The Guardian recently had a profile of self-publishing success Amanda Hocking, who writes novels incredibly quickly, then self-publishes them on Amazon. While she’s managed to become a phenom “at precisely the moment that self-publishing itself turned from poor second cousin of the printed book into a serious multi-million dollar industry,” it’s interesting to see what the next chapter in the story is:

[Hocking] resents how her abrupt success has been interpreted as a sign that digital self-publishing is a new way to get rich quick. Sure, Hocking has got rich, quickly. But what about the nine years before she began posting her books when she wrote 17 novels and had every one rejected? And what about the hours and hours that she’s spent since April 2010 dealing with technical glitches on Kindle, creating her own book covers, editing her own copy, writing a blog, going on Twitter and Facebook to spread the word, responding to emails and tweets from her army of readers?

Just the editing process alone has been a source of deep frustration, because although she has employed own freelance editors and invited her readers to alert her to spelling and grammatical errors, she thinks her ebooks are riddled with mistakes. “It drove me nuts, because I tried really hard to get things right and I just couldn’t. It’s exhausting, and hard to do. And it starts to wear on you emotionally. I know that sounds weird and whiny, but it’s true.”

In the end, Hocking became so burned out by the stress of solo publishing that she has turned for help to the same traditional book world that previously rejected her and which she was seen as attacking. For $2.1m, she has signed up with St Martin’s Press in the US and Pan Macmillan in the UK to publish her next tranche of books. The deal kicks off this month with a paperback version of Switched.

She adds, “I would rather people talk about the books than how I publish them.” Which suggests to me that she’s real author, not just a flash-in-the-pan tech story.

I wonder if self-publishing is just another example of how new technologies– particularly technologies that automate labor, or describe themselves as disintermediating– really just redistribute labor. Just as dishwashers and washing machines created “more work for mother,” and the Blackberry makes it easier for you to stay in touch with clients but creates the expectation that you’re available 24/7, it sounds as if self-publishing makes smart authors more aware of just how much labor that’s not usually theirs, but is now, goes into publishing books. Some authors are okay living with typos and little editing; the rest end up taking on the work of editors and book designers, maybe doing a decent job, and maybe not.

The point is, the bigger slice of profits offered by self-publishing get eaten up by the extra work you do, and it’s not clear that you’re going to come out ahead.

Personally, I can imagine self-publishing some kinds of works that I wouldn’t be able to publish as books, or couldn’t publish economically– an ebook of talks, a lavishly-illustrated volume of contemplative spaces, or a 10,000-word essay focusing on some important new technology. But I’d recognize that this would be an entrepreneurial effort different from book-writing, and wouldn’t compete with the books, but rather constitute an effort to broaden my personal brand, monetize new channels, or whatever we’re calling such activity in 2013.

Of course, this is all premised on finishing the next book, so enough of this.