Baboon Fart Story

There appears to be an ongoing feud between self-published authors and authors who get published through traditional methods by an established publisher. Self-published authors believe that they can earn more money by publishing their novels on their own and they do not like getting rejected over and over again by publishing firms and agents. Those who get published traditionally believe that self-published books are trash as they have not been vetted through agents, editors, etc.

I can see both sides of the argument. There are many self-published piles of manure. There are also piles of manure that are published by the Big 5 publishers. Granted, they are well edited piles of manure, but they still stink.

Chuck Wendig wrote on his blog, Terrible Minds, the following statement about self-published books:

This usually sounds something like “The only real choice is either self-publishing your work or submitting to the gatekeepers,” where the gist is, understandably, that self-publishing is like getting to jump right onto your flight and go wherever you want to go, and traditional publishing means submitting to an invasive colonic cavity search before you’re even allowed near the gate.
 This is true-ish, in that I can literally write the word “fart” 100,000 times and slap a cover of baboon urinating into his own mouth, then upload that cool motherfucker right to Amazon. Nobody would stop me. Whereas, at the Kept Gates, a dozen editors and agents would slap my Baboon Fart Story to the ground like an errant badminton birdie.

Within 24 hours, a writer only known as Phronk took up his challenge and self-published Baboon Fart Story and was selling it for 99 cents.

This fine tomb was the word “fart” written 100,000 times. It was actually formatted as you would expect, with paragraphs and chapters. However, only the word “fart” was used. The book even had a baboon urinating into his own mouth on the cover.

The reviews for this book were awesome. But, alas, it appears that Amazon has gatekeepers of their own and removed the book. Shame, too, as I am sure it was a much better read than 50 Shades of Dumb.

According to the author, the book sold 21 copies before Amazon removed it. This was the email he received:

We’re writing to let you know that readers have reported a poor customer experience when reading the following book: Baboon Fart Story: An experiment inspired by Chuck Wending. As a result, we have removed the book from the Kindle Store. Indicators of poor customer experience are surfaced through a variety of methods, such as customer refunds, customer reviews/star ratings and direct customer feedback. Per our KDP Content Guidelines, we reserve the right to determine whether content provides an acceptable experience for customers.

This experiment proves a couple of things…

First, you can publish anything you want. Anything. This book, with 21 sold copies, was ranked #9 under the Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Books & Reading > General category on Amazon.

Second, you can publish a book quickly if you want to. This book was up on Amazon within 24 hours of the original blog post.

And third, there will always be gatekeepers. Whether it is an agent, a publisher, or the cry of a multitude of unhappy readers to Amazon, bad books will be banished.