Shit! I forgot a title!

As much as publishing and distributing work is a function of publishing industry, not publishing other work is also a function of the publishing industry. By choosing what is available and what is not, the industries are in charge of defining aesthetics: they create the environment where we determine what is good literature, bad literature, and all the value-related distinctions thereof.

This restriction is paradoxically liberating. If Borders only shelves the relatively well-written books, and organizes them properly, I will never find myself buying a plotless glorification of rainbows and unicorns. Of course, I would never read Cometbus, either. There are millions of publications of all kinds that I would never know to read, but god only knows how many I would deem worth reading.

This might not be a problem for you, Mr. or Mrs. Fiction major. You might revel in vast stacks of essays and stories that are limitless in variety, you may be famished for the slightest lesson, trick, or idea. Your devotion may be fanatical, you might be considered some kind of book fetishist, but it's reasonable to say that most everyone else is as far from that as possible. It's not that they're dumb. Quite the opposite, they just don't want to have to sift through tomes of unicorn glorification in the off chance they might find something that will change their lives.

Perhaps you should write for the kinds of people who are willing to mine such vast archives. Other writers, musicians, artists, grad students, and other miscellaneous lovers of the idea of the independent press. People like you. If you're lucky you just might figure out something worth saying to them, and even if you do, the rest of the world won't know or care.