The meaning of the word... Published

I've been thinking about this all day for some reason, but I have to ask, in our world what is the meaning or and the value of being "published"

I personally view publishing houses, comic publishers, the music industry, hollywood, and the video game industry largely built on an antiquated system that emphasizes the value of a corporation making decisions about what is and isn't good.

Why do we recognize these authorities? Why would we in our age? Why is it laughed at when someone self publishes a book. Why are web comics not held in as much esteem as regular comics? Why should we care about a music label saying something is good when the music label is only there to fund the production of a hard medium such as a cd/tape/record? We no longer need these corporations because we have the internet and as such their purpose is, more or less, completely obliterated.

Why would artists ever want to be associated with these corporations? They take a majority of the money that is gained by the popularity of the artists and provide no service that the artists couldn't do on their own.

And in those mediums where the money is the big factor (due to hiring people or some such thing)...has having that much money to throw around helped to make great art/product? Or has it in truth harmed it?

So again why do we scoff at self published and laugh at the idea of indy development as not as good as big companies...

Any sane author wants an out side force to some editing and polishing of their work. I've seen more than enough published material by people who got to important to edit or self published that just screamed for a pass by an editor. Robert E Heinlein's later works are like that.

Basically a professional shop brings along editors, typesetting, cover art, marketing. These are all things that the creator of a work shouldn't have to do themselves. Oh some can, but then some people are great generalists.

That said the performers who make money and keep it are the ones who learn to do some of all of this hands on themselves. So they at least know if they are getting what it is worth or not.

Still publishing is changing and evolving. It is quite possible that the traditional publishing houses, at least the top tier one will go down in flames. That is more because the six major publishing houses in the US are all owned by big mega conglomerates that have no clue how a publishing house makes money or works. They will want books to be widgets. And for that matter they have recently been found to be apparently using truly horrible accounting practices/software for tracking ebooks.

Still I think that an author who believes that they can do the final edit on their book has a fool for a client and that is something that a small to mid sized publishing house can add along with the other things above.

Really do you want to manage the minutia of publishing your book every where it needs to be published?

It's impractical to sift through the dreck without at least some vague assurance that someone, somewhere vetted the product first. Like it or not, people who have made it their profession to know what will be popular have an enhanced credibility.

See also: CoH's Mission Architect.

Some very good, independent products can, of course, shine through and succeed by word of mouth. Some very bad products can, of course, survive the corporate vetting process. There are no hard-and-fast rules.

Still, I think what you see as an oppressive corporate influence on art is less objectionable in the grand scheme than the Twitter-enflamed presumption that everyone is a special snowflake entitled to an audience. Also, I'd be shocked to find that independent artists generally make anywhere near as much money as corporation-endorsed artists do. (Edit: I don't scoff at the self-published, but I have a hard time caring about them -- or even knowing they exist. As Terra points out, professional marketing is worth something.)

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Oh and you really really should read some examples of the truly horrible stuff that regularly finds its way into the slush pile of any editor. And then thank any god you want that it isn't getting published.

Everyone thinks their book/story/song/game/other art thing is just awesome and will be recognized as such if people just KNEW.

Oh and if you think I'm exaggerating read this to get a feeling about it.

See I read various author blogs, and discussions. regularly chat with authors online, and follow some what the science fiction publishing industry. So I've seen some interesting insights into it.

I do know a pair of authors who are successfully publishing some of their material themselves, but then they have run a small press for years publishing chapbooks of theirs and others. Even their they jumped for joy to get contracts with a bigger publisher to print their books and write new books.

Check out Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden Universe books, they have recently been all reprinted with new novels in the universe coming out over the last few years.

What those publishing companies excel at is promotion. No writer is going to be able to self-promote at near the level that Random House is. If you want your book to be read, you need to get people to notice it among the myriad other books that come out every week.

For some media, you probably need a corporate backer to even afford to make the end product palatable. This is especially true for certain genres of movies and music. A low-budget indie film or album will work fine in certain genres, but only the major corporations have the kind of money necessary for effects-heavy movies, or for the more advanced recording studio technology, and trained personnel to operate it well, that a lot of Top 40 music requires.

As people have said, self-publishing has its problems... which can be more or less so depending on the medium. Music and games seem to be the easiest places to make it happen these days, with the ease of distribution on the internet. There are respected webcomic artists out there... just not many, because frankly, most webcomics are garbage, and even the good ones likely don't have a number of readers that really compares to larger print works. Really, if you name any form of art that can be digitized without losing most of its value, you can probably find somebody who's making a living doing it on the internet. The corporations currently do serve a purpose, though--like others have said, they offer quality control, access to much larger distribution channels, advertising, and peripheral needs like box art.

