Looking for something good to read? Check out these four fantastic self-published novels!

(none of which are written by me or any of my friends)

Out of the Black, by Lee Doty
A fast-paced, violent blend of police mystery, science fiction, and horror, rife with plot turns and flashbacks, this book grabbed me from my first look into the heads of the unconventional main characters. If you liked Guillermo Del Toro's The Strain, you'll like this.

Pay Me, Bug!, by Christopher Wright
Space opera at its finest, with a crew of charming miscreants, well-paced plot, and dialog so snappy it'll make you snort milk through your nose. If you liked Bujold's Vorkosigan books, you'll like this.

In Hero Years, I'm Dead, by Michael Stackpole
Comic-book noir, where larger-than-life heroes with feet of clay and closets full of emotional baggage do battle with the forces of indifference and entropy as well as more tangible villains. If you liked Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, you'll like this.

Bait Dog, by Chuck Wendig
Atlanta Burns may be a YA heroine, but her world is as mean as they come. Emotionally charged and viscerally violent, this is not a book for the faint of heart, but it will make you cry, swear, and cheer out loud. If you liked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, you'll like this.

Yes, if you want to. Next question?

Seriously, though, I can think of at least a dozen good reasons to submit something to an unpaid market, and I'm sure your dozen will be different from mine. There isn't anything wrong with giving your work away, within a few parameters.

Don't send your piece to a nonpaying market first.
    "But," I hear you say, "I'm a new author and I haven't had a lot of things (or anything) published yet. I should start with nonpaying markets for the experience." What you're telling me is that you don't think your writing is good enough to be paid for. If you really believe this, don't send that thing anywhere! Work on it some more, until it's as good as you can make it. Then follow the advice of editor extraordinaire Erin Evans: Start at the top. When you've made that story or poem into the best piece of work you can write, send it to Clarkesworld or Fantasy and Science Fiction or whatever is the most challenging market for your genre. Aim high. Give every piece the chance to succeed beyond your expectations. And when your manuscript comes back, turn it right around to the next most challenging market, and keep sending it out. Nonpaying markets are the publishers of last resort for your work, generally, not the first. Starting out at free is a way to never challenge yourself to be better.

Consider the alternatives to nonpaying markets.
    Your story is good. It's really good, and you love it like a child, but no one wants to pay you to publish it. Now what? You have several choices: you can hang on to the story and resubmit it in a year, or two, or five. From my own experience, I know several successful authors who have recently found publishers for old, previously unpublished stories. Sometimes, it's not your story, it's the timing. If you wait, you might hit the right market at the right time, some other time. Don't like that idea? You could also self-publish. It's never been easier to self-publish ebooks, and the number of short stories and novellas for sale on Amazon puts the lie to the idea that you can only sell novels online. If you have a few pieces that have collected their share of rejection letters, why not bundle them together in your own anthology?

Not unpaid all the time.
    There are all sorts of good reasons for deciding to submit to a nonpaying market. (Here are a few: The Value of Free.) But all of the arguments that go something like "If you were a house painter or a bus driver or an architect or a code monkey, would you work for free?" are at least partially true. Obviously, there are circumstances in which all of these professionals, and most others, would in fact work for free. But only rarely, and only in the larger context of being a paid professional. The time you spend on your work is as valuable as theirs, as is the product that you produce. Creative people too often sell their talents short with the excuse that "It's only a hobby" or "But it's not my real job." Bullshit. You can give away free samples for the same reasons all those people offer you little cups of goodies in Costco: to raise awareness of your product, so that people will come back and buy more.

Not all nonpaying markets are created equal.
    You need to understand why you're giving away your work. Are you doing it to raise your professional profile with future publications, to make more readers aware of your work, to show your support for a publication or a cause, or to get a particular story to the audience most likely to enjoy it? Then consider what kind of nonpaying market is most likely to accomplish that. You may get as much traction out of a well-placed free sample on your own blog, website, or social network site as you would by allowing it to appear in a publication with a limited readership or one that's not particularly known for quality. How do you evaluate the relative merits of nonpaying markets? My best advice is to read about the publication in a place like Duotrope, google to see what other people have said about it, and then read the publisher's web page with a critical eye before you submit. Don't be taken in by places that want to charge you a reading or editing fee, that want you to purchase or sell subscriptions, or that have lengthy publishing histories and still don't pay their authors.

By all means, give away your work from time to time. Just keep in mind what you're trying to accomplish, and don't make a habit of it.

I've been watching the progress of a start-up epublisher with a great deal of interest. Lately, I've also been watching with concern.

When I saw authors in my social networks posting happily about having pieces accepted at the publication, I thought it was great to see another market for short fiction, even an unpaid one. Who am I to turn my nose up at unpaid markets, after all? And there's nothing unusual about subscription-based short fiction periodicals.

But when I read that the ebusiness is looking editorial managers for genre offshoots of the original publication, it raised a red flag. Each editor chosen will be responsible for putting together an entire publication, from soliciting, selecting, and editing submissions through selling subscriptions and marketing. This work will be compensated in a percentage of the price of each subscription. Authors may, or may not, be paid out of the editor's cut.

As a business model, this is pretty straightforward. Come up with a good idea, put the first iteration into practice, and accumulate associates whose compensation is dependent of their ability to sell the product. These associates can push that compulsion downhill by compensating a new tier of associates (authors, the generators of the actual product) according to their ability sell the product. The person who originates the idea keeps a chunk of the profits, and a tidy business is born with a lot of built-in incentives for everyone involved to purchase the product and sell it to their friends and acquaintances. This is a business plan with a venerable history. After all, this how Amway and Mary Kay work, isn't it?

So why does this bother me? I've submitted plenty of work to places that pay less than pro rates (which, despite the name, are of course laughably low when you're talking about short fiction), or that pay token rates plus royalties. And I know that publishing is a business. I've worked for Harcourt Brace (which become Harcourt General, which became Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Wizards of the Coast, the Journal of Democracy, an indie women's magazine that squeaked by on ad revenue and cash infusions from the publisher's mother, and a marketing magazine so thick with ads it was difficult to find the few pages of actual content. But all of these places treated authors and editors as producers of content, not as the sales or marketing staff.

Yes, publishing is a business. But at its foundation, publishing is about getting words and ideas to readers, about communicating information and transmitting intellectual and creative experiences. Publishing is about the word, and words are written by authors. When any business is built around a stream of unpaid work, there's a fine line between canny business practices and exploitation. When any publisher treats authors like a flock of sheep to be sheared of content without compensation (the Huffington Post has perfected the model), the quality of those words suffers, and the credibility of the publication is diminished.

We have a choice, as writers. Believe me---oh believe me!---I know exactly what it's like to want to see something of mine published somewhere, anywhere. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with unpaid markets, or fledgling markets, or token payments plus royalties. We all have to start somewhere, and if this is where you or I start, that's fine. But be vigilant, and be aware of your own worth. When you encounter a venue that asks you to pay to be published (examples I've run across include being asked to pay for editing services before a piece can be published, or being asked to sell subscriptions), you need to consider whether you're being offered an opportunity or being fleeced.