Don’t believe me? Let’s see people who could not get published by the “establishment,” or at least until they proved themselves, “profitable.”

Just off the top of my head, and I’m sure if I “Googled” it I would find many more, let’s see, Virginia Woolf started her own publishing company just to get published. Is this an isolated incident? Just so happens my two favorite poets, at least AD are Emily Dickinson and Blake. Seems she had NOTHING published in her lifetime, and he published his own.

So how does that seem smart? If you are a writer, a real writer, a writer who wants no more than to tell the truth, the hell with the facts, I’m talking the truth of our humanity, and I dare say humane nature has not changed for at least 6,000 years, proof is that between Homer and Shakespeare there have not been any more “stories” worth telling. It is just a matter of detail. Our common humanity: life, death, loyalty, betrayal, joy, sorrow, with few exceptions, that is about it. So why try? Each generation defines these in context. Chaucer had a different point of view, but the “truth” did not change, just the “facts.” Or Homer, or Dante, or Swift. I think you get my drift. So as it turns out whether Sappho, or Blake or Woolf or Dickinson, they said, metaphorically, the public be damned, the publishing world be damned. I have something to say and by God I am going to say it. Thank all the deities, or more likely some combination of DNA that consists of a combination of cells and atoms and protons and neutrons and electrons and photons and who knows what else. You might like to check out Tyson and Hawking before you start to think of yourself other than star dust. Woolf made the comment in the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteenth century, if you go back to the classics and the literature that was respected before her time, you unfortunately get no more than one half a view of the world. You will not find any women writers who wrote from their own experience. True, there were lots of stories, “about” women, but few written by women who had first hand experience of being women. Woolf has a wonderful piece called: “A Room of her Own.” Don’t quote me on the details but she says something to effect: a woman needs a room of her own, a room where no one else may enter without her permission and 200 lbs a month. I may not have that exactly but the point is that women need a private space where no one could violate, and enough money to survive. Unless a woman had that, rich old royalty didn’t count since they new nothing of the common woman’s life, the world would never know what half of humanity and their experiences were. Can you comprehend that? Listen one more time. One half of humanity’s story has, more or less, not been told? Amazing if one thinks about it. To the victor goes the spoils. Sometimes I wonder what great literature we might have if the conquered lands, lands who were under the oppression of the powerful from the beginning of time, what truths we would have uncovered? So, what has that to do with publishing? Simple answer. I have things to say, stories to tell, essays to publish, poems to illuminate and there is no way in the world I would let the “professionals” who want nothing but formulaic manuscripts, sure fire money makers, genre literature, writing that can be so easily classified by some label at Barnes and Nobel or some other chain, otherwise, God forbid, you would not know what section would you put it in? Bull shit. If a publisher agreed to publish my work it would be embarrassing, an insult, a proclamation that I had nothing to say, or at least nothing profound to say. Who would take a chance on something that had not been focus grouped. Well, I could go on and on and since not one soul will read this, I am casting my pearls before swine. It matters to me not one whit if I am not recognized as an important writer. But I am. How do you know I believe in myself? I would never, under any circumstances, subject myself to the whims of a publisher, editor, or anyone else. Does it cost me a couple hundred bucks to self publish? Yep. I care not one whit even if I don’t sell enough to get my money back. If you sell your self for thirty pieces of silver, you are either a Judas, or a poorly paid whore. Am I good? Who knows? But I can say this: I say what I mean and I mean what I say. No more, no less. And as my daddy taught me: let the chips fall where they may, no more, no less, because there is not enough money in the world for me to sweat blood and tears to write something I did not believed revealed truth, and by that I mean truth that is not formulaic. I just as well make donuts in a bakery, where each one has a neat whole in the middle.
Any one can do that. And, truth be told, selling donuts is a site more profitable than writing stories people are not ready to hear. But as we say in the South, screw the bastard and the horse he rode in on. Opps, southern ladies should not speak in such ways. Get used to it.
pds

But you don’t have to sell your books there.

Other places have appeared – B&N, Apple, etc. That’s why Amazon’s share of the market is going down, not up, and that, BTW, is why it’s kinda funny to say they are becoming a monopoly. Apple is providing e-book creators with a better authoring tool AND a better and more visually pleasing reader – with retina resolution on the iPad 4, e-ink is losing its “monopoly” on being kinder to out eyes.

Traditional publishing was also a marketplace – with higher bar to entry, but more help if you made it to the inside. All the authors who did not or will not try can now go to the other marketplaces. That’s competition, and that drives prices down. Since an e-book is really just a “proprietarized-format” website with pagination, it suffers from the same reader attitudes as all e-entertainment – the readers/listeners/watchers have gotten used to the right price being zero.

Which may be the whole point of this – consumers no longer pay for the content, but they will pay (within reason) for ease-of-use, for being spared the trouble of poor-format and virus-infested warez. That is what Amazon and Apple have understood, having set up an easy system for getting and reading “books” instantly, everywhere and effortlessly, and at a very small price. That’s the game any competitor has to beat them at, and springing the book-nerds from their cages in the cellars may very well be trad pub’s only chance to even play that game. Whatever your opinion of Steve Jobs, he seems to me to have proved that the Powerpoint suits are needed to run a business, but they can’ MAKE a business.

The traditional publishers have all the knowledge, writers, connections etc to adapt but instead they insist keeping their head in sand and running these business into the ground.

Sack John now while there is still time to change and adapt rather than destroying the company value by charging at windmills. Otherwise they will all be sacked in 10 years when they are broke.

Blaming Amazon or the DOJ is a complete and utter cop out, if publishers are going under it is because they have fundamentally failed to give consumers what they want. Lots of people do want to buy books but paying more for an ebook than a paperback or in some cases a hardcover is clearly a load of horses**t.

They need to realise they are dead and work on building the future rather than clinging to the past. I have as much sympathy for them and the insipid tripe that lines the shelves of traditional booksellers as I do for kerosene lamp oil companies.

If a “race to the bottom” means I buy directly from an author who hired their own editor and distributes their own ebook, then hurry up and get there. Consumers get cheaper books, the authors get a greater share of the profits and the mindless bureaucracy of publishers gets a footnote in the history books. I have a kindle and its great! Can you not see how useful it is? Why do you fight this?

It’s one thing to identify problems, another to actively try and solve them. It’s better to show than tell.
All the best,
Shawn