By Patricia Young
A friend tells me she is reviewing two books— a short story collection and a novel — for a literary magazine. One is published with a well-known publishing house and the other is self-published. My friend is equally impressed with both books, but she’s curious. Why has one author chosen to go the self-published route? She does a little research on the web and learns the self-published author has published several previous books with reputable publishing houses. These previous books have also received glowing endorsements from big name authors and positive reviews from mainstream media such as The Globe and Mail.
Another friend is in the process of self-publishing a mystery novel set in a winery. She plans to promote the book herself at – where else? – wineries in the Okanagan. She is enthusiastic about the prospect of visiting wineries in the summer, sampling their wines and talking to sommeliers. Adjacent to most large wineries is an upscale restaurant and gift shop where she hopes to persuade the management of the wineries to place her book alongside novelty corkscrews, wine glasses and bottles of prize-winning merlot. Because my friend believes in her novel and has an lively, engaging personality her plans to sell her book, independent of a publishing house, seem entirely plausible.
I ask the women in my writing group for their thoughts on self-publishing. One says self-publishing’s definitely become less stigmatized.
“Why not?” she says. “If you’re willing to put the work into getting it out there, it’s another option.”
“I’d never self-publish,” another woman says, “but, hey, isn’t it a bit like online dating? Hasn’t the Internet made it okay? No longer shameful, hidden, uncool…”
We all laugh, but agree with the comparison.
Not so long ago, personal ads at the back of newspapers were for the weird and desperate, but now everyone’s on-line to meet a potential partner or knows someone who is. I know several people who are married as a result of online dating. I also know people, young and old, who say they haven’t gone there yet, but plan to if and when they get up the nerve. In the last few years, online dating and self-publishing have both become increasingly more respectable and offer choices unavailable in the past.
The taboos may have fallen away with regard to self-publishing but are we losing something when we lose the gate-keeper? Is the author, the reader, the book itself, losing something when there is no one to say, ‘This chapter needs to be re-written, this poem goes on three lines (three stanzas… three pages…) too long?’ What writer doesn’t benefit from working with an editor? I know I have learned much over the years, observing how an editor will approach a collection of poetry, as well as an individual poem. And the process of working with a good editor can’t help but teach you to become a better editor of your own work.
On the other hand, more and more people are hiring freelance editors to go through their work before submitting to a publisher. A freelance editor costs money, of course, and the young writer, especially, is at a disadvantage here.
The Internet has changed much more than the stigma around self-published books. It seems every day I receive in my inbox a website advertising some novel publishing venture. Foundpress, for example, is a Canadian site where you can purchase individual short stories. The Poetry Project in Ireland is a site publishing contemporary Irish poetry. Most print journals now have blogs and websites that publish online content, and more and more exclusively online magazines are popping up on the literary landscape. Dragnet, for example, is a Toronto e-zine that has now put out seven issues. According to Jeremy Hanson-Finger, one of the editors, the magazine publishes “energetic pieces that may explore serious topics but don’t take themselves too seriously.”
And then there are the innovative, grassroots publishing enterprises that use the latest desktop publishing programs but still have one foot in the real world. David Zieroth’s Alfred Gustav Press comes to mind. David publishes meticulously edited chapbooks because, as he says, he wants “to keep in touch with poets,” but also because he “really loves working with poets and poetry and paper and coloured pencils and staples and blades and steel edges, all those little tools of the trade.” The Alfred Gustav Press has a regular group of readers who subscribe to the series, and there are always new people signing on. The chapbooks themselves are simple and elegant, and, because the work is unpublished, the distribution of these chapbooks is a way for poets across the country to read new work they might not otherwise.
Jackpine Press in Saskatoon also publishes uniquely interesting and often beautiful handmade books. Each collaboration between artist and poet attests to the fact that the physical book is still, for some people, an art form in itself. Ursula Viara, another poet who runs her own press – Leaf Press – publishes lovely chapbooks as well as full-length poetry books.
Although I haven’t come across many self-published poetry collections, I imagine it won’t be long before they become more common and available. After all, poetry never has and never will be about making money. Sometimes, I wonder if we might, on some level, be returning to the spirit of the sixties, when poets typed their poems on manual typewriters, ran them off on Gestetner machines, then folded them in half and stapled them into little books they could give to friends and sell at readings. Of course, the technology is now more advanced, the books more attractive, and poets can promote through blogs and websites; but the same impetus is at work – to get the poems into the hands of readers.
The business of publishing is now so wide open it’s hard, if not impossible, for the average writer to get an overall sense of what’s going on. And from a reader’s perspective it can seem overwhelming. As another friend says, “There are days when I go down a rabbit hole and forget to come up.” Despite the woes of the book industry, people are still writing and people are still reading, but the shape and form of this relationship is in flux. The best I can do is compare publishing to language itself: messy, unpredictable, changeable, alive.
5 Comments
I began self-publishing over 10 years ago now after growing tired of waiting and waiting for a journal to respond to my poems let alone a full collection. It was a hit and miss process and meanwhile the clock was a ticking so I decided to self-publish.
I have self-published three poetry chapbooks, one full collection of poetry and a prose work. In the past eight years two of my chapbooks won literary prizes, one was short-listed this year and my prose work was short-listed for two different lit prizes in two different years, 2007 & 2008 respectively. My prose work ‘The fate of olives’ is being considered for a documentary by a local filmmaker.
The point of all this is to say that self-published work is not inherently crap, vain, pretentious, or all three. Publishers as Sandra points out in the WR interview do not always publish quality or even know it and this is especialy true when it comes to poetry. She also accurately points out that poets have been publishing themselves for ages: Whitman, Burroughs, the Tish poets of B.C., bpNichol, for example, to name a few.
The real problems of self-publishing, after getting past the image problem, are finding a good inexpensive free-lance editor and distribution.
This Carmelo guy makes a lot of sense. Self-published does not always equal vain or bad work. A lot of gifted writers and poets began life with private collections and self published. Auden is a good example.
Talk to David Zieroth (then known as Dale), he was publishing little staple together books in the early 70’s. He knows the route. Glad he is putting his writing and publishing skills to help other writer’s–with a classy touch.
Self-publishers are using freelance editors to ensure quality just as those who are submitting to publishing houses are. Often they just want to get the work to market faster. I had pop culture references in my humorous book “Beaver Bluff” that wouldn’t withstand the two+ year wait a publishing house might need to put it in a readers’ hands. I know people who have waited two years simply for a response from certain publishing houses, yet they wanted an “exclusive look.” Yikes.
You may have noticed that all categories of publishing sales fell last year with the exception of romance, which rose 35% due to 50 shades of grey. (report from Publisher’s Weekly). The publishing industry has become another big box store, and self publishing is the only option sometimes.