In and amongst the amazing sports stories this week, I took time to read Laura Miller’s piece on self-publishing. In it, she voices concern over what will happen when the proverbial slush pile, a term used for the large mass of manuscripts that publishers must wade through, is thrust upon the reader. She worries that readers will simply give up when faced with so many options, all of which are equally bad. Without publishers, she argues, those gatekeepers we all love to hate, readers will be left unable to find the really fantastic novels and will,instead, limit themselves to an even smaller number of gems that somehow find their way through.
It’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it? Masses of readers trapped in the vortex of slush, straggling en masse toward a few bright pieces of light while, all the while, the even greater works slip deeper and deeper into oblivion. Until, at long last, as she notes in her final sentence, we all just give up and literature slips away drowned in its excess. Now there’s a horror movie worth watching.
To be fair, I like most of what Laura Miller writes (she was my only remaining reason for subscribing to Salon), so I want to give her a little slack and she admits that others tend not to be as, shall we say, dramatic in their predictions. Most anticipate a new form of gatekeepers arising and I tend to be part of that group. Her concern seems more that the chaos that happens as the old forms fade and new forms arise will be costly and difficult for both books and readers. I tend to think this is an overstatement. The old guard isn’t going away anytime soon and the new guard still has a long way to go. What we are seeing is a rather orderly transition from one form to another. Come on, folks, it’s not like we’re talking about the music industry here.
The simple fact is that self-publishing is great for certain things. It’s awesome if you simply want a small run of copies to give or sell to friends and family or for a specific event. It’s also great if you are a narcissist who wants to pretend that having a physical copy of a book with your name on it means something. It can also work if you are ready to market the hell out of yourself and do whatever you can to sell your books. For everyone else, it’s a model that isn’t going to work.
Let me start by reiterating a basic truth that is going to seem odd coming from a new media guy: books on the web aren’t real. They are characters that point to supposed real books that require someone to actually pay for those books before they are generated. That’s what makes print-on-demand so cool, you don’t have the overhead upfront. That’s the only thing it really changes. You still need to find somebody to buy your book. If you don’t, then there is no book. Your bad text now sits in a dusty electronic storage medium and still never sees the light of day. That’s the game with self-publishing. In self-publishing you have to be your own marketing agent. You have to push everything or nothing will happen. If your work is crap, no one is going to buy it and that, as they say, is that.
As far as the Internet goes, the slush pile is here. It’s been here for quite some time. I can sit and read Urbis or watch Youtube and, on occasion, I’ll find something decent. I still subscribe to Netflix, though, and you’re going to see the same type of thing happen with text. My personal bet is on the rise of small publishers with niche appeal. Well, at least that is what I am hoping for. Regardless, a new method will arise to help sort the crap from the quality. Miller may bemoan the slush pile, but we all know that change is here. Hopefully this industry is smart enough to move and evolve before being run over by progress. I tend to think it is. After all, it’s not like we’re talking about the music industry here (I kid, I kid!).
- Links -
Laura Miller’s Salon Article: “When anyone can be a published author” | Youtube | Urbis | Netflix
Been awhile since I popped my head in.
Do you see this company of yours in particular rising off the ground soon? Come to think on it, if you get tired of sailing on your own gigantic wings of awesomeness, you have quite the corral of writers and artists around you to expand your publishing house further.
I don’t know how yours is going to work tho, so know if this is an asinine idea.