November 2008 Archives
Gone are the days when an author with something important to say struggled financially to have his work printed at a local printing press, and then a further emotional and strategic struggle to place his work where people might read it, like local bookshops, coffee houses, libraries, lodges, union halls, schools, churches, etc. In the last two decades self publishing has not only hit an all time high but has gotten much easier. The Internet and world wide web have played a primary role in this new accessibility to literally millions of readers across the planet with a mere click of a computer keyboard.
For most of the 20th century self publishing had a stigma attached to it that was hard to overcome. Those budding authors who paid to have someone publish their literary work were seen as losers who weren't even worthy to be read except by family and a few close friends. The publishing houses made sure that this stigma was perpetuated ad infinitum to protect their own financial interests. As these publishing houses merged into a handful of really big publishing concerns owned by multi-national financial corporations, getting one's literary work out to a large number of readers became nearly impossible.
One bit of information these big publishers held closely to their chest was the fact that most all of the great literature and documents published in this country from its founding through most of the 1800's was done privately. From Ben Franklin to Edgar Allen Poe they first published their literary works by their own hand or paid someone else to do it. During this era there wasn't any stigma involved in self publishing one's book, essay collection or pamphlet. In fact it was considered more of a rite of literary passage and an expectation from the community of readers. Can you imagine a big corporate publisher telling Thomas Paine that his political tract The Rights of Man wasn't financially or culturally feasible to be published?
The few mega publishing houses we have today publish books based first and foremost on a financial bottom line, secondly how least offensive and controversial that book may be, and thirdly what cultural and literary value the work has for the community of readers. There are thousands of examples of this kind of publishing that can be found in large chain bookshops, malls, airports, and grocery stores. Any serious reader who picks up one of these corporate literary offerings can tell immediately that it was published to make a fast buck; to be read once and tossed aside! On the other hand I don't want people to get the idea that just because a book, poem or essay is self published it is somehow better than the stuff that is spewed out of the corporate publishing houses.
In the old days of the private back room, hand cranked lithograph press there were pamphleteers and poets who had no business picking up a pen to write, let alone publish the result. The Internet today has magnified this situation fifty million times. It seems that in today's highly accessible, global free press everybody sees them self as an Ernest Hemingway; whether they are a pimply-faced teen with zero life experience, an illiterate slob whose past time is drinking Coors Lite beer on the weekends, or a racist skin-head who fantasizes killing ethnic minorities. If you are a serious and discerning reader, and take the time and effort and combine this with a little luck, you will find some of the most incredible, illuminating and brilliant self published writing in the world today.
If it wasn't for the freedom of the Internet and competent, self published writers, we would all still be held captive to the safe, bland, corporate literary mush that passes as literature. Because of the explosive accessibility of the Internet those previous budding authors with something truly important to say and creative ways of expressing it, can now be read by millions across the planet without corporate greed and banality standing in the way. It truly is a new era for self publishing as well as for the written word. And the remarkable thing about this new era is the financial cost. Anybody can create a free web site and publish their writing for millions to see just for the cost of an Internet connection. How extraordinary!
