Writers together: self-publishing is no longer just for losers.

They still exist. Writers who find it hard enough to write a book, and so are happy to leave all the rest to a publisher. They then complain afterwards about the poor marketing, minimal payment and guidance, but have no idea how they could do it differently. Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly easy to do things differently. Publishing your own work is now a real alternative thanks to the internet, bol.com and social media.

On Saturday, March 19, the Association of Linguists a well-attended gathering at Amsterdam's variety-smartlap-art-café-where-everyone-has-had-a-hot-date-restaurant Captain Zeppos on 'self-publishing'. Initiator was Nanda Roep, once started as a successful author of children's books, and now successful publisher of her own cross-media work. She is able to do so thanks to The Free Publishers, a platform founded by former journalist Gerard Keijsers for people who consider themselves too good for the traditional publishing world.

Porn

Nanda Roep is a respected author. Around her not the tinge of rancid air that until now has usually surrounded self-publishers hangs: lots of extreme pornography, unreadable gothic thrillers and conspiracy theory literature. Those times are behind us. Self-publishing is slowly but surely becoming salubrious.

During the afternoon, a number of examples came along showing that indie-authors are not at all as hopeless as people sometimes think. And then it's also nice to know that, as a self-publisher, you get quite a bit more out of each book sold than if you do it through an external publisher, which sometimes pays out no more than 7 per cent of the selling price to the author. Of course, you have to provide a good editor, work with designers yourself and, especially in the beginning, you lack the extensive experience and sales network that a good publisher already has, but there is a lot in return.

Freedom

Nanda Roep explained that at her former publishing house, due to high staff turnover, she was constantly confronted with new, youthful employees, whom she had to come and explain more and more how something worked. Now that she has everything in her own hands, she can also try out new things: games, CDs, adult novels: all those things a traditional publisher lacks the expertise for, or did not want to give her a chance at.

Such freedom is, of course, wonderful. Investigative journalist Marcel van Silfhout wanted something different after years of working for Zembla and KRO Reporter. The journalist who is a hobby chef in his spare time wrote a book with his wife, who is a photographer, about a Moroccan chef in which journalism, travel and cooking came together in an unexpected way. No publisher saw fit, so he did it himself. He eventually sold thousands of books and was named third best cookbook in the world by a top cookbook site. It made money and brought back space for a investigative journalism book on the food industry, which received very strong media coverage but ultimately survived too short in bookstores.

Reheated mash

A revealing book on the Fyra debacle, too, ran into trouble with the same bookshops at some point: it first came out successfully before the parliamentary inquiry on that subject. When Van Silfhout approached bookshops to put the still-topical book back on the shelves when the final report was published, he got zero response because booksellers did not want to sell a warmed-up mash-up.

This perhaps outlines the big problem for bookshops and traditional publishers: physical books appear in huge quantities, and stocks cost a fortune. Things that you, as a paper self-publisher, naturally run into as well. That means you can't sit on old stuff for too long. Something that is no longer an issue when your product is digital, and possibly also via print on demand can be disseminated. Suddenly, old works can stay current and make money again. Existing bookshops and publishers cannot make that leap to cheap.

The indies can. Especially when they unite. Hence, during meeting there was already an initial call for the Association of Writers and Translators turn it into a writers' cooperative. That's not a bad idea at all: after all, you already have the translators, journalists, editors and screenwriters in-house, so you don't have to do it for the network.