Self-Publishing And The Gatekeepers

August 8 2014 Blog

"... The chief qualification of ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers. Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right there is the cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in literature is guarded by those watch-dogs, the failures of literature. The editors, the sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and failed. And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are the very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way into print–they, who have proved themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius. And after them comes the reviewers, just so many more failures. Don't tell me that they have not dreamed the dream and attempted to write poetry and fiction; for they have, and they have failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than cod-liver oil...."

-- Jack London, "Martin Eden"

All of us who learned in our youth a love of reading have likewise developed a love of books and those who introduced books to us. Somewhere above us, we imagined, way upon high, were those who decided what was and was not worthy to be set into print, given a lovely cover, and permitted on the shelves of that greatest of all stores, the bookstore. There was a certain magic to the process and there was a saintliness bestowed upon all who were involved in the process.

Most likely, too, we first acquired the love of reading from a teacher, a parent, or some other authority figure. Books were sacred mysteries passed down from the elders to the youth, an initiation of sorts, necessary before we could enter into this new world that only books could lead us to.

The same thing goes with young people who get their first taste and desire to become writers. Somewhere in their past they were given an assignment by a teacher to write, at which point they discovered they liked the process of creating something from nothing. Maybe they even felt as if they were talented at it and, maybe, a teacher or older person had taken interest in the writing they had done and complimented them on it. Perhaps they even encouraged them to pursue their interest in writing. Maybe they even went as far as sharing it with the class or submitting it to a publication or a competition.

We writers are always looking for our work to be recognized, acknowledged, appreciated. It is natural, after all, for those who spend so much time creating in solitude to want to know that other people can relate to what we have done. If we didn’t get positive feedback of some sort, it would be reasonable that we should question our relatedness to the outside world, even our sanity.

Which is why it has always been the case that the writer has sought the recognition and acceptance of those who are the gatekeepers of what does and does not get published. Of course, in the past, that was the only option for a writer to get read, to win the favor of those who stand between the writer and an audience. If you could not win favor with the publishing houses or the media, few people would ever get the chance to read your work.

Such is not the case anymore. Granted, it is still easier to appeal to those systems and institutions that know how to smooth the way for a writer that fits their mold, but it is not the only way. The potential is now there to bypass the gatekeepers and thereby bypass the demands they place upon you. You no longer have to conform your writing to their tastes, no longer have to alter and mangle your work to fit into their conception of what a given audience wants.

Let us put aside all notions that publishing is anything other than a business, that publishers are interested in bringing your thoughts to readers rather than bringing the reader’s cash into their pockets. Don’t get me wrong, the art of writing can still be sacred and pure, as can the act of reading, but to get from writer to reader it must pass through the meatgrinder that is the market, where art and integrity are at best talking points.

And while publishing has been little more than a business for quite some time, probably dating back to Gutenberg, the machinery and industry that controls the process has only become more focused on the bottom line since then. The big publishers are getting bigger and the smaller ones are getting gobbled up or are fading away. The market for booksellers is increasingly coming into the hands of a few players such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The bigger the institutions making the decisions the greater the distance between the decision makers and those who have concerns other than profit.

Thus, the person in charge of reading manuscripts is no longer acting under his or her own discretion but instead looking for something that fits the template given to them by the corporate office.

Today, focus groups and spreadsheets have made it amazingly possible to remove from publishing decisions any thought of art, ideas, or beauty. As always, publishers have heaps of manuscripts awaiting attention, but today they are able to immediately access whatever is trending. Algorithms and corporate mindsets are shrinking the role that individual humans play. Nobody is asking what new work might speak to the troubles and concerns of the world as it is today but rather what is currently selling with the 14-18 year old market.

So on one hand we have a constriction of the gatekeeper’s concerns into a small gap of moneymaking banality and on the other we have an unprecedented alternative to traditional publishing in the form of self-publishing. Indeed, some people who have found success in self-publishing have seen the big publishers come knocking on their doors. What would keep people from taking the easier, less restrictive way that offers complete freedom and a vastly larger slice of the rewards?

But of course, that’s not the way we have been trained. Many of us are still looking for the approval—not from the ultimate audience, the readers—but from the anonymous sources at publishing houses, magazines, and newspapers. We are still looking for that nod from the teacher telling us we have made the grade.

