I decided to self-publish a chapbook of my poetry on the Internet.
Since fiction has always been my true love, I
wagered I could tolerate de-valuing my poetry more
than my prose.
This Business of Dance and Music went
online in October 2002.
Unlike self-publishing in print (on a low
budget), the World Wide Web can be
professional looking, inexpensive and global if
applied to the right resources.
The self-publisher needs to have access to
Internet software programs and tools to make it
inexpensive.
There is a web society out there, like the
mythical legends of dwarves, hammering steadily
through the mass possibilities of our information
age. They offer many web-building, web-publishing,
web-marketing resources to novice webmasters for
free or minimal charge.
With their help, I designed, marketed and
launched the chapbook within four months for less
than 100 Canadian dollars.
I have observed the poems online, now, for
over a year and am now plotting my next progressive
step as a writer.
Online self-publishing is a truly virtual reality because it does not
require the approval or support of somebody,
somewhere, within or without the literary and
publishing industry.
My own traditional upbringing as a writer
tells me that if I am not physically bound and kept
in somebody’s library then I am not truly
published.
The book is lasting and the Internet is not.
The book has gone through peer review in
order to just be and there are no invitations sent
out by the Internet.
A published book has already invested faith
and value in me, in terms of editing and marketing
from the publishing agent and company, and online I
am always earning it from the consumer market.
Of course, how and who can give anybody a
sense of worth depends on each individual need and
person. Therefore and understandably, agents, publishers,
writers, editors and web-surfers cannot be made
responsible for this.
So beyond a desire to get out from under my
day job, my career goal as a writer is to attain a
sense of lasting value in my work.
Anne Hawkins, a literary agent who writes for
the website,
Authorlink.com,
provides an interesting checklist for the conditions
that weigh a book’s chances for publication in, Why Do Good Agents Turn down Good Books?
I used this checklist to see if lobbying for
publication with a major publisher or agent was a
true measure of whether the book was good, and thus
help the writer understand her/his progress.
Hawkins describes the publishing industry
from a practical and business standpoint, that the
‘goodness’ or publishable-ness of a book is measured
by more things than the concerns of the
literary/fiction writer, who makes up only part of
the publishing industry.
Marketability, suitability, entertainment and
luck run alongside quality and value.
The Checklist of why books get turned down by agents runs along this
line:
1.
The
Personal Taste of the Agent.
2.
The
Level of Passion the Agent has for the book
3.
Submitting to the Wrong Agent with different book
preferences and contacts.
4.
Lack of Suitability for a particular market
5.
Length of Book
6.
Closing Statement:
Good books draw rejections for a variety of
reasons, and many of these reasons have nothing to
do with the quality of the work….
Glen T. Brock, from the book retailer’s perspective, supports these
ideas, saying, “Quality
and style are not necessarily marketable quantities.
Entertainment value is highly marketable.
The public wants to be entertained.
That’s more important than being educated or
cultivated.
Literary writing has a very limited consumer
base.” Good writing is subjective – and, as a surprise to
me, not always the same thing as ‘literature.’
It doesn’t necessarily run parallel to how a
work was published.
I
understand that print publication by a major
publisher or agent is, to this date, a critical
achievement for any kind of writer to establish
herself financially and within her industry.
However, it would
be unwise for the writer to rely solely on the print
publishing industry's judgement in order to value
her work.
Back in the day, when I actively hustled my work, getting good feedback
was as subjective as good writing, and came from all
different sources and sizes.
I had an average of one publication per
twenty poetry/short story submissions to local and
national journals across Canada.
In those years, an editor, from the Malahat
Review, made the comment, on my rejection letter,
that my poem was ‘gutsy.’
Also, Gordon Pengilly, the poetry editor of
the Dandelion some years ago, volunteered to give my
play two reading services.
Other than these two situations, the manner
in which I was published and received as a writer
went a lot like this:
1.
Thanks for the submission.
2.
It
will be published (or not published) at this time.
3.
Here’s a copy.
4.
The
End.
(Hell, I didn’t always read my own copy)
As a new writer trying to develop her craft, the
submission process was often met with silence,
whether the journal agreed or disagreed to publish.
I could not expect the publishing industry to
offer free readings services to every manuscript for
my betterment.
Pity and praise the editor who devotes that
much of their thankless time to each submission!
Silence from journals, agents or editors may
have indicated that the writing needed major
improvements but that silence was still not
constructive.
