It's a buyer's market for almost everything, right?
So, lets say you are better off than most of us (me, especially) and you decide that this is the time to buy a house. You hire a realtor and she drives you out to Neighborhood A to see a traditional ranch. It turns out to be too traditional for you, but on your way to Neighborhood B to see the next house on the realtor's list you pass a cunning little craftsman with a "For Sale" sign in the yard. It has charm and character and doesn't look turned out of a cookie cutter.
So you draw your realtor's attention to it and tell her you want to see that house. She hems and haws and tries to evade but when you insist, the realtor finally gives you an answer. "No," the realtor says, "you can't see that house. " She's already met with the committee at the office. They reviewed who you were and what you would like and dislike and composed a list of acceptable houses. The craftsman wasn't on the list so it's not for you.
In reality, that scenario may not have happened to you on a house hunt, but in the past it happened every single time a reader walked into a bookstore. All of the books on the shelves had been screened for the readers by the publishing royals - agents, editors and publishing companies. The royals decided what readers should want and only put the acceptable books out there for the bookstores to stock and sell. So if a reader wanted a book, he or she had to buy one of those in the store. And when the sale was made, the royals patted each other on the shoulder and said, "See, we were right again."
Traditionally published author and Salon writer/co-founder Laura Miller wrote a piece recently that said all of us talking about the indie revolution have been focusing too much on what it means to "the reviled gatekeepers" in traditional publishing rather than to the readers. Ms. Miller says that what the revolution has done, in reality, is to outsource the agents and publishers' slush pile to the readers. And, she wonders, what will happen when all of those "previously rejected" manuscripts "hit the marketplace," swelling "the ranks of 99-cent Kindle and i-book offerings by the millions. Is the public prepared to meet the slush pile?"
Ms. Miller's piece says the public has "no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is." Well, gosh, she gave it 4 reallies. So it must be bad, right? Well then, readers must be much better off under the traditional system where the Royals screen the choices. They'd be much happier with the traditional ranch instead of the craftsman - whether they knew it or not. Why put the readers through the "awful" process of deciding for themselves?
Why? Because the world is not full of cookie-cutter people. And because THERE IS NO SLUSH. The so-called slush pile is just the insulting term for all of the books that the Royals decided didn't suit their vision of what people should be reading. Wasn't the world a better place when no matter what readers chose, it would be an "acceptable" choice? The Royals and Ms. Miller certainly think so, but I disagree. I think most readers and surely most American readers would have rebelled against being force-fed years ago - except that most of them never realized the system existed. Most of them never knew that there were piles of amazing books in every genre that they'd never be allowed to choose.
Readers were not better off in the days when piles of writer's visions and dreams were locked away in an "acceptable" version of a Nazi death camp. Readers were not better served in the days when the Royals kept the work that was too different locked away until the writers surrendered and their dreams died. Only the publishers were better off when they held the keys to the kingdom.
What does the Indie Revolution mean to readers? Whatever they want it to mean; whatever they allow it to mean. The vast variety of new work out there now and coming soon is as wide and varied and different as the people who will choose to buy and read it. It means that the marketplace of ideas is wide open and writers can create what serves their vision. No longer do writers have to try to fit their work into a pigeonhole that a traditional publisher might find acceptable. It means writers can be as different and daring and original as the folks who will buy their work and take their journey to make it their own.
The destruction of the slush pile created a new world for writers, but it created a new one for readers too. The idea of that new world likely terrifies the former traditional publishing empire because it surely scares the stuffing out of Ms. Miller. Her piece says that to date people hadn't seen "the vast majority of what didn't get published" which is a good thing. Because "it's enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population."
Ms. Miller, like the traditional publishing world from which she hails, disdains the new indie world just as surely as the publishers have for years discounted the readers who will nurture the indie world, fertilize it and make it grow. Contrary to popular belief in the circles of the literary elite, the "general population" is composed of some pretty bright, pretty discerning readers. With the indie books, just like with the traditional ones, they'll read the cover blurb and flip through the book before they ever decide to plunk down their hard-earned dollars. For the ebooks, they'll read the free excerpt and get a pretty good idea of the voice of the author before they hit the buy button.
When all of "that stuff" gets introduced to the readers, they'll have all of "that stuff" and the regular stuff from which to choose. And that reality only scares the old world order, the traditional publishing royalty. It means that the power has passed from their hands to the hands of the "general public." It means that the value of the stamp of a traditional publishing house decreases as readers pick their purchases based on the author's voice and the author's vision.
When the slush pile gets outsourced a magical thing happens - it disappears. Today the work can only get labeled "slush" if the authors choose to allow it to be insulted and denigrated. It gets locked away only if the writers give away their power. More and more, writers are choosing to take their work directly to their audience. On the real or virtual shelf, it's not slush. It's a choice that the readers wouldn't have had just a couple of years ago.
Yes, readers who find themselves in a real or virtual bookstore now face two paths that diverge. Some of them will continue to take the well-traveled one blazed by the traditional publishing Royals. But others will take the new path and enjoy a new journey where no agents or editors exist to filter or distill the voice and vision of the author. Those who travel the new road will enter a new place. It may be more raw, more bold, and more dramatic. But that's okay. Some readers are like that too.
It's not a traditional ranch world anymore.