New society for self-published authors will help self-published authors to deal with the publishers that… don’t… publish… them?

The Bookseller reports that Orna Ross, a former literary agent and twice Penguin-published, now self-published author, is soon to launch the first non-profit organisation representing self-published authors’ interests, The Alliance of Independent Authors. Specifically, that will mean organising conferences, establishing a network, providing support, and giving advice about contracts and payments. Bafflingly, the article quotes her as saying:

We will be speaking up on behalf of independent authors, and making links with booksellers, wholesalers, agents and legacy publishers, so people have an idea of what our creative needs are. It requires a change of attitude both in writers and in other players. In the past, the author was a resource to be mined, but indie authorship is about meeting the publisher as a partner.

Err… what? Isn’t indie authorship about not meeting the publisher at all? About sidestepping them because they’ve been deemed to add little to no value to the publishing process? We don’t want to heap scorn on all self-published authors — that’s as ridiculous as self-published authors heaping scorn on all traditional publishing houses, which only happens, oh, about every second of every day. We know the value of our editorial, marketing, publicity and design expertise, but publishing has always been a tough industry, and of course there are some talented writers (and lots of less talented ones) who choose to explore non-traditional options. The thing that baffles me is: if Ross truly believes that self-publishing is the future of the industry, why involve ‘legacy’ (ugh) publishers in the conversation at all? Could it be that we do still have more than a little to offer?

Ellie Robins is an editor at Melville House. Previously, she was managing editor of Hesperus Press.

http://twitter.com/kristinemuslim Kristine Ong Muslim

“…sidestepping them because they’ve been deemed to add little to no value to the publishing process?”
- many of them, YES! There are others who work hard to come up with something that is not 100% vampire-meets-human cliche, something relevant, something literate, something that will last. I hope Ms. Ross will help those groups of “real” writers instead. Nobody is backing them up. In fact, the only support that they have is that self-inflicted curse to force themselves to write well, to read as much as they can. And whenever they read, they buy books, books that other “real” writers write. Their collective book-buying supports the publishing industry. Besides, it’s a choice to self-publish. One can always learn to write well to get published the right way. The self-pubs just chose to take a shortcut, a shortcut that is usually priced at 99 cents in Amazon.
http://twitter.com/RoyChristopher Roy Christopher

I think this organization assumes that a self-published author eventually wants to become a regularly published author — with a publisher. In that case, an experiences liaison might make sense.

Melville House Books

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February 8, 2012