By making the work public, in any form, the writer essentially asks for
evaluation and criticism.
Publishing online allowed me a different kind
of reaction to my writing than what I received in
the submission process to literary journals and even
local writing workshops.
The biggie was the global distribution.
“I just got 10 hits from Turkey!”
And many other reactions like that.
Global accessibility to my poems was such a
drastic difference to the public access to my file
cabinet or even the national literary journal, the
Dandelion, that I suffered a mild case of stage
fright.
I soothed myself by saying that nobody would
be able to find my tiny website and was then further
irritated by an increasing desire to be found.
I was forced to admit that I actually did
like my poetry.
My faith in the poems was measured by this
desire to be seen. I eventually lobbied my site to search engines and lamented
the long 4-month wait before Google and Yahoo
registered my site.
I used a freeware version of the
Funnel Web Analyzer to track the passages of
invisible visitors across my pages.
I’m not an official e-publisher, web-designer
or entrepreneur yet I still manage to get my poetry
a few clicks everyday from places around the world.
Unlike the silence from the journals and
editors, this global silence had the effect of a
thousand, white-hot lights.
Mistakes, awkward word uses and grammatical
errors are never more glaring than under this silent
scrutiny.
These visitors don’t need to know where I
went to school, what I have or haven’t published,
what publishing house or agent backs me, or if I am
male, gay or Chinese.
I, too, cannot be sure if the visitor is a
literary critic or professional phoose-ball player.
It’s only the writing to be our own mirror
reflection.
Another big difference between self-publishing online and publishing in
print is that the writer can edit the work after
it has been published.
I, at first, considered this to be
‘cheating’.
It meant I put up shoddy work and wasn’t
smart enough to catch it before it went up and
therefore should suffer the humility like a scarlet
letter. In fact, it was an opportunity to look at my writing in a
different form.
Online publications can be fluid,
transitional and interactive with its reader/viewer
and inviting to commentary.
It costs nothing to edit the final draft.
A book publisher, for pure economical
reasons, cannot re-publish a book just to see what
the other possibilities might have been like, even
if half the readers send in emails to suggest the
changes.
Do the opinions of readers of literary
fiction effect the decisions of the publishers?
I don’t know. Perhaps, the situation has never occurred where readers
thought that they could have that much effect on the
writer or publisher.
The poetry can continue to grow with me even after publication, in its
online form.
I even left a few pages empty in the online
chapbook to add future poems that fit its theme.
Printed publication provides its own unique
perspective on written work.
Each publication in print stands as a
testament of the writer’s development at that time
in the writer’s life.
Print publication maps permanent landmarks in the
career whereas online publications can be a
constant process.
Each form of publication offers different
perspectives. Publishing is an art form
in itself that, rich in history, should continue to
be strong in creativity and innovation.
Despite these creative freedoms, online, self-publishing
still has many of the same flaws that had originally
discouraged me from going that route.
Once the work is online, the writer will
likely never know what the verdict would have been
with a publisher or journal because most will not
accept already published work.
Journals, publishing companies and agents
often state quite clearly in their submission
guidelines, that they want only unpublished work.
Self-publishing, on or offline, also means
you don’t get paid – significantly, anyway.
I’ve seen some very creative attempts to draw
charitable donations, though.
According to Anne Hawkins in an article written for
Authorlink.com
called,
Literary
Agents and Self-Published Books, “Once a book has been published in any form, its track record enters
the equation, with the two most important components
being ‘buzz’ generated and actual numbers of copies
sold. We’re no longer talking about potential.
Now we’re looking at demonstrated performance
in the media and marketplace.
She’ll (the agent) take on a self-published
book that has demonstrated really good buzz and
significant sales.”
“If your ultimate goal
is publication by a major press, think about biting
the bullet and embarking on the traditional query
process at the outset.
If you do not find an agent or publisher, or
if the process becomes too painful, self publishing
is always a viable option.”
Hawkins describes a thin path to publication for the new writer in the
first article cited, Why Do Good Agents Turn Down
Good Books?
In this article, she describes
self-publishing as an option after failing to
publish in print.
Aside from selling good sales to the agent or
publisher, I wanted to look at how books are
actually selling in today's consumer market.
Christopher Dreher
quoted the former
editorial director of Random House, Jason Epstein,
in
Salon.com’s
publication of, Why Do Books Cost So Much? as
saying the price for the average hardcover book of
fiction had seen a 200 percent increase from 1975 –
2000.
