I have a publicist. For some reason, in the eyes of my small circle of aspiring writer/author friends, that makes me kinda hot shit. Probably because to them it means I take my writing career seriously enough that I can afford to invest in a publicist. Fair enough.

Very recently my publicist sent me this:

Would you have any interest in doing an original blog post on your decision to self-publish and the differences between then and now?

She sends me these types of things pretty often, all part of a strategy to market my books. Quite frankly, between interviews and pitching and blogging and social media and guest posting and commentating etc etc, I feel like I’ve written so many things like this I cannot even keep them straight anymore. Truth be told— no, I really have no interest in doing another blog post; I’d much rather spend all that necessary brain and typing energy working on the seventh volume of my current serialized memoir, which is actually already a few days late and still needs the rest of the week to complete at the very least.

Anyway, my point is: sometimes to succeed at something you just gotta do what you gotta do, even if you really don’t want to, duh. I don’t have a literary agent or a “traditional” publisher or anything like that, so discipline is a responsibility I have to consign to myself. I think most people can empathize when I say it’s not always the easiest thing to do, adhere to self-discipline. So sometimes I think to myself if I had an agent and/or a publisher breathing down my neck as well all that, I’d probably want to beat myself in the face with my keyboard on a daily basis.

This is why I self-publish. Why I chose to do so then about ten years ago and why I will continue to do so as far as I can foresee, but obviously I would change my mind in a heartbeat if a “traditional” publisher ever wanted to cut me a fat million dollar check.

I’ve told (and written and read and re-read and edited and re-read and edited and re-read again) the story of why I chose to self-publish so many times, if I tell it one more time I will hurl my laptop out the window and run screaming maniacally into the nearest Starbucks and kill every blogger in sight. And really does it make a difference— I think what’s most important is that I don’t regret it.

Just last week a blogger named Rick Bylina asked me, “What’s the one best improvement in self-publishing now over ten years ago?” And amongst a bunch of other mumbo jumbo answering that question I also stated this:

I declined a quasi-offer from a traditional publishing house, because I wanted to maintain creative control over my work. But then after I self-published [and realized how expensive the retail price of my book was due to the costs of “on demand” printing], I reconsidered and spoke with several literary agents thinking I could find a publisher who could butcher enough trees and distribute so many copies of my book it would end up in the discount bin for 99 cents, but none of them were interested in representing me unless I’d sold “at least 5,000 units.” Now I ask you, if I could have sold 5,000 units at thirty bucks a pop, what the hell would I need a literary agent for?

Now you can sell books for as little as 99 cents without all that rigmarole, if you want. Hooray!

There it is in a nutshell.

Five years ago, Mediabistro quoted me saying this:

The stigma is lifting; don’t be afraid to consider self-publishing. “There’s an inherent integrity in self-publishing that doesn’t exist when you take a more traditional route,” Diaz says. “You can exercise much greater control over your work. Basically, self-publishing is putting your money and reputation where your mouth is. I believe there will be a day when self-publishing is even more respected than the traditional route.”

So ya know, excuse me if I’m feeling a little vindicated these days. One time right around that same year, I had a little blog-spat with Hamilton Nolan of Gawker, because he wrote an article which essentially opined that the self-publishing racket is doomed to failure because people are too stupid to realize that their writing sucks. I contradicted him and then some trolls got in my face (I’m sure you can well imagine). Well, I’m too lazy to Googipedia it right now, but I’m thinking something like a bazillion dollars and 80 some-odd percent of all books sales later, who’s laughing now?



Besides, I don’t want to mention any super famous successful bestselling authors by name or anything [*cou-Paris-Hilton-ough*] but I think we are all disillusioned enough by now to realize that when it comes to selling books, good writing comes secondary to good marketing anyway.

Here’s a little something I offered up at Quora once:

For example, if you are a book author, you may be required to do “readings” in random bookstores in far-flung suburbs across the country. You may occasionally have to drop everything and run to some cheap television studio to answer insipid questions on camera just to have them “light” your face atrociously and eventually censor out all your best quotes to suit their agenda. You may have to throw fancy dinners just to “shmooze” certain editors and journalists and gossip columnists whom you know deep in your heart are fucking scumbags. You may have to spend hours on end sitting in the frozen fish section of Gourmet Garage with a larger-than-life-size cut-out of your head. If you’re kinda cute and really lucky, you may have to don a satin bed sheet and pose provocatively on the cover of Maxim.

But all that sure beats making a tacky sex video and “losing” it on the steps of The New York Post, yes?

As a self-published author you have the freedom to choose to do those things or choose not to do those things, but it’s really great not to have to argue with somebody else over who is going to take a percentage of your writing income no matter what. As a self-published author, I got 99 problems. But a boss ain’t one of them.

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Abbe Diaz is the author of PX This. (Diary of the “Maître d’ to the Stars”) and PX Me. (How I Became a Published Author, Got Micro-Famous, and Married a Millionaire.) She is also a freelance commercial-artist, designer/dressmaker, and restaurant consultant. She has worked in the restaurant/bar industry for nearly 25 years, with numerous stints throughout the New York dining/party scene that include: Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel, Club USA, Coffee Shop, Spy, Cafe Tabac, The Strand (Miami Beach), Mercer Kitchen, Ilo, Lotus, and Theo. She served as the opening maître d’ for The Park, Smith, and 66.Abbe has been featured in various media outlets such as The New York Daily News, The New York Post, msn.com, The Morning Show (Australia), CBS’s The Insider, The New York Observer, Blackbook, Time Out New York, Perez Hilton, Gawker, LXTV-NBC, NBC Chicago, New York magazine, Mediabistro, hamptons.com, and foodchannel.com, just to name a few. For more visit: http://abbe-diaz.com/books/. Twitter: https://twitter.com/pxthis. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PXthis