There is some merit to that approach. It is important to get all the instruction we can from those who have the appropriate experience and knowledge. If we want to produce quality writers it is important that aspiring ones serve some sort of apprenticeship and learn their craft from acknowledged masters. Self-publishing in some ways has turned on a sewer pipe that’s been dumping a flow of sludge into the marketplace, but at the same time it is a conduit that permits those who don’t fit the mold or aren’t willing to conform to it to find an audience. And if you think the publishing industry has been elevating the art of literature, I ask you to take a look at the bestseller’s lists, where Bill O’Reilly and James Patterson never seem to leave the list. And the authors who are given the largest advances—celebrities and newsmakers who have never written anything more complex than a Tweet—are those who will be given a ghostwriter to do their work for them,

Which brings us back to the Jack London quote I began this essay with. Those who serve as the gatekeepers are not the best qualified to judge what good writing is. If that was true in London’s time it is doubly true today. They are neither successful writers themselves nor do they seek to advance the craft. Inexperienced authors may sometimes view them as benevolent fairies who will waive their magic wand upon them and pronounce them as the chosen one, but in truth it’s a business and business and art have never mixed well.

I am not saying there is necessarily anything wrong with choosing the traditional method of publishing, nor do I wish to say that publishers think about money to the exclusion of all else. But there is an alternative now, the likes of which has never existed until recently. Jack London went on to be the most successful and best paid author of his day. Much more than that, though, he was in my mind the greatest writer the United States has ever produced. But the rejection he received before breaking through the barrier the gatekeepers maintain is a tale of epic struggle, leading to countless moments where a less determined or less desperate person would have quit. I am quite certain he would have welcomed the opportunity self-publishing offers, and equally as certain he would have succeeded at it.

I have chosen the route of self-publishing, though I have yet to find success. Once it began to look like I would soon have a finished novel, I began to think about what to do with it next. While I had always assumed I would go the traditional route, Jack London’s warning had always been in the back of my thoughts. And when I got to know authors who were independently publishing I just seemed to fall in with the community. It seemed the logical approach for me, perhaps because I fell outside of the norm, never considered myself trendy. The additional work is no doubt something I would like to fob off on others: the self-promotion, the search for editors, proofreaders, and cover artists. But it is worth it to be in charge of one’s writing and one’s destiny. Too often one believes that the publisher cares for your book as much as you do and that is just not true. In the end, the writer is alone in his desire to nourish his work.

I do not rule out signing a contract with a publish someday. But when I do it will be as someone who has already achieved a degree of success and has attained a degree of knowledge of the industry. I realize it is a hard road to take, but I do not see an easier one. The world—the publishing industry included—is utterly indifferent to what you are writing and it is up to you to change that situation. While those who initially encouraged our writing had our best interests at heart, those in the publishing business have their own interests. I don’t blame them, they have a job to do. Those who are unable to write must still bring home a paycheck, and I’m sure they offer a degree of assistance to those who do. Still, should I ever wish to go into business with them, I’d like to do it on my own terms and with the sleep wiped from my eyes.

Writers Shape Worlds

My last blog post was entitled Words Shape Worlds. In it I expressed my belief in the power of words to shape the way we see the world. Sounds like a bit of a fluffy, airheaded idea, doesn’t it? It’s not and I was being quite serious. If you doubt it then contemplate for a moment the amount of time and energy that goes into word choice in advertising. Think about the billions of dollars spent each year in order to influence the way you think and act. So much money and so much research is not done without a serious thought for return on investment. People want to get inside your head and the use of words is one of the primary ways of doing it.

But words, powerful though they may be, are merely the conveyances of ideas. They are the conduits that carry living, transformative changes of perception from the transmitter to the receiver. Words do indeed shape worlds since they shape the way people perceive the world and act within it. But it is the writer who decides what words to use, how the words are assembled in order to present the overall argument. In other words, words are the paint, but the writer creates the picture.

As the perceived value of words has diminished of late so too the value of writers. The role of the writer is to amuse, to distract, to create false worlds within which people can briefly escape from the harsh realities of the real world. Readers too are told this story, so that most of a writer’s audience has come to expect to be told fairy tales the way a child would. The only difference is that a child is less willing to complain when they learn something or are confronted by somewhat troubling notions. Children, after all, are in the process of discovering the world, whereas by the time people reach adulthood most of them are too frightened to pursue any real kind of discovery further.