Dreher went on to say that, “during the 1990s many publishing houses
conglomerated or were acquired by large
corporations, which forced publishers to be more
conscious of the bottom line and their
responsibility to stockholders. To Epstein, this is
exactly the wrong model for book publishing.
Traditionally, the business was, he insists,
never meant to be a moneymaker and should be seen as
"more like a sport or a hobby.
It was fun and culturally very useful.
If you wanted to make money you'd go over to
Wall Street."
Dreher backed this argument with a similar quote from a professor at
Fordham University and author of "The Book
Publishing Industry," Albert N. Greco,
"The book industry is not run the way other
businesses are run, and it's unlikely it ever will
be. It's a creative industry. It's not like selling
light bulbs. And publishers have been working that
way in this country since 1639. I don't think it's
going to change very quickly."
These two quotes enforce the idea that publishing is a strange game of
loving and warring between creative and business
dynamics, culture versus profits, with the writers
and readers caught in between.
From a book retailer’s point of view, Glen T.
Brock, described the market thus:
“In 1944, the book industry experienced a huge
increase in costs and scarcity of materials
(courtesy of ww2).
Publishers in the know were concerned that
the huge increase in the costs of books would
destroy the market.
The paperback book was invented as a result.
Why? Because the public wouldn’t spend over 99 cents for a
hardback book!"
“In my opinion, something major is on the verge of blossoming
in the book industry.
Could be websites, or e-books or maybe
something we haven’t seen yet.
If the economy doesn’t suffer a general
deflationary depression, some entrepreneur is going
to introduce something to lower the costs of
production to the consumer.
Lower prices will bring more volume, which
will benefit, among others, writers.”
“If the book industry has reached a point of price that is not
profitable, perhaps another media would replace it.”
The cost of books is on the rise because publishing houses are trying to
be the large corporations that they were never meant
to be. The possibilities for the new writer are as certain
as the possibilities for the book.
With such certainty for the writer's future
market, the writer needs to be more proactive in
creating her/his market.
Publishing work online can promote literature and trace
this consumer market better than a bookstore can.
Websites can track and study the market behaviour of
their visitors more strategically than the bookstore
manager.
Web analyzers can track which countries the
visitors came from, for how long the visitor stayed
and on which pages, what pages drew them into the
site and what pages made them exit, etc.
More sophisticated web analyzers can record
personal information about the computer and owner
that visited the site, much like the telephone call
display or directory.
A wayward surfer may accidentally fall into the writer's text by the
random search of a word that was used in the text. If I have the term ‘walrus’ in one of my poems, web-browsers
looking for websites on ‘walruses’ may be led to my
site. Once they land there, they may click away as fast as
they can or they may decide to give me a chance.
The average pedestrian is not likely to trip
over my book and decide to take me home with
him/her. Being online, I am accidental.
I can’t pick my consumer nor does the
consumer necessarily need to go looking for me when
we do find each other online. The online audience is not limited to book-buyers.
Random searches for subjects such as ‘hip hop
woman,’ ‘lightning storms’ and ‘Langston Hughes’
have drawn a trail to my poems.
By having a broader audience than the average
bookstore or library, the Internet’s level of
interactivity and accessibility can attract more new
readers or non-readers to literary work.
And if nothing but print publication will satisfy me and I understand
that there is no print publication without a paying
market, what better way for a writer to prove this
then by presenting live statistics and comments from
this very consumer market?
Writers have always been encouraged to travel and have many experiences
for material and ideas to write about.
Writers can also apply this rule to
publishing.
To travel as many roads to publication as
possible is to widen the writer’s experience and
independence.
Writers should experience both print and
online publication.
There are benefits for the writer in each.
One which is a long shot and possibly getting
longer and the other just is.
One sets a standard to measure oneself by and
the other has no boundaries except for what is
illegal in your country of origin.
I prove myself by more than just the query submission but by my own
marketing.
As the publishing world continues its fine
balance as a business and a creative industry, so
perhaps should the writer make her craft her
lifestyle as well as her enterprise.
What is my next progressive step?
I will stay online until I feel I have had my
fill of what being online has to offer.
Attempt to develop or understand a market and
community where my writing can belong, with the
Internet’s global reach to guide me.
copyright
lyw
|
