A Necessary Evil

More and more, I see the similarities between the music and publishing industries, but one common thread between them is the fight between the indies and the corporations. It seems to me that writers (and musicians) begin their careers as independents for whatever reason (be it lack of interest from the conglomerates or a passion for the indie world) but aspire, secretly or not, to break into the commercial realm eventually. Its that bar that no one would mind hitting. But in reality, as Temple makes a great point about, these two worlds are not much different. Its the stigma, the stereotype of each world, that makes either seem better when in reality the indie world has as much, sometimes more, to offer than their larger counterparts. So why do we even have the two separate at all? Why is there this division in the literary and musical worlds of big labels and indie labels when they provide the same basic services? Well, its the necessary evil. One has to have the other to compete with to make themselves look more enticing. If everything were equal in the literary world and small presses didn't have the conglomerates, they couldn't distinguish themselves from anything. They couldn't say, "We're better than HarperCollins because we do *insert any extra freedom small presses offer here*." They would only be able to say, "We *insert any extra freedom offered by said press here*" and would have to distinguish themselves from other small presses creating a competition in a world with a strong sense of community and support. We all love each other, we all want each other to succeed. Because we're all batting for the home team. We're in this together because we are fighting the same fight. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. *Insert any other inspirational, togetherness colloquialism here*. Without the conglomerates, that sense of community between indie presses would be diminished to the likes of , for lack of a better analogy, Hillary slamming Obama. The conglomerates are Hillary and Obama's Republicans, providing everyone that's not a "Republican" a community to join to fight against them, bringing everyone together. In politics its different because its not a community, its a constant battle between people and parties alike. But in the literary world, only the parties fight. Sure it doesn't make much sense at times - "Man, its a party! Make love not war!" says the hippie spilling beer on his sandals as he dances to some Janis Joplin. But would it be nice if we all could "just get along"? I don't even think anyone can imagine how the literary community would be without the fight between the indies and the conglomerates. I know its hard for me to do. So maybe HarperCollins is the bad guy. And maybe everyone wants to be in with the bad guy at some point - I mean, they're cool, they kick ass, they do things the easy way, and they get the coolest costumes. But in the end, fighting for whats right with your underwear on the outside of your clothes wins out over the ass-kicking, sleek black spandex of the bad guys. And they may be evil - but they are a necessary evil. Without the knowledge that worse things existed, we couldn't appreciate that good things we have at our fingertips.

What happened to the good old days?

After reading the article by Johnny Temple, I was definitely left a little overwhelmed. I think someone already touched on this, but it just seems a little ridiculous that we spend our whole lives working on this one piece of literature, only to have to then single-handedly promote the book. At the same time, the publishers (at least the big industry ones) take way too much control over the book (cover art, editing, etc).

If there's one argument that does turn me more towards small press publishing, I would have to say its the control they (at least its the impression I get) allow to the writer. I want my book at every bookstore, but I want it to look the way I want (because no matter how we try to encourage not judging a book by its cover, we all know that a bad cover will immediately turn us off).

It's recently occurred to me that the whole art world (writing included) is not as pure as I had imagined. My overly idealistically self is now stuck between this rock that is small press publishing and the hard spot that is the overly controlling (yet not very helpful) publishing houses.

But I guess the key, at least according to this article, is to embrace the excitement needed to sell your book. Then again, I'm not one to bring batons to a book signing just to keep people's attention. Do I have to be flashy to be a successful writer? What happened to the good old days when writers lived quiet lives and only hung around in the cafes of Paris? Do we really have to resort to cheap tricks just to keep literature alive?

Being a Pimp

This is the second time I've read this article by Johnny Temple. What stood out to me the most was the way in which authors must be so hands on with their work. It doesn't matter if the book is being published by a major conglomerate or an indie publisher, the author still has to do quite a bit of work to get the word out there.

What that brings me to is this: what if said author has no idea how the hell to do it? Writer's aren't publicists, marketing schemers or advertising agents. We write and we want to get published. How do we know how to promote ourselves? Truthfully I wouldn't know how. Well I'd know some small ways, but not how to actually book a reading etc. These are things that should be taken care of for the writer. Too often nowadays, especially with the murdock dominated empire, are books left to collect dust on the shelves with the writers wondering what the hell happened. I think it's expected that our book and us are to be taken care of and promoted, but that very rarely happens.

