Self-publishing

It's funny how quickly a world can change. Sometimes it can be terrifying. When my parents were growing up, the self made man was someone who went through all the steps, went to college, worked the shit jobs, got the experience, and eventually was able to raise through the rungs of the world through hard work and dedication and doing what they were supposed to. Today, the self made man is the idiot who found a good way to make the world look at them, regardless of how stupid they may be, and figured out how to charge them to do it.

Think about it. The internet has provided a pathway for the average joe to be seen by everyone on the face of the earth, doing anything. We had to create a new world for the phenomenon of one person's idiotic fifteen minute limelight online being seen by millions of people worldwide, and permanently painting our view of a word or phrase or face. We called it going viral. Like a virus that infects the minds of the entire world, one person's actions can get around like wildfire in ways never before possible.

And people figured out how to profit off of this. That's why websites like youtube exist. To provide a service for people to try and go viral, and when they did, to make a profit off of that. But it didn't just create one hit wonders. Today, music artists find their start on youtube, leading to pop stars like Justin Beiber becoming a household name because someone saw him singing and deciding to sign him on a record label. TV shows like America's Got Talent or The Voice give performs the chance to get out there and make a name for themselves. Dreams are more accessible than ever before.

And what about the writers? Some of them are able to profit just off of blogs like this one, although they generally aren't writing fiction. Novelists are given spaces through online retailers to sell their books without needing to get it published by a big name company, which means that books can no longer be shut down before hitting the market for not being what a specific publisher is looking for, or perhaps not being of a high enough quality. This process of self-publishing goes back to the beginning of the printing industry, returning power to the writers rather than the publishers as it has become.

But this leads to a slew of new books, and not necessarily of high quality. The perfect example of this being Fifty Shades of Gray, a self-published book series that started off as a fanfiction of another hit series, Twilight, and can hardly be seen as good writing by anyone with a grasp of storytelling, or the English language. Yet it sold millions of copies, and far more of that profit went into the author's pocket than would have had it gone through a traditional publisher.

But for every big hit, subpar Fifty Shades, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other self-published books that never go anywhere. Every Justin Beiber, hundreds of singers that go unheard. Thousands of people trying to find their voice, their niche in the world, all fighting for space that is no bigger than it ever was before the internet came along to give them that opportunity.

The old methods are still there. They are harder, they are slower, and they can still fail. But they are still there, and they are still probably more stable and reliable. The question becomes - which road will you take?