Do You Validate?

I ran across a small blog post by Anna Jones Buttimore entitled Why I Prefer Traditional Publishing. I read it with an eye toward wanting to enjoy it and understand the author's point of view, but one of the final passages made me a bit angry.

According to Miss Buttimore she has published, through traditional means, several books. The first two made her some profits the third not so much. She has seen very little from her self-publishing ventures. She writes:

My sixth book, co-written with my friend Hellen Riebold, was self-published because of its controversial subject matter. Royalties from that, so far, are zero. Well, not quite zero, but Amazon only send you a cheque once your royalties reach a certain level, and we're not there yet.

It's obvious she's got some arguments about the structure of royalties from Amazon, that she doesn't want to go into in this article. If she had I would refer her to this post I wrote last year about Andrew Hyde's book "This Book is About Travel." The post is good, but what I would commend enthusiastically is the hyperlink embedded in the post (this one) for the breakdown of royalties from different means that Mr. Hyde provides.

Then she hits the reader with this passage, and this is the one that got my ire up.

Those things are all very nice. But actually the reason I like traditional publishing best is because of the validation. I like knowing that someone believes in my work enough to invest in it. I like imaging that industry professionals think I'm good at what I do. I like being taken seriously as an author: when anyone with any level of talent (or none) can put out a book, I like being set apart from them and recognised as someone whose work was actually put into print based on its own merits.

Validation from the publishing world is not something I'm after. Validation from my readers is what I want. There is a significant difference. In just the few, small, bites I've taken from the publishing worlds buffet I've not been impressed. I see a lot of nepotism, a lot of glad-handing and too much subjectivity. This is not sour grapes, in fact before I self-publish I throw my manuscript out to a few agents to judge their reactions. 

I think that the publishing world has evolved into a morass that makes it very difficult for new authors with no connections to find a place. The method of submission is abbreviated, truncated and ambiguous. The rules are arcane and petty. The subjectivity is off the scale, and based on the results of popular writers like Hugh Howey (of Wool fame) and J.K. Rowling, its not at all precise. 

So, I agree with Miss Buttimore that we are all seeking Validation, but I disagree with the direction from which she is expecting it or hoping for it. The publishing industry was long overdue for a shake up and personally I'm glad to be in the middle of it and living through it.