If I were to publish my novel with a publisher, the book’s chances for success would be slim and would be entirely dependent upon my own actions. If I were to self-publish my novel, the book’s chances for success would still be slim and would still be entirely dependent upon my own actions.  Therefore, I wonder, rather than spending potentially years searching for an agent and/or publisher, might I be wiser simply to self-publish and give it my best shot?

Here’s the problem: As always, money and time are the problem.  I don’t care about the stigma.  As e-books become more common and as they become easier to publish, I believe self-publishing a book-length work will eventually have about as much of a negative stigma as writing a blog (as opposed to being a “professional” journalist, for instance). But if I’m going to spend a hell of a lot of time and money self-publishing a book, I want to know that my work has reached a certain threshold of quality.

As the traditional gatekeepers, agents and publishers are responsible for determining first of all whether a book is good, and secondly whether it stands a chance of making them some money.  Of course, I’d like my book to make money, but that’s not the reason I wrote it.  There are easier ways to make money than writing a work of literary fiction (ex. working at McDonald’s).  Therefore, my primary concern is that my work is competent.

No, I’m not going to take my mother’s word for it.  Or my friends’.  Or even the kind words of acquaintances who might have given it a read.  I want to hear it from someone who really knows what he’s talking about and has no personal connection with me whatsoever, and preferably from several such individuals.

Here’s the idea: create some kind of peer review board for fiction writers, similar to the peer review that all published scholarly books and articles must go through.  They wouldn’t say whether they liked the book, or whether it was terribly original.  They wouldn’t make suggestions for how to improve it or edit it in any way, like a crit group or beta readers.  Instead, they would simply state that, yes, this book-length work of fiction is of a high enough quality that it is suitable for publication.  That’s it.

Such a judgment would certainly be subjective.  Hence, having a board of several readers rather than giving a single person veto power.

This approval would give me the confidence that I was not wasting my time and money self-publishing something that never should have been published in the first place.  Being able to state that my novel went through this peer review process might even help alleviate concerns among potential readers that the book is just a self-published turd.

How might this work?

The not-for-profit option:  A writer could submit her own book for review only after having reviewed five other randomly selected books herself.  Each book would be judged by five reviewers.  Reviewers would not only give a thumbs up or down, but also briefly justify their judgment.  That way, if a writer’s work was rejected, she could decide whether that rejection was reasonable and therefore whether it should be taken into account.  Yes, you’d certainly get some people in there who don’t know what they’re talking about, but this wouldn’t be workable with only certified professionals of some kind.  Having five reviewers per book would help mitigate the influence of the ignoramuses.

The for-profit option:  Same as the above, except the company running it would screen the reviewers and pay them.  There would probably be fewer reviewers per book.  And the writer would have to pay substantially for the review.

Here’s the problem with the idea: I don’t like the idea of art of any kind being subject to an approval process.  If this kind of system were to catch on, just as self-publishing is being de-stigmatized, experimentation could be further stigmatized if it were not somehow allowed for in the approval process (perhaps each book could be categorized by genre so that writers of similar taste would be doing the reviewing?).  Better to have a lot of crappy self-published books out there than to create some fascistic infrastructure that would keep a would-be William S. Burroughs from getting “approved.”  Yes, that person could still self-publish, so perhaps it would not be the end of the world.  I could even imagine writers bragging that their work was rejected by the conservative peer review process!

Is there a better option for a writer who wants to get his own work judged objectively by someone who just might say “this is not good enough”?