No one self publishes to make money. You don’t really make any money when you publish any book, much less when you write, design, print, and sell your own books.
When you self publish, you don’t do it because you want to make money. You do it because you love books.
I never tried to get a book deal before I self published. I self published not because I was a writer but because I wasn’t one. I had never taken a writing class and I didn’t know anything about writing. All I knew was that I wanted to make a book.
The publishing world is extremely white. The astrological publishing world is even more white. To this day, there are less than 20 astrology books written by people of color. The reasons why the publishing world is so white have to do also with why it’s run by so many women. The world of publishing used to be run by white men but, as the labor became more precarious, began hiring more and more secretaries as editors.
For many publishers, a mainstream book is a book that’s accessible for white people. For many publishers, writers of color get advance checks a fraction of the checks that white writers get because writers of color can only be compared to each other and are considered to be illegible to a mainstream market. For many publishers, writing is not a job but a pastime that gentlemen do when they are leisured.
When you self publish, you don’t have to think about any of that. When you self publish, you are forced to find your voice without worrying about any of that. When you self publish, you must think not only about what you write but also the crucial question of who is this for?
There’s a very romantic idea that writers and artists do not have to be accountable to the public. Writers and artists are locked in a room, lost in their own creative juices, and must have that access to the privileged space of leisure to find themselves. This idea makes no sense.
There are things that you have to do when you self publish! You have to ask yourself who will want to read your book. You have to be fully engaged in the environment with which you want to converse. You have to listen well not to those who publish books but to those who read them and use them.
I love books because they’re cheap. They’re one of the cheapest forms of art. Not only are books cheap—writers are also expected to be more accessible because books are supposed to be for everybody. No writer charges a bunch of money for a public performance unless they also do other work. Writers are not accountable to the rich or to the institution like some artists are. Writers are supposed to be in conversation with the public.
To self publish, you must love books. You must know why people love books and you must know exactly what it is about a book that makes people enjoy using and misusing it. Many people do not buy books because they want to read them. A book is not like a speech or an internet article. A book is an object. Most people buy books because there is some use in the book for them in their own creative lives and because they want to own a thing that they can ruin.
Most people buy books because they like to fold them up, to dogear them, to underline and highlight, to lose or give away, and to use to prop up their projectors.
If people wanted to just read, they would keep their eyes on a screen and their shelves clear of any loose pages that must crumble after just a year or two.
When you self publish, you understand that the thing you are making is not a reading experience. Books are more erotic and communal for that. You must understand that you are making something that someone is going to give their lover or their sister. You must understand something about why it is that we keep cumbersome and ephemeral things.
Everyone who writes should self publish at least once in their lives because to do so is to a type of independence that nothing else can really offer. Self publishing is about knowing that there are people out there who you want to speak to and that your voice can become a funny little object that intersects with the relationships between strangers who you never know the names of. Self publishing means that you do not just write. Self publishing means that you understand that, as a writer, that you must hold space for yourself even when no one else is willing to hold space for you.
