I’ve done good and bad books. I don’t see much relation between whether they were with publishers or not. My most muddled and typo-filled book was with a publisher. Another picture book with a big publisher had all the fun over-edited out of it. I read the book to a class of four year olds. A boy at the back piped up “that wasn’t as good as the other one”. He was right.
And I have made terrible mistakes self-publishing. But when I’ve got the first print run back from the printers and realised there’s something horribly wrong, I’ve just stuck the books in recycling, learnt from mistakes and moved onto the next thing.
What matters is making the book I want to make. At the end of the process I want to hold a book in my hand that I love. It doesn’t matter what route I take to get there, as long as I get there.
And I’d much rather make a book I love for a small audience, than a book I don’t love for a big audience.
On balance, the pleasure of controlling the process- which includes having the freedom to resolve or accept inevitable mistakes how I want- outweighs the advantages of working with a publisher.
