It's\u00a0a buyer's market for almost everything, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, lets say\u00a0you are better off than most of us (me, especially) and you decide that this is the time to buy a house.\u00a0 You hire a realtor and\u00a0she drives you out to Neighborhood A to see a traditional ranch.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It has charm and character and doesn't look turned out of a cookie cutter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So you draw your realtor's attention to it and tell her you want to see that house.\u00a0 She hems and haws and tries to evade but when you insist, the realtor finally gives you an answer.\u00a0 \"No,\"\u00a0the realtor says, \"you can't see that house.\u00a0\"\u00a0\u00a0She's already met with the committee at the office.\u00a0 They reviewed who you were and what you would like and dislike and composed a list of acceptable houses.\u00a0 The craftsman wasn't on the list so it's not for you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 All of the books on the shelves had been screened for the readers by the publishing royals - agents, editors and publishing companies.\u00a0 The royals decided what readers should want and only put the acceptable books out there for the bookstores to stock and sell.\u00a0 So if a reader wanted a book, he or she had to buy one of those\u00a0in the store.\u00a0 And when the sale was made, the royals patted each other on the shoulder and said, \"See, we were right again.\"<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Traditionally published author and Salon writer\/co-founder Laura Miller wrote a piece recently<\/a> 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.\u00a0 Ms. Miller says that\u00a0what the revolution has done, in reality, is to outsource the agents and publishers'\u00a0slush pile to the readers.\u00a0 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?\"<\/p>\n Ms. Miller's piece says the public has \"no inkling of two awful facts:\u00a0 1) just how much slush is out there and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is.\"\u00a0 Well, gosh, she gave it 4 reallies.\u00a0 So it must be bad, right?\u00a0 Well then, readers must\u00a0be much better off under the\u00a0traditional system where the Royals screen the choices.\u00a0\u00a0They'd be much happier with the traditional ranch instead of the craftsman - whether they knew it or not.\u00a0\u00a0 Why put the readers through the \"awful\" process of deciding for themselves?<\/p>\n Why?\u00a0 Because\u00a0the world is not full of cookie-cutter people.\u00a0 And because THERE IS\u00a0NO SLUSH.\u00a0\u00a0 The so-called slush pile is just the\u00a0insulting term for all of the books that the Royals decided didn't suit their vision of what people should be reading.\u00a0 Wasn't the world a better place when no matter what readers chose, it would be an\u00a0\"acceptable\" choice?\u00a0\u00a0The Royals and Ms. Miller certainly think so, but I disagree.\u00a0 I think most readers and surely most American readers would\u00a0have rebelled against being force-fed years ago - except that most of them never realized the system existed.\u00a0 Most of them never knew that there were piles of amazing books in every genre that they'd never be allowed to choose.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Readers were not better served in the days when the Royals\u00a0kept the work that was too different locked away\u00a0until the writers surrendered and their dreams died.\u00a0\u00a0Only the publishers were better off when they held the keys to the kingdom.<\/p>\n What does the Indie Revolution mean to readers?\u00a0 Whatever they want it to mean; whatever they allow it to mean.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It means that the marketplace of ideas is wide open and writers can create what serves their vision.\u00a0 No longer do writers have to try to fit their work into a pigeonhole that a traditional publisher might find acceptable.\u00a0 It means writers can be as different and daring and original as the folks who will buy\u00a0their work and take their journey to make it their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n The destruction of the slush pile created a new world for writers, but it created a new one for readers too.\u00a0 The idea of that new world likely terrifies the former traditional publishing empire because it surely scares the stuffing out of Ms. Miller.\u00a0 Her piece says that\u00a0to date people hadn't seen \"the vast majority of what didn't get published\" which is a good thing.\u00a0 Because\u00a0\"it's enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.\"\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Ms. Miller, like the traditional publishing world from which she hails, disdains the\u00a0new indie world just as surely as the publishers\u00a0have for years discounted the\u00a0readers who will nurture the indie world, fertilize it and make\u00a0it grow.\u00a0 Contrary to popular belief in the circles of the literary elite, the \"general population\" is composed of some pretty bright, pretty discerning readers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n When all of \"that\u00a0stuff\" gets introduced to the readers, they'll have all of \"that stuff\" and the regular\u00a0stuff from which to choose.\u00a0 And that reality only scares the old world order, the traditional publishing royalty.\u00a0 It means that the power has passed from their hands to the hands of the \"general public.\"\u00a0 It means that the\u00a0value of the stamp of a traditional publishing house decreases as readers\u00a0pick their purchases\u00a0based on the author's voice and the author's vision.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the slush pile gets outsourced a magical thing happens - it disappears.\u00a0 Today the work can only get labeled \"slush\" if the authors choose to allow it to be insulted and\u00a0denigrated.\u00a0 It gets locked away only if the writers give away their power.\u00a0 More and more, writers are choosing to take their work directly to their audience.\u00a0\u00a0On the real or virtual shelf, it's not slush.\u00a0 It's a choice that the readers wouldn't\u00a0have had just a couple of years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yes, readers who find themselves in a real or virtual bookstore now face two paths that diverge. Some of them\u00a0will continue to take\u00a0the well-traveled one\u00a0blazed by the traditional publishing Royals. But others will take the new path and enjoy a new journey where no\u00a0agents or editors exist to filter or distill the voice and vision of the\u00a0author.\u00a0 Those who travel the new road will enter a new place.\u00a0 It may be more raw, more bold, and more dramatic.\u00a0\u00a0But that's okay.\u00a0\u00a0Some readers are like that too.<\/p>\n It's not a traditional ranch world anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It's\u00a0a buyer's market for almost everything, right?\u00a0 So, lets say\u00a0you are better off than most of us (me, especially) and you decide that this is the time to buy a house.\u00a0 You hire a realtor and\u00a0she drives you out to Neighborhood A to see a traditional ranch.\u00a0\u00a0 It turns out to be too traditional for ...continue reading \"What The Indie Revolution Means To Readers\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1086,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}