Self-published authors: revolutionaries or weirdos who will die alone?

When asked by non-writer friends why I haven't self-published my writing, I answer adamantly that there is a huge stigma associated with self-published authors: those are the desperate kind, who didn't write a book good enough for it to be picked up by a proper publisher. A sort of cringe akin to being the only single person at a dinner party organised by your relatives who you have nothing in common with and who have already accepted the fact that you are a weirdo that will die alone but nevertheless still make a point to discuss it at every opportunity.

Despite overwhelming evidence of huge success stories that keep cropping up about self-published authors who have made it big by going solo, I still resist the notion of putting my work out there as a self-published venture.

Why do I still think the stigma lives on? Because it is an attitude I perceive in publishers who I really trust and respect--the ones who have brought me my favourite authors in beautifully, impeccably produced books (often with the help of state funding), and who obviously have good taste and know what they're doing and take literature seriously. And because there is a kind of systemic violence against self-publishing, particularly if your work is literary fiction or poetry: you know, just little things like how newspapers and magazines don't really tend to review self-published books, how literary awards don't consider self-published books, how self-published authors don't get the cooshy jobs, and how the Society of Authors does not consider somebody who is self-published as an actual author and thus cannot become a member, unless he or she has sold above an X amount of copies. (As if most traditionally published authors reached that target on a regular basis?)

But maybe, just maybe, it is only a matter of time before authors stop caring what old-fashioned dudes in linen suits think? Because ultimately, it's the readers who are actually going to buy and read the stuff. We maybe just need to work a little bit more at our 'marketing' strategies, what with the very unsexy label "self-published" that authors get, whilst musicians and visual artists who publish (i.e., make publicly available) their work on the internet are away being trendy and indie and all the rest. In our case it is the independent publishers who seem to have dibbs on the label "indie" so perhaps authors need to wait their turn for the spotlight or else be doomed for ever by publishing through newer means.

But writers can and should and do and will take advantage of this crazy world that is the Internet, just as visual artists and musicians have been doing for the last decade. Maybe self-publishing will even become cool, have its own kind of edginess? We admire the "home-made" qualities of indie records, the warm distorsion that comes with recording on tape, the spontaneity that comes with a live video posted on the go. Often records are produced to sound as if they were recorded using poor-quality or vintage equipment, when in fact all the modern cons were available. Why shouldn't a few typos and non-professionally-edited books emanate this same kind of "home-made" charm? The way cut-and-paste zines get a bit of street cred for being hand made?

And I think there will be space in this world for all, publishers and bookshops and self-published authors and indies and Amazon and all the rest. This is just the kind of shift in production and distribution methods which inevitably brings about a change in power structures. Which sounds pretty healthy to me. Almost like some kind of revolution.