What Makes Someone An Author?

I recently came across an article written by a man named Michael Kozlowski about self-publishing.  In it, he makes very clear his disdain for those that go the indie route for publishing.  He quotes a pretty uptight publisher of non-fiction economic books(but I repeat myself), saying, “The overwhelming majority of self-published books are terrible—unutterable rubbish, they don’t enhance anything in the world.”  It’s obvious from the rest of the article that Kozlowski shares this view, as he talks about how little indie authors make.

This is not an unknown phenomenon.  In fact, it’s quite common.  Many in the traditional publishing world view independent writers as not “real” authors.  So I thought I’d explore what that means.

To the traditional world, being a real author apparently only means having an agent and traditional publisher validate you in some way by giving you a deal.  Number of sales and size of audience don’t matter because these gatekeepers have given approval.  I gotta say that I think that’s just a bit…narrowminded.

I’ve talked at length about my disdain for traditional publishing.  Even decades ago, when there were numerous publishers, they were still elitist, missing out on many works and promoting others that were garbage.  The most famous case involved Steps by Jerzy Kosinski, an award winning book that Chuck Ross retyped verbatim and changed only the author’s name.  Yet publishers still rejected it, not knowing it had already been published and won awards(although many of their rejection notes were encouraging).

Today, the lack of publishers out there makes the claim of not being traditionally published even more of a joke.  Are lots of self-published books bad?  You bet!  So are lots of traditionally published books(Pregnesia comes to mind).  Do lots of self published writers make very little money?  Also very true, but so do most traditionally published writers.  In fact, nearly 80% of authors do not make enough from their books to earn a living from writing alone.

So what does make an author?  To me, it’s pretty simple – did you write and publish a story that someone outside of your family enjoyed?  If you can honestly say yes to that, then you’re an author.  I have to qualify it with “outside of your family” because, truthfully, your family is probably being nice.  Also, you probably enjoyed your own story since you wrote it and it conforms to your vision.  However, if you can get another person, a disinterested party, to enjoy your work – or, better yet, pay money to read your story – then you’re an author.  Being an author involves writing books – not stories on notebook paper with no cover – and getting others to enjoy them.  That’s it.  Yes, you put a lot more into your writing, pouring your heart and soul into the book, but that’s all the behind the scenes stuff most don’t care about.  What they care about is your story.  So tell it.  Be an author.  And to hell with what snotty elitists think.