“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
It’s sad about the snake and one is tempted to write something touching, a sort of eulogy, even though it’s just a metaphor. But here it’s a metaphor for a world that is both physically and metaphysically close to all authors. It’s a metaphor for the world of publishing.
Averse to “business,” I blithely write books and blogs about all the strange things that interest me. But the business of publishing is a field of bloodthirsty battles right now, strewn with the smoking ordnance launched by both sides – traditional publishing and independent author publishing.
Educated as a sociologist and published in both venues, I can only take the long sociologist’s view while happily typing stories into an electronic reality that pays my rent while eroding the reality that used to pay my rent. I can’t take sides, but there are sides.
Recently somebody wrote a scathing 4-part article in the Boston Phoenix (normally a young, savvy, cutting-edge local paper, so the article is odd) slamming independent author publishing as a “dead-end.” Of course it isn’t a dead end or any kind of end; it’s new; it’s a beginning. My friend Lou wrote a careful, thorough and compelling response to the article and to one of its supporters that is so direct and clear that no more need be said.
Why DIY Publishing is not a Dead End
This morning I read a post by Anderson Porter about a four-piece article written a few weeks in the Boston Phoenix by Eugenia Williamson, entitled The dead end of DIY publishing. I had read the Williams piece earlier, and the more than fifty comments, which in my opinion had done a more than adequate job of pointing out its problems. But when Anderson seemed to accept much of her analysis, and labeled the comments as “the usual pitchfork-waving, spittoon-dinging dismissals, I found myself spending the rest of the morning writing a reply. When I finished, I thought I ought to expand a bit, and post what I had to say as a blog, thereby at least justifying a morning lost to writing on my next book. So here goes: (Click here to see Lou’s post entire.)
abigail padgett 
I just read Locke’s blog. I’m glad she’s doing so well with self-publishing.
I know how self-publishing got its bad reputation, however. I once proofread a piece of dreck for a vanity publisher. The house’s editor tried to clean it up a bit. For example, about every fifth word in the novel was the word “golden.” The story was so blatantly autobiographical that the editor tried to curb that, too. The author’s political and religious opinions made the story run like a manic-depressive cycle. (And not with a whit of Bo’s style or humanity.)
As with any kind of publishing, traditional or DIY, the cream will rise (with a little luck).
Locke mentioned feedback. Have you heard about e-book readers that collect data on how a reader reads — slowly in which parts, rereading, skipping parts, giving up during the introduction, etc.?
Thanks for your “informed” response, Linda! You’re so right; self-publishing is a jammed-open gate through which surge god-awful floods of unmitigated garbage. Every other word misspelled, agonizingly bad grammar, complete ignorance of plot, character, setting or even beginning, middle and end. Not to mention that crucial distinction between fiction and the personal diatribes of everyone. I mean, gee, there IS a difference. I always tell my writing classes at the first meeting, “If you want to write about your grandmother’s casseroles at church suppers, you’re in the wrong place. Unless, of course, she poisoned the entire choir AND the cross-dressing pederast preacher with her famous Heavenly Ham’n’Cheese Macaroni.”
OTOH, every professional writer I know (many midlist authors like me, whose publishers no longer exist) is only too happy to fight for those rights reversions and then put their backlists up as e-books. I’m thrilled to have Bo Bradley out there again, thrilled to see BONE BLIND (lovedlovedloved by agent and six different editors, but too uncategorizable to publish, they said…) being read. Self-publishing is just, well, “golden,” to plagiarize your vanity client’s favorite word, for real writers. And in that category lie those with talent, skill and terrific books that for one reason or other (well, there’s only one reason – “Will it sell enough to make us a lot of money?”) failed to capture the interest of an agent and a publisher. And as you say, the cream will eventually rise to the top.
Re: feedback, yes, I just read an article on the data-collecting e-readers. Really interesting and potentially valuable, although they’ll need a huge n to generate significant data. I, for example, will read every word of a densely intellectual text, highlight and make notes, but only on cross-continental flights. Boston to San Diego is six hours in tourist and I have to concentrate on something to avoid brain-death. But at any other time I’d just skip around in that book if I read it at all. Personal reading habits are probably all wildly idiosyncratic like that and will skew the e-reader data unless they cull an n of thousands for each book. Which is, of course, doable.
Abbie