Self Publishing Soapbox

Hey y'all,

Perhaps I'm feeling the unrealistic optimism of a new dawn. As I get closer and closer to the time when I will get the softcover version ready for print on demand and the first novelette ready for Amazon, and other ebook reader apps, I'm excited for how much things have changed for writers in the last 7 years since I first hit the road with my collection, "Ella Bandita and other stories." I remember somebody telling me I needed to start a blog and thinking, "Huh?" And then my email journal became a blog for JuneauMusic.com and a lot of folks in Juneau who hadn't been on my email list got to read about it.

I also remember the discomfort of a lot of agents and editors over what Amazon was doing. Bully or not, love them or hate them, they've turned traditional upside down on its ass and the authors that are getting out of their contracts and leaving the big 6 behind - and think of how many hoops they had to jump through in order to get there - definitely prove that things are changing so fast, and even if I have to work my ass off online and in person and in life to get my stuff out there, it is possible to be successful at this.

As far as appealing to the traditional publishers/agents/editors are concerned, I've accrued 40 rejections. And that's nothing compared to what many authors go through. But plenty of my rejection letters state something about the "realities of the publishing marketplace." Yeah. They're not exactly clamoring for new writers. But that's not what gets to me. What gets to me more than anything else around traditional publishing is the elitist bullshit behind it. I feel like I'm back in high school, trying to gain acceptance into the popular crowd. Don't get me wrong, I've met a lot of nice people in this field through all the conferences I've attended, the pitches I've made, and my work has been rejected very kindly and with a few flattering notes. But the dynamic is whacked - it's stifling, there's nothing expansive about it. So how can unique stories or new voices find a stage? Where's the room to grow or open to new ideas? In a pitch session, I was expected to compare my work to others - so they could get a sense of what it was about or what pigeonhole to stick me in. It never occurred to them that the influence behind my work was stuff I'd read so long ago, I could never remember where it came from. But what was most troubling was that they expected imitation.

Another problem with publishing really, is that the privileged have taken it over. I don't remember the exact wording of his quote and Tolstoy is hardly my favorite of the classic authors, but I remember he said that Great art is created by extremely unhappy people... And as much as I hate to admit it, he's right. I know my best stories come from my darkest hours and my most excruciating pain. Go to a writer's conference and I'm confronted with an agent or editor who often was educated at an Ivy School, had to compete pretty brutally to get the job they had, and very likely came from an upper-middle class background with some level of stability/conformity that set the standard for family life and where that family fit in the community. Nothing wrong with that, and I wish I had come from that kind of background. But I didn't. And my work reflects that. But a lot of people don't and my work is for them. So how are these people going to see me or "get it" about my work. They haven't and they don't.

This attitude has poisoned contemporary writing. I've practically given up on fiction because so many times I've gotten into a story only to have it collapse by the middle, and end in a mess of hastily tied loose strings - often times that were never connected to begin with. And how many conferences have I gone to where I heard that my "first fifty pages have to be perfect." And that's what's happening with writers - they're so obsessed with getting their first 50 immaculate instead of building a wonderful story as a cohesive whole.

Enough of my rant. I've checked out some of the self-pubbed authors on Amazon. Some of the writing is really deplorable, other writing has potential is really green, still others is pretty good. But good for them for putting their stuff out there and I love Amazon for giving them and me an opportunity to do so. They've provided a stage where my voice can be heard - whether the audience is one or one hundred or one hundred thousand or even a million, a million+, they've really empowered the lone writers like me and the readers who now have the potential to find us.