Yet another “why I don’t” blog entry. I promise I’m not delib­er­ately rabble-rousing, it’s just that I’ve been watching some fairly omnipresent debates out on the Inter­webs lately, and doing some thinking of where I stand on them.

As folks know, I have a 3-book deal with one of the “Big 6″ pub­lishing houses based in New York City. That’s what’s com­monly called a “tra­di­tional” pub­lishing deal, and makes me, according to Mike Stack­pole, a “house slave.” But what folks may or may not know is that, during my long road to securing the deal I cur­rently have, I was strongly tempted to self-publish. I saw the suc­cess of the now leg­endary Amanda Hocking and J.A. Kon­rath. I felt that I’d written a good book, and I knew that the Big 6 turned down great man­u­scripts all the time that they later wound up regret­ting they’d passed on. If I believed in my work, if I truly wanted to be a writer, then why didn’t I just run my writing up the pole and see who saluted?

Now, before I answer that ques­tion, let me make this unequiv­ocal state­ment. Self-publishing is absolutely a legit­i­mate way to get your writing before an audi­ence. I think it’s a lot less likely to be suc­cessful than the tra­di­tional route, but there are plenty of exam­ples where it’s wildly suc­cessful. I am dis­cussing why *I* CHOOSE not to self-publish. I am not lam­basting anyone else’s deci­sion to get their work to market in any way they choose.

So, let me explain why I don’t self-publish by way of an anec­dote. When CONTROL POINT was first going out to market, the man­u­script (then called LATENT) got some serious interest from the folks at Ace (an imprint at Pen­guin). But they had a problem with the second sec­tion of the book. They were willing to give it another look, but only after I’d essen­tially gutted this sec­tion and com­pletely replaced it.

The sec­tion in ques­tion? 2nd out of 4. Which meant that the other 2 that fol­lowed would also have to be com­pletely reworked. The pub­lisher was essen­tially asking for a 75% rewrite.

You can imagine my heart sinking as I read that email. They weren’t offering a con­tract, they were offering to take another look AFTER I tore my life’s work down to the studs and recon­structed it. And this was AFTER one of the leading agents in the industry put his full faith in the man­u­script and signed me to a rep­re­sen­ta­tion contract.

So I did what I always do: I whined, I bitched, I called my friends and com­plained bit­terly for as long as they would listen.

And then I shut the f$#k up and got to work.

And wouldn’t you know it? As the new out­line came together, the novel got better. By the time I had com­pleted the prose, it was orders of mag­ni­tude better. Sell to a major pub­lisher in a 3-book deal better.

The lesson in all this? I am not the best judge of my own work. I am too close to it. It is tough for me to see what needs to change, tougher for me to know when my novels are “cooked enough,” ready for prime-time before a demanding and hyper-critical public. Heck, even my agent thought it was fine as it was. But you know who is a good judge of my work? Who spends pretty much all their time looking at writing trying to figure out what makes it good enough to go before the afore­men­tioned public? Edi­tors at major pub­lishing houses.

Remember, I thought LATENT was fine as it was. My agent thought it was fine as it was. Had I been willing to self-publish, I would totally have trotted it out there at that point in the process. But it *wasn’t* fine as it was. It was NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It took an expert, someone with skills, expe­ri­ence and a gut instinct honed over years in the trade to first see that, and then guide me to bringing the changes nec­es­sary to make it fan­tastic onto the page.

The most impor­tant thing a writer has is his or her rep­u­ta­tion. Once you put crap work out there for public con­sump­tion, you are well and truly screwed. People are not going to for­give you and pick up another book by you if they’ve read one that sucks. I, for one, am TERRIFIED of that pos­si­bility. The thought of trusting my own judge­ment on whether or not my work is ready for prime-time con­sump­tion about throws me into a panic attack. I would never have that con­fi­dence until an editor with decades of expe­ri­ence and a proven track record of shep­herding major writers to suc­cess gave my man­u­script the nod. I sup­pose I could hire such an editor out of pocket to vette my work before self-publishing. But such talent doesn’t come cheap, and guard offi­cers don’t exactly make a lot of money.

So, the only way for me to access that kind of talent is to get a tra­di­tional pub­lishing deal, which is what I wound up doing. There are people out there who have the ability to read their own work and judge it fit for public con­sump­tion. I will doubt I will ever be that person. Until I build that kind of con­fi­dence, I am unwilling to self-publish.