{"id":9308,"date":"2014-04-30T23:36:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T05:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=9308"},"modified":"2014-04-30T23:37:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T05:37:58","slug":"z-is-for-slaying-the-zombie-memes-of-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/z-is-for-slaying-the-zombie-memes-of-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Z is for Slaying the Zombie Memes of Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Being an indie writer is awesome. Without a doubt, self-publishing is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and has enabled me to build exactly the kind of writing career I have always wanted.<\/p>\n<p>So it frustrates me to no end when people in the publishing industry try to discourage new writers from self-publishing the way that I did. What&#8217;s worse, they often justify their advice with information that has been debunked or opinions that have been shown to be unfounded. These &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/davidgaughran.wordpress.com\/2014\/01\/08\/astroturfing-the-source-of-zombie-memes-in-publishing\/\" target=\"_blank\">zombie memes<\/a>&#8221; keep coming back as if the act of repeating them is enough to make them true.<\/p>\n<p>Some examples of these zombie memes include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Self-publishing is a bubble.<\/li>\n<li>Ebook growth is stalling and will soon decline.<\/li>\n<li>Getting visibility as a self-published author is impossible.<\/li>\n<li>Amazon is evil because _______.<\/li>\n<li>Amazon is destroying literature.<\/li>\n<li>Self-publishing is destroying literature.<\/li>\n<li>______ is destroying literature.<\/li>\n<li>Publishers nurture writers.<\/li>\n<li>Publishers are the guardians of literature.<\/li>\n<li>Traditional publishers only publish high-quality books.<\/li>\n<li>Self-published books are flooding the market with crap.<\/li>\n<li>Only a handful of indie writers are making a living.<\/li>\n<li>Self-publishers should not be called authors.<\/li>\n<li>Ebooks shouldn&#8217;t be cheaper than print.<\/li>\n<li>Publishing a book is harder than writing one.<\/li>\n<li>Readers are reading the wrong books.<\/li>\n<li>Publishers help authors navigate the digital world.<\/li>\n<li>Agents help authors navigate the digital world.<\/li>\n<li>There is nothing unethical about agents who act like publishers.<\/li>\n<li>There is nothing unethical about standard publishing contracts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bullshit, all of it. Pure, unfiltered bullshit.<\/p>\n<p>No matter how many times you kill these memes, they just refuse to die. Some people get a thrill at rehashing all the old arguments, but not me. I&#8217;d much rather leave the good fight to others, and quietly keep building my career while the naysayers all please themselves with the sound of their own voices.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, perhaps that&#8217;s the key to slaying the zombie memes right there&#8211;successfully building your own career in spite of all the critics and naysayers. It&#8217;s a lot harder to believe all this crap when you see enough people succeeding in spite of it. The critical mass of indie writers is growing, and becoming a lot harder for the establishment to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>This month, I sold over 700 books. I&#8217;m making enough on my books now that I don&#8217;t need a full-time or even a part-time job&#8211;writing is what I do full-time now. It&#8217;s still touch-and-go from month to month, but I&#8217;m living the dream, and because of the opportunities made possible by self-publishing, I have every confidence that I will continue to live that dream until the day I die.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to slay a zombie meme is to create a competing meme that speaks even louder. That&#8217;s exactly what we in the indie movement are doing. And one day, when the zombie memes are finally dead for good, ours will be alive and thriving. It&#8217;s a new world of publishing, and never a better time to be a writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being an indie writer is awesome. Without a doubt, self-publishing is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and has enabled me to build exactly the kind of writing career I have always wanted. So it frustrates me to no end when people in the publishing industry try to discourage new writers from&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/z-is-for-slaying-the-zombie-memes-of-publishing\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Z is for Slaying the Zombie Memes of Publishing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Z is for Slaying the Zombie Memes of Publishing #atozchallenge #amwriting @AprilA2Z","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[909,577,529],"class_list":["post-9308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blogging-a-to-z-challenge-2014","tag-ebook-revolution","tag-indie-publishing","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2q8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9308"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9311,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions\/9311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}