So the writer is assigned the role of mollifer of the masses by the powers that be, and those who venture to do something more are criticized for moralizing, pontificating, philosophizing. You can’t be a good writer if you don’t conform to the mold.

And it’s easy to go along with this sort of thinking. After all, it’s not easy making a living with just pen and paper, metaphorically speaking. Attempting to write at all is stepping outside the safe parameters, to try anything more ambitious seems more than a little foolish. And all the forces of a rather rigid social norm are pushing against you, telling you you must conform.

Those who buy and sell want you to work for them, want you to help convince others through slick marketing campaigns to buy product. They tell you life is about money and that you will starve if you do not dance to their tune. But if you are a writer, I wish to remind you that the ideas you construct from your observations and contemplations are more valuable than gold, and it is said that man does not live by bread alone.

Those who live to gather power also wish to dissuade you from your course. With guns and veiled threats of violence they will tell you that writing what you perceive to be the truth is a dangerous notion that threatens to weaken the pillars upon which society sits. Never mind the fact that what you write is merely an observation of the weaknesses that already threaten to bring those pillars down. If you write too closely to the truth as you perceive it, you will make enemies of those with power, make enemies of those who have control over the soldiers and the police and those with the weapons of violence. But if you are a writer, I wish to remind you that the ideas you write and the truths you observe are as powerful as any threat against them, for has it not been said that the pen is mightier than the sword?

The written word is both precious and powerful. They are too valuable, too sacred, to use merely to sell product or amuse. Words can connect humanity, can elevate discord into meaningful discussion what elsewise would devolve into conflict and violence. Words lift us up from the merely physical and bestial into realms that are spiritual, magical, miraculous. If there is divinity within us, it is hewn from our baser clay by words and ideas.

If you are a writer you work for beauty and truth, not for money and safety. To the degree that you do not you are not a writer but a propagandist or a salesman. The words, ideas, and approach must be your own or else you are not a writer but a stenographer. The path of a writer cannot be dictated by anything other than the truth and inspiration he or she perceives.

Words written freely and boldly were what forged our nation. We were nothing until we embedded lofty ideas into a collection of words that became The Declaration Of Independence. Although past words and ideas echoed in the document, it was a weapon forged anew for the world that was. Writers of today, while influenced by the stories that came before, must write anew the story of today. We must share in the boldness of those who wrote yesterday’s stories if we wish to pay proper respect to them.

I Did It And I'm Doing It Again (How I wrote a novel: grandiose thoughts and perhaps some guidance from one who has gone before)

A little over a year ago I wrote a blog on what my next book would be about and how I wanted to begin it. You can check it out here: http://theamazingmorse.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-new-novel-is-begun.html

I only had the barest of ideas, but seeing as how I had already written 4 books before, I felt confident enough to share what little I had with the faith that it would grow to become a full-length novel. It was an act of bravado, a writer’s equivalent to pointing to right field and telling you I’m going to hit one out of the park. It has taken a little time, but I have delivered on my promise. Weighing in at over 100,000 words, it is my largest novel to date. The name of it is Shell Shock, and you can check it out by clicking on the image of the cover somewhere to the right of the screen.

I share this with you for two reasons 1) To plug my new book, both because I am very proud of it and also because writers have to promote themselves if they expect to sell any books and 2) I thought it might be instructive on how a novel is started from modest beginnings and grows to become something one can be proud of and (hopefully) sell many copies of. You see, before I had written my first novel, I viewed the process as both mysterious and miraculous. So hard and rare had it been for me to actually complete a short story, I never really believed myself capable of writing a novel, could never visualize how it was done.

I know the answer now, or at least an answer that works for me. And the answer is to trust in the process and work on what is in front of you without worrying unduly about the questions you don’t presently have answers for. Work and trust. It’s pretty basic, and I’m willing to bet it works on a whole lot of things besides writing.