Are we supposed to hire someone with the little advance we did make on our novel? That's not such a bad idea and might prove fruitful in the future, but is it necessary? Maybe writers should all have marketing degrees? That could seriously help. It just makes me frustrated knowing that if I happened to ever have my stupid novel, that's taking me my entire life to write, published, I would want it promoted until people were sick of hearing about it. I think everyone feels that way. So I guess I have to become the marketing, advertising and PR person as well as the writer of the book that's hopefully getting reviewed by the Times.

The publishing industry is like the sticky spiders' web that sucks us poor little writers in, getting us caught, with no way to free ourselves. We're enticed by how pretty it all looks and when we get there we realize we're dinner. Hmm...but isn't that the way of the world in general?

Assignment for 2/19

A brief, brief reading for next week's class can be found here. And I'd like everyone to look over the site of indie press role model Jim Munroe, who has lots of good advice. We'll discuss his approach to publishing. Lots to talk about there.

Also, apropos our discussion on 2/12, please bring in a mission statement for the project you would like to do in class. If you're not sure yet, then please pick one of your ideas and bring that in.

See you Tuesday.

--Jonathan

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.

small audience vs. no audience at all... which would you choose?

So after reading Anne Elizabeth Moore's shpeal on zines, I have to admit that by the end of the article, I was convinced to get into the zine world, and publish my own little periodical on... who knows what. Her last lines got me-- "You can think of it as lost, gone, and unavailable to history — or you can assume it is there, still, somewhere." I didn't want my history to go unheard!
So, whether or not my newfound excitement over zines will carry me through the entire process of actually writing one and finding a way to get it "out there" is yet to be seen.
But you know, the important thing is that this article (plus our trip to Quimby's) helped to define this world more for me. I love that it's completely driven from the passion of the writers. Did the punks who passed out zines at shows care if they got paid? Certainly not. They just wanted to spread their voice, their opinion, their story, etc. I love that about small press publishing.
The only problem I keep encountering is that... no matter how much I can preach about selling out, I still want to see my novel sitting on a shelf at Borders. And I'm not sure that that could really happen with the small press route. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
I guess my problem lies in defining what's more important: reaching a broader audience (through a major publishing house) or being immersed in the passionate self-determined world of small press publishing.... but perhaps not reaching as large of an audience (especially if there are only 250 books printed!)
But then again, I don't really have to make this decision.... what it really comes down to is who ever is actually willing to publish my work. And in the end, I'd be happy with 250 people reading my story than no one reading it.

What I take with me.

My goal for this course is to have created my own online magazine by week 14, however I found one of the most important values to that future presentation in Anne Moor's article "Be A Zinester." On the surface I want to challenge my contemporaries as I find my strength in writing, but the most important thing that we do as documenters of fiction or non-fiction stories is that we record many versions of history as we see it, whether we are exposing the unlikely reality based or the otherworldly, we are contributing to the culture of our time. Sometimes the thought is overwhelming. Then, I am comfronted by editors who claim to be able to tell good writing from everything else and I realize that publishing myself is a step that I have to take if I honestly believe that my work is worth reading, that way I can truely find out instead of waiting on some dusty old fart to do me a favor.

I am not by any means claiming the lordship of all authors. I am simply saying that I would like for my website to go on to show the improvement of my own and other writers work as it preserves "the oral histories of conspiracy theorists" and everything to the far end of the spectrum. I would like the website to comprise of the type of writing that digs into the senses and emotional memory of every reader. I want to publish writing that readers want to forget but can't. I'm sure we all do.

Good writing isn't always grammatically correct first time out of the gate and packaging sometimes needs to start out with bare bones materials to get off of the ground. Throughout this article Ms. Moore only suggested form in reference to the style of presentation where she mentioned collages or writing in the margins...because the writing of these "hidden histories" are about the message of obscurity/genre of art.