And, as you hinted at in your first post, the definition of self-published is getting a little hazy these days--if I make my own game with no corporate input and then distribute it on Steam, does it count? Conversely, under what circumstances would it be worth my time to distribute the game myself instead of using Steam?

Self publishing isn't bad if what you're publishing is what is considered a "niche" sort of book - where it is only really going to appeal to a certain few people.

If you think your piece has a broader audience, then I would go after a literary agent/publishing house.

Personally, I do vanity prints of my diaries than I've been transcribing from handwritten to typed using Lulu, but they do offer some marketing and distribution packages.

Publishers and editors provide a valuable service to make a writer's work much better. All you have to do is read a lot of the self-published dreck out there to realize how important a good editor can be. I can't tell you how often I see some self-published work, some of it with some good imagination and underlying talent, filled with ignorant, silly and inexperienced errors. (I recall going through an entire 3 book series where the author didn't understand the difference between "your" and "you're." And the story was actually a fun read with interesting characters. A good editor could have improved it immensely to the point where it might have been worthy of actually being published.)

I have met a number of good, published writers who are very thankful for their editors. Most of them know that a good editor can help them write a better story. Most of them seem to have a love/hate relationship with their publishers, however.

Making money on writing is very hard. (My wife is working at it -- she is currently working on writing and re-writing school books. She is working with a "book packager" who has collected a team of authors, artists and experts to put together a good series of textbooks.) It takes a combination of talent, experience and technical expertise. Self-published books almost never make any significant money -- they just don't have the distribution channels needed (and usually aren't very good or a publisher would have accepted the work). The main publishing houses produce quality product or they don't last. These publishing houses have the experience and connections with the best distributors -- major booksellers and trade groups that service the independents. Publishers have the experience to know what kind of books sell. Publishers know how to advertise books. Publishers know how to distribute books. And publishers can provide the capital needed for advertising, printing and distributing books. These publishers take the financial risk, so they reap much of the reward.

Things are changing, and exactly how the various roles in the publishing game work out is not yet known. But there is a role for people who know the business and how it works.

Publishers exist because the main job of a writer is to write. Not to handle the eight billion little things that come up in the process of trying to publish a book. Can you handle all of your own publicity, promotion, editing, proof-reading, and the many technical aspects of self-publishing? Sure. But doing all that, how much time does that actually leave you to write? Which is what I'm sure most writers would like to spend most of their time doing.

There are people who excel at all those other things. So let them do it. That leaves the writer the time and energy to excel at writing.

Self-publishing, frankly, means squat. Anyone can do it if you're willing to pony up the cash, and not many people are probably going to notice it even then. As others have noted, there is a lot of dreck out there, and you don't necessarily have to edit your stuff much. Just writing a novel for NaNoWriMo might be a fun challenge, but it doesn't mean you have a good book on your hands, or that you don't need to edit it like crazy to make it decent.

Once you do have a decent book, you MIGHT get lucky and gain a following, but the odds are low... maybe/probably lower than having an agent and a publisher like your stuff enough to publish it. The same issues occur for blogging, webcomics, webvideos, etc. Most people that are well known for it started out with it early on, and now there are so many things out there to look at being found is might difficult.

Like it or not, publishing houses, etc., are around because they have been able to find the decent stuff more often than not, and don't let out too much of the dreck. Are they perfect? Can they be evil? You bet.

But I still want them to publish my stuff, even if the few literary magazines I have sent stuff to have published some stuff I don't care for instead. I'm not so stupid to think that publishers know everything, but I also am not so delusional to think that self-publishing means anything, either.

Self publishing is blogging with paper. Anyone with money can do it. It doesn't mean it's good, or right, or interesting.

Just like any band can publish their own CD or DVD.

I think some of what you guys are saying is wrong, though I don't generally buy books, because I don't ever go looking for books and ask is this book from a publisher or is it self published. I look for interesting titles and covers, check out the synopsis, get reviews and suggestions from friends, and then make my decision... Never has the question of who published it crossed my mind when actually looking for/to buy a book.

And yes editors and getting a bit of advertising is good, but you can get someone to edit your book...or multiple people to edit your book, and you're not gonna get much advertising if your a new writer or are non-famous anyways so I don't see how that factors in.

It's convenient to have those things under one roof and such... and certainly the "someone other than the author liked it" things is nice, but then we know there is always someone else that likes the same thing that one other person likes and I don't think it's good to deprive that one person of that ^.^