In my earlier attempts at writing I would write when the muse was upon me, only to become thoroughly frustrated when the flow suddenly ceased. I had no idea she could be prompted, enticed to continue onward when she appeared reluctant. I did not realize that a first draft could have holes in it, that a character could change names halfway through or become different people or change their motivations in order to fit with the narrative when the narrative had changed. I had always quit a story the moment that a problem arose I could not immediately solve.

But you see, some problems are more difficult to solve than others. Some problems you have to think about for a while and you can’t afford to stop the whole process just because of some small snag. Move along to the next thing, leave a question mark (?) in the text to remind you on your next look-through that you have a continuity problem, and eventually an answer to those insoluble problems will come to you. It may come when you are in the shower, mulling over your book while listening to the radio. It may come while you are walking the dog, or when you are half asleep in bed. The point is, it will come. It will pop into your consciousness, and instantly you’ll realize there was some tremendous answer to the question you had been asking.

It’s weird, but that’s how it works, for me at any rate. I know some people who outline their whole novel before they start to write it, but I’m pretty sure they’re aliens or liars. Perhaps they are lying aliens, the point is I cannot even conceive of doing such a thing. My attempts at doing so have only made the work more difficult. It might work for you, but since my way works for me, I’m just going to assume it is the best way possible since it is my way and it works.

So having briefly discussed how I have gone from a want-to-be writer of books to an actual writer of books, let me once again offer an opening scene for my next novel, which will be the third and quite probably last in the Seven Stones series, of which Seven Stones was the first and Shell Shock the second. The first 2 books dealt with World War 1, so my third (Sudden Storms is a working title, one I hope to God won’t be the actual title) book will deal with post-war Germany, which as we all know, is also pre-war Germany since the events of that era led to World War 2.

I envision a passing train with car after car filled with paper money, all but worthless. The post-war inflation in Germany was greater than was ever seen before or since. I’m not sure exactly why this scene grabbed me, it just popped into my head and immediately I said “this is it”. It speaks to the mass-insanity that societies are susceptible to. It demonstrates how we build our civilizations not on solid and real objects or ideas but so often we build our entire world around something as valueless as money printed on paper. Such a concept requires buy-in from society at large or else it all just goes to hell. It ties into the first chapter of my book The Association, which you can check out for free on Amazon (just click on the book cover, again to your right).

There is something about the idea of having to bring a wheelbarrow full of paper money to the store to buy a loaf of bread that terrifies me more than fire-breathing dragons and I don’t know why. Perhaps because it signifies the breakdown of the rational world as we know it, that however much we believe we can construct a sane world that works according to scientifically observable laws, there are forces beyond that we do not understand nor control.

Of course, it will not be too long afterwards that those same railcars will be used to transport human beings to labor camps and extermination camps. There is that somewhere in the background of everything. But I’m determined not to focus on the Holocaust: there’s been too much written and said about that by now. In fact, I intend to sidestep the war itself, except in passing. Instead, I want to explore the ideas and the spiritual yearnings that somehow led to the events of World War 2. Because no matter how incredibly horrible things ended up, I believe that evil is merely the twisting of normal and healthy desires. That for me is horror, something that was intended to be good becoming something very bad.

So I will avoid the darkest aspects, the events from 1941-45, those events that most people are already aware of. But that doesn’t mean the book will not stare into some incredibly dark places, nor will it seek to deny the reality of the evil of which humanity is capable. But I seek to find answers to such evil, hope even in the darkest of places. Because if I can’t, what is the point of dredging up such awfulness?

I’m worried I’ve set myself one hell of a task on this one, but it’s one I look forward to tackling. I seek answers, or else I seek hope, in which case I’ll have to create my own answers. I’ll see you in a year and we can discuss what I’ve come up with.

Cast Your Vote Against Cancer

Here's your chance to vote against CANCER. We have an anthology of vampire stories and all of the proceeds are going for a fellow writer who has a rather severe form of cancer and a ton of medical bills. By voting up The Bitten Anthology, you will be helping to raise awareness of the book and increase the money we can raise. You might have to search a bit, the book is currently at 349 but I'm hoping it will rise:https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/47810.2014_Must_Reads?page=4

And if you really like vampires and really dislike cancer, you can buy the e-book here: http://www.amazon.com/Bitten-Trish-Marie-Dawson-ebook/dp/B00LDYV010/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405827730&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bitten