Enough.

The writing world is, in many ways, reminiscent of the Wild West lately.

It's got its share of outlaws lurking, too, seemingly more than there ever have been before.  And they have one target in their sights, constantly:

Traditional publishing.

And it's starting to get really, really irritating.

If you haven't heard the popular manifesto, it goes something like this:

"The traditional publishing industry is a dinosaur that deserves to die and, if there's any justice, it will. It's a closed system in which you have to know somebody, you have to have a celebrity name, you have to have 'pull,' and even then it's impossible to get an agent and even get your manuscript in the doorway. But say lightning strikes, and you do get in the doorway?  They'll then dumb-down your work, tell you what you can and cannot write, and ignore both your cover and your title ideas. By the time they're done with your story, you won't recognize it anymore. But, hey, at least they'll then take two years to get the book out, pay you a pittance, give you no marketing support whatsoever, and blame you when it doesn't sell. No one with a brain should subject themselves to that!"

Well, yeah. If all of that was accurate, no one would.

Only it's not.

But then, it brings about incidents like I witnessed recently in a writers' group on Facebook.

A writer posted that a publisher had contacted her with a four-book deal, and she was turning it down. Why? 

Because the publisher was going to make her take down two of her indie-published titles from Amazon when they took them over, and she didn't see that there would be a financial benefit to doing that. And she then proceeded to elaborate further on why self-publishing was the way to go because no publisher would ever make it worth your while to give up that precious independence!

But many, many of us raised questions.

Such as...why in the world would a publisher pitch an author?

(Note: unless for vanity presses, it doesn't happen that way. No. Not ever.)

This was by far the biggest question most of us had. About which some of us, myself included, expressed doubts that this "offer" was legit. 

Did the author thank us for caring enough that she not get scammed?

Hell, no. 

She lashed out at many of us--yours truly included--accusing us of calling her a liar.

She even had her friends chime in and lambaste us as well.

And in the mix, of course, were dozens of "me-too" echoes from people who repeated the same tired script about how horrible traditional publishing was...ad infinitum.

Only...

It should surprise absolutely no one to find out that in her initial post, this author hadn't quite told the whole truth.

A publisher hadn't approached her out of the blue to publish four new books; a publisher who had already published one of hers had expressed the offer to take on more. The offer wasn't a "pitch" to lure an indie author into the evil of Traditional Publisher Servitude.

This woman has published 40 books on her own, some of which look fairly competent. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, there's a reason.  I would have tried to explore more of them, but I couldn't; there were no "look inside" features for any of her stuff. The most I could glean was a blurb for one of her fiction titles--something so atrociously written that it was clearly done by someone with no clue what a "blurb" was.

(Something going the "traditional" route, by the way, can help you learn to do.)

If any of the people lambasting us took the time to read even that far on her author site, they might have smelled a rat.

I suspect very few did.

I did respond to the accusations of calling her a liar, by merely stating that in her initial posting, the publisher sounded like the liar...not her. And that some of us were sincerely trying to keep her from making a mistake. But that she also hadn't played fair with us, and I didn't need to stick around for more of that.

I left the Facebook group. And I ain't going back.

But let this stand as my manifesto of sorts, if you will. 

I'm fed up. 

Fed up with this slanted, error-ridden narrative. 

Fed up with how it paints an entire industry with half-truths, casts them in cement, and encourages newbies of all stripes to swallow them whole. 

And I'm fed up with spending social media "networking" time with other writers having to debunk, and debunk, and debunk...over and over and over again.

If you're out there independently published? God bless you.

Just stop lying about what the rest of us are choosing if we take the other route.

Enough...is enough.

Thoughts?

Janny