Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using self-published works

Is my book a reliable source?

Hi there. Sorry if this is not the right place to post this, but I was wanting to sort something out. I wrote a book about the manga artists Clamp, which I crowdfunded via Kickstarter and had published by a company local to me (Also listed on Amazon). I don't know if my book counts as a reliable source as it might fall under the banner of self-published works, and even then I don't know if I myself am allowed to use my own book as a source, rather than somneone else referencing my book. What exactly is the situation? Can I or someone else use my book as a source on Wikipedia? Thank you. ISD (talk) 15:13, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

@ISD, your book is self-published. Self-published works can be reliable. It's even technically "legal" for an author to WP:SELFCITE what they wrote (a little bit), although it's much much much better if you suggest it on a talk page and let other editors decide whether they think it's good for a particular point. (I assume that the goal would be to cite, e.g., something about a character described in your book. Self-published sources shouldn't be cited for information about any living person [except the author].) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Thanks for the information. ISD (talk) 06:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Traditional publishing vs self-publishing

I'm thinking about adding this to the page. What do you think?

Comparison of publication models

	Traditional publisher	Self-publishing
Book publishing	External authors submit book outlines and sample chapters. If selected, the publisher contributes substantially towards editing (including developmental editing if necessary), designing, and marketing the book. The author pays for none of this and expects to get paid (assuming the book sells). If the publisher rejects the book, then the author is free to sell it to a different publisher. The money ultimately comes from book sales.	The author(s) writes whatever they want. The author hires whichever vanity press, e-book publishing platform, or printer they want. If the author needs help with editing, illustrating, designing, or marketing the book, then the author hires whoever they want and pays for their services. The hired company accepts anything that the author will pay for, with only necessary practical restrictions (e.g., if they don't have the right equipment for that type of book binding). The money originally comes from the author, who may (or may not) hope to recoup the original outlay through book sales.
Newspapers and magazines	The publisher/publication hires editors and journalists. The editor assigns stories (to internal staff) or commissions them (among freelancers; alternatively, editors may accept external pitches, in the book-publisher model). The journalists write the stories; the editor and publisher/publication representatives decide whether to publish what the journalists wrote. If an employee instead of a freelancer, the journalist gets paid the same even if the article is not published. If a freelancer, and the piece doesn't run, the freelancer is free to sell it to a different publication. The money ultimately comes from advertising revenue and/or subscription sales.	The author(s) creates a publication, e.g., The Company Newsletter or The Weekly School News. The author is frequently a group, e.g., an organization's marketing department or a fundraising team, but it may be a single-person publication (e.g., Substack newsletters). The author decides what stories to include, and writes them. If the author needs help with editing, illustrating, designing, marketing, website management, etc., then the author hires whoever they want and pays for their services. The author pays all publication expenses (e.g., printing and postage costs; e-mail and webhosting costs). Depending upon the context, the money may come from personal funds or departmental budgets.
Peer-reviewed journals	The (usually for-profit) publisher or (usually academic) sponsoring body creates the publication and hires editors. External authors submit whole papers. Staff editors send the papers for external review and use that information to decide which ones to publish. The authors usually pay for publication, but this is understood to be akin to volunteer work on all sides, with the money usually coming from a third-party grant rather than the author's own funds. If the journal rejects the article, the author is free to submit it to another journal.	The author writes a whole paper. The author finds a predatory publisher with a pay-to-publish model. The article is not peer reviewed. All articles that are plausibly connected to the journal's subject are accepted – as long as the payment has been received. The main job of the journal's editor, once the author's payment has been received, is to post the article online. (Having been paid to post it in the "journal", the editor wants to avoid breach of contract charges or having to give refunds.) The author can pay for the same article to be published in multiple journals, because the content is unimportant to the publication.

The main problem is that some Wikipedians try to make publishing a daily newspaper be equivalent to publishing corporate materials. For example:

• Publisher/business hires an editor. The editor hires writers. The writers write. The editor edits. The publisher (or designated agent, e.g., the editor-in-chief) prints and distributes the newspaper.
• Publisher/business hires a head of marketing. The head of marketing hires writers. The writers write. The head of marketing reviews it. The publisher/business (or designated agent) prints and distributes the marketing pamphlet.

