesis and trying to go through university presses?

>>6771249
Van Gogh was a pauper though. He'll still have to have the same shitty life, with the same shitty job.

Because I have no audience and lack the money to advertise effectively.

Because no one cares about me

>>6771189
You sound like a quitter to me.

>>6778342
>>6779873

Every famous person ever started exactly where you are.

You know what they did? They actually worked regardless.

You know that whole cliche bullshit about "believing is the first step to success"

It's not about believing...it's just about actually doing it even though you feel shitty about it all the time and are embarrassed.

It's not like you can get worse than no one caring about you and having no audience.

When you are at that point there is literally only one way to go...

This isn't a 'improve yourself help yourself cliche paragraph in a self help" shit.

This is just common fucking sense for anyone who started anything. The only difference between you and your peers who seemingly are doing something with their lives, is that even though they have no clue what's going on, they are still actually doing something they can wake up to everyday. And you're just coming to 4chan.

Think about that. You ARE a loser. They ARE smarter and better than you, no matter how many books you read. That is, unless you start doing something.

All those 'plebs' going to jobs and college...they are so, so, so, so much better and smarter than you. You're just too fucking pathetic to realize.

>>6776160
>>6776366
>>6776383
samefag shill

>>6779917
Nah. I'm not >>6776366

Besides, I wrote the description so why would I be telling myself how to rewrite it? Shit makes no sense man.

>>6771338
This.

>>6779907
You know what's funny? I was already shilling my piece earlier on this thread, and I wanted to bump it subtly without appearing to be a samefag. Bitch, I know I'm going to be famous, but people don't respond well to that kind of tone.

>>6779907
I'm >>6779983
and you did motivate me to invest in advertising my novel on Amazon. Otherwise it will never be seen. Thanks for berating me into helping myself

>>6780026
Honestly you'd have better luck spamming it on forums. Amazon ads are pretty useless.

>>6781824
I'll try both. Do you have personal experience or are you just talking as someone savvy enough to always ignore ads? I think most people pay more attention to ads than the average 4chan user, who becomes an expert at skimming through the bullshit of webpages.