My point (which I didn't make clearly enough, obviously) was that what JJ described isn't a self-publishing cooperative, where authors work together to self-publish their own books in a mutually supportive way. What JustJas was describing is how trade publishing works: a group of people deciding what is publishable, then editing and proofreading it in order to bring it to market.
True, as a broad view of trade publishing this is how trade publishing works, but there other factors involved in whether a book will be trade published, such as whether there is a viable marketplace for it, whether it breaks an author’s branding, whether the publisher has a budget big enough to publish a book or the resources to publicise it, and so on. JJ’s co-operative doesn’t have these problems. A co-operative doesn’t have a budget – the author does, just as a self-publishing author would.
And another big difference I can see is in terms of the royalty percentage – self-publishing, either through a co-operative or alone, is much higher (without going into an endless debate of whether it is more profitable or not).
These factors aside, generally, there is more freedom self-publishing in a co-operative than there is in trade publishing if it is run properly without any agenda other than supporting the writers involved.
Many self-publishers self-publish in order to avoid having their work judged by others. If they don't want to work with trade publishers, why would they want to get involved with this? And how is this different to trade publishing, specifically?
See above again for answer to the last question.
As to self-published authors… Well, it’s the same with writer’s groups. Some like to be involved, some rather write in isolation. Some would rather have complete autonomy to publish what they want, in whatever state it’s in, with whatever content they wish, and that’s the freedom of self-publishing. Co-operative publishing puts slight restrictions around the quality, but that’s all. It’s not complicated by finance or branding or marketing issues – a co-operative shouldn’t have that. It’s up to the author to carry that burden themselves and make their own judgements as to whether they want to publish or not. All a co-operative should do is vet the writing, suggest edits if needed and then support the writer in getting it out there, with advice on formats, publicity, covers etc through the shared experiences and skills of the group. The co-operative provides this support for free, because they know a bestselling book will provide reputation and publicity for them all.
And if the writer doesn’t accept what the co-operative suggests in terms of the edits, then they can publish it anyway without the co-operative; after all, who’s to stop them?
And here you imply that people in publishing don't love writing, don't love reading, and don't love good books. You imply that they're all working for profit. And that just isn't the case.
We all have to earn a living. That's what publishing tries to do: earn its living. It does so by publishing books. Most people who work in publishing do so because they love the books they publish, and they love publishing. They certainly don't do it for the money: judging by a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago an average editor's salary now is about the same as it was eighteen years ago. I'm sure you'd rather spend all your time writing and playing with your children but you have to have a day-job in order to pay your bills. We each have to make these compromises. And so does publishing: it has to publish books it thinks will make a profit. But that doesn't mean that it publishes them without thought or care, or without passion.
My intention wasn’t to imply that all the people working in the industry are driven only by profit. Not at all. Most of the people working in the trade, from the editors down to the booksellers, love the job because they love books. And of course the trade publishes books with thought and care, otherwise it wouldn’t survive. But, as you’ve already pointed out, it IS a business, and their end goal is to make a profit and to earn a living. I guess what I failed to make clear enough, is that a co-operative doesn’t need to make choices based on making profit for the publisher, and that’s the difference. A self-published author will in most cases never earn a living from writing and have other sources of income that will do that, but that hardly seems to be the point; a lot of writers will still write and want to be published whether they earn a penny or not, won’t they?
It all comes down to the same argument over what drives publishing decisions. A co-operative or self-publisher is driven by different factors than a trade publisher, factors that an author may be more in control of, factors that are less to do with creativity and more to do with budget restrictions and risk, which is why to some writers this endeavour would be more desirable.
That might or might not be the case. But please don't try to make cooperatives look better by misrepresenting trade publishing: it doesn't help anyone.
Again, it wasn’t my intention to imply that co-operatives are better. As someone involved in both, I can see merits in both, though trade publishing is more desirable especially with reaching a greater audience, something that self-publishing is restricted to. It wasn’t my intention to misrepresent at all, just show there are different factors that drives the decisions of trade publishing, than self-publishing. If trade publishing was as simple as you mentioned in the first quote above, more writers would be published and there would be more books out there. But trade publishing is more complicated than that, as you know.