These aren't the same, because (a) newspapers are considered a traditional publisher, and dictionary definitions explicitly exempt anyone using a traditional publisher from self-publishing, and (b) the marketing department doesn't have the same quasi-adversarial, semi-independent relationship that reporters and newspaper editors have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

book publishing distinction seems fine...

Peer-reviewed journals is harder, is there a clear criterion for predatory publisher?

Newspapers and magazines sections seems like distinction might be even harder, especially with some new media sites. don't know what my thoughts on that are quite yet. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 22:41, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Everyone (i.e., in academia) knows what a predatory publisher is: It's one that publishes anything you write, so long as you pay them. Due to a lack of transparency in the industry, people may disagree over whether any given journal is actually predatory vs merely a journal with low standards. (For example, some Wikipedians want journals to uphold the highest possible standards, and therefore are quick to declare journals predatory when the academic field disagrees.) But (a) this is meant to illustrate a general case and (b) if the journal is predatory, then you don't really even have to bother with SPS rules, because it'll get removed by script-wielding WP:CITEWATCH editors anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

afaik, academics can point out fully predatory publishers, but often have issues with distinguishing between that and journals that employ some but not all predatory practices. many open-access publishers skirt into predatory behavior with some journals they own and there is a range of behaviors between fully predatory and fully reputable. for examp: I know some of MDPI's journals are essentially predatory, others skirt the line, and a few have high impact factors.

Beall's List is well-regarded as a way to find predatory journals, but even that has issues.

I'd also like a bulletpoint about preprints being essentially SPS in the table. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Preprints should be in the regular list. I'll do that now.

The point of this table is not to provide a comprehensive description of all possible ways to self-publish something. The goal is just to illustrate ways in which self-publishing books/news/scholarly articles is different from traditional publishing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

fair enough. i dont have complaints for now then, and it seems reasonable guidance. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it would help to change the first row to "Example of traditional publishing" and "Example of self-publishing". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The Joy of Cooking

The Joy of Cooking is probably not a good example for us to give. Only her first edition was self-published, and that sold only 3,000 copies. If things had ended for the book there, no one would be talking about it today, let alone citing it as a source for anything on Wikipedia. Largoplazo (talk) 11:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I wonder what you think a "successful" level of cookbook sales would have looked like during the Great Depression. James Joyce's Ulysses had an initial print run in 1922 of just 1,000 books.

A lot of originally self-published books ended up becoming massively more popular after they were picked up by a publisher. Fifty Shades of Grey was picked up by a publisher less than a year after the initial self-publishing; its millions, too, came after it stopped being self-published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

This guideline is about the reliability of self-published works, that is, works that have only ever been self-published, not about whether the reliability of a work printed by an outside publisher is diminished by ever been self-published. That Ulysses is studied now and has a Wikipedia article now isn't on the strength of having sold 1,000 books in 1922 and never thereafter having found a publisher or sold another copy after that.

If Wikipedia in 1933 was already treating The Joy of Cooking as a reliable source then the case could be made for using it as an example but it's unlikely that, if this guideline had been written in 1933, that its writers would have heard of The Joy of Cooking, let alone considered it to be a reliable source of information in the Wikipedia sense. What's needed is an example that has only ever been self-published. Largoplazo (talk) 10:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Would you like to suggest any alternatives? Beall's List springs to mind, but I've tried to avoid leaning too much on scientific/scholarly examples. Editors need to see the application to everyday subjects, not just pseudoscience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't know of anything specific that would have the advantage of being widely known, but I'm thinking in terms of people who are already accredited in their field and have numerous externally published and/or peer-reviewed works, who on the side share much analysis or information in an online journal, maybe in a podcast. Just as an indication of the direction my mind is going, the "Lingthusiasm" podcast hosted by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Largoplazo (talk) 21:48, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

SPS about living people

We currently have the stipulation to "never use self-published sources as third-party sources about any living people, except for claims by the author about themself. "

Suppose Alice, a notable individual, self-publishes a view in source A about the work of Bob. It is not newsworthy enough in its own right to be published by a good secondary source. Consequently, we are prohibited to cite source A to write something like "Professor Alice thinks X about Bob." This is counterintuitive, especially since source A, as a primary source for Alice's thoughts, is about as good as you'll get for representing her views. What is the reasoning for this, and why can't it ever be relaxed? אקעגן (talk) 14:37, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

