Traditional publishing is like Super Mario Brothers, and self-publishing is like The Sims

I’ve noticed that a lot of writers, whether veterans or just starting out, have a difficult time wrapping their heads around self-publishing ebooks. Or, more specifically, the mindset of self-publishing ebooks. Like, many writers want someone to set goals for them – someone to offer a Seal of Approval and say that the plot is good enough, the editing is good enough, the sales are good enough, and the book is therefore good.

I realized you can also see this quality is in recent college graduates. After all, in the modern Western world, a kid typically spends 18 years in some form of schooling or another before he’s released upon the world, and this transition from school life to real life is often a massive shock. In school life, everything is regulated, and there is a set of orderly and defined goals – pass this class, pass this paper, advance to the next level. In real life, by contrast, you can do pretty much whatever you want so long as you don’t get arrested and can cope with the consequences. And some people just cannot wrap their minds around that – interestingly, it’s often the kids who excelled academically who have the hardest time dealing with life outside of school. The same sort of dynamic, I think, is at work in writers who have a hard time dealing with self-publishing.

In other words, traditional publishing is Super Mario Brothers, and self-publishing is The Sims.

Super Mario Brothers is a side-scrolling, linear game. In his quest to rescue Princess Peach from King Koopa, Mario runs left-to-right through a world full of things trying to kill him, hoping to reach the castle where the Princess is held prisoner. Except at the end of almost every world, the castle instead holds this talking humanoid toadstool who informs Mario that “the princess is in another castle.” In the original NES Super Mario Brothers, Mario had to go through seven freaking castles before he got to the end of world eight, which finally held the Princess. Needless to say, only the terminally bored or the highly obsessive-compulsive ever got to the end of Super Mario Brothers.

This is a lot like how traditional publishing worked. Submit work to the agent, and get back the letter informing you that the princess is in another castle. Send out books and articles in cold submissions, and get back the letter telling you that Princess Peach is still in another castle. Keep at it long enough, and eventually you will find the Princess. And then it’s time to start looking for the next Princess – but make sure she’s 90,000 words long, and has a capable female protagonist, and shapeshifting sex wereotters because those are hot right now, and be sure to write the book in one specific genre, as well.

So traditional publishing, like Super Mario Brothers, is very linear, with a lot of talking Toadstools of Disappointment in princess-free castles.

Self-publishing is more like The Sims. The Sims is a “sandbox game”, which means that it’s not linear and there are no stated victory conditions, like rescuing the Princess or finding the TriForce or defeating the dread dragon Alduin or whatever. In The Sims, you control a simulated person, a Sim, and you can do…pretty much whatever you want. If you want to turn your Sim into a hard-driving career man, you can do that, or have kids, or expand your Sim’s house, or turn your Sim into a bum who sits around all day watching Sim Oprah…you can do that, too. There’s no princess to rescue, and you can do whatever you want.

Self-publishing works a lot like that. Have a 600,000 word fantasy epic? Go for it. Or a string of 45,000 word romantic novels? You can do that, too. A detailed guide describing how to clip your toenails? No one will stop you. You can do whatever you want for cover art, editing, layout, plot, and topic…and there is no final authority to tell you whether you are winning the game or not.

The thing is, there are people who find The Sims infuriating. There’s no plot, no goals, no quests, no point! You see a similar reaction with writers settling into self-publishing for the first time as they wrestle with the realization that there’s no official Princess to rescue from  King Koopa’s castle – save for whatever goals you set your yourself.

And that, I believe, is the key to self-publishing: the realization that no one is going to set goals for you, but that you must set them for yourself.

-JM