WP:WEIGHT If Alice's statement is significant enough to be mentioned, it will be covered by independent reliable sources. If no sources mention it, her statement isn't relevant to the article about Bob. Relaxing that would allow for the inclusion of anyone's self-published opinion; how is that encyclopedic? Schazjmd (talk) 15:32, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I think that logic would hold even for non-living people, or any other topic, really. Yet, we are allowed to cite SPSs for other topics, assuming they are by notable enough sources. What makes living people different in the case you describe? אקעגן (talk) 19:12, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Self-published sources are generally only allowed for what they write about themselves, and self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications (as long as it isn't about a living person). Schazjmd (talk) 19:25, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

In addition to WP:WEIGHT, I should have referenced the policy on writing about living people. Self-published sources aren't the "high-quality sources" that the policy mandates. Schazjmd (talk) 19:29, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

If famous TikTok loudmouth Alice frequently posts videos of herself casting aspersions on Bob, her comments have no place in our article on Bob unless they've received substantial coverage elsewhere. Largoplazo (talk) 16:26, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

@אקעגן, since this rule originates in WP:BLPSPS, I think you should ask your question at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons instead. This page can't relax the policy requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Using a self-published source to show that a term is in use within a community

Is it acceptable to cite a self-published source to illustrate that a term is being used within the author's community to refer to something specific? That is to say, is it acceptable to cite as a primary source an author's use of a term as indication that the term is in use within their community? What's being cited is the author's use of a term [primary], not a statement by them that the term is in use [secondary]. Another editor stated that the self-published nature of the cited work makes it definitionally a WP-unacceptable source. Can anyone provide clarity on this?

I believe that in this case such a citation is acceptable on WP since it fits the following criteria:

Self-published doesn't mean bad … If you are supporting a direct quotation, the original document is the best source

and

Using self-published sources … Acceptable use of self-published works … 3. A self-published work may be used as a source when the statement concerns the source itself.

The specific example this is in relation to is the citation that I added for the "Ghost" entry on this page [1] which cites a post on a publicly-editable photo sharing site [specifically its title and subject] as a primary source illustrating use by a member of the community in question of a specific term ("Grey ghost") to refer to a specific object. Alex Hajnal (talk) 18:12, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Meh… an SPS verifies that the author of the SPS uses a specific term… but does not verify that anyone else (the “community”) uses it. That author could be the only one in that community to do so. Blueboar (talk) 18:30, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Fair point. Would multiple such citations (of different authors' posts) suffice to establish the term's use by the community?

In this specific case, a search for the object in question returns posts from multiple [two] authors referring to it using the term: [2] (which I had cited) and [3]. Would this use of the term by multiple people suffice to demonstrate use by the "community"? Relatedly, a search for the term shows it to be in use a a general term for similar objects. Alex Hajnal (talk) 19:01, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

That sounds like original research to me. It amounts to a Wikipedia editor compiling raw data and reporting their own linguistic analysis and drawing conclusions here. I don't even think that has anything to do with self-published sources. If someone here were to compile the use or non-use of Oxford commas in conventionally published reliable sources and report statistics on that here, that would similarly be WP:OR. Largoplazo (talk) 19:18, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, both alternatives I suggested definitely fall under the gamut of "original research". I also concur that such isn't limited to self-published sources. Alex Hajnal (talk) 20:29, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

@AlexHajnal, instead of answering your question, I'm going to suggest that you Wikipedia:Let the Wookiee win. Cite this instead:

• Trains. Vol. 40. Milwaukee, Wis.: Kalmbach Publishing Company. 1979. p. 21.

If he wants a non-self-published source, then there's a non-self-published source. The text names an "E8 4261" of MBTA the Gray Ghost. And if he reverts you again, then I suggest reading WP:FETCH.

As a side note, https://www.trains.com/trn/railroads/locomotives/five-of-the-worst-locomotive-paint-schemes/ would let you expand the entry to include a CSX paint scheme that was alternately called "gray ghost" and "stealth gray". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

This (p. 3) seems to be a better source for the specific term. I will probably add a citation to that instead (or just leave it as-is; the reverter comes across as being a bit hostile and I have no appetite for a pointless edit war).

I only added the citation in the first place since I loathe seeing unbacked assertions presented as facts. I'm asking questions here mainly to get a better idea of what the guidelines for WP contributions are. Alex Hajnal (talk) 20:25, 29 October 2025 (UTC)