There's been a growing attempt\u00a0by some\u00a0authors to make the writing world a society of classes.\u00a0\u00a0Certain status-hungry\u00a0authors want to define terms\u00a0as labels.\u00a0 The labels\u00a0 allow\u00a0those writers\u00a0to cling to\u00a0the status that apparently means more to them than their relationships with other writers or their readers. In other words, the name game is really the fame game.<\/p>\n
Back in the olden days -\u00a0a couple of years ago - an author\u00a0was forced into a system where the people who created the work had to act as beggars, supplicants crawling in mass numbers to bow before the altars of literary agents.\u00a0 The agents functioned as super readers - if they liked your work they might deign to present it to publishers and rake in 15% of your sales for their efforts.\u00a0 And the publishers?\u00a0 Whether they were the \"Big 6\" or smaller, self owned \"independent\" companies, they generally published only work that was pretty much cookie-cutter - change the name of the author and the cover and send out the same kind of books over and over.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A writer's only alternative to getting their work to actual\u00a0readers was to pay to self publish it.\u00a0 Then they had to drive from bookstore to bookstore, trying to convince owners whose bread and butter was selling the books marketed by publishing companies.\u00a0 The authors could rent tables at flea markets or stand by their trunks in a mall parking lot like low-rent drug dealers, but none of it was very effective. None of it ever had or ever would have made a dent in the sales volumes of big publishers.<\/p>\n
And authors who had clawed and crawled their way to traditional or independent publishers\u00a0felt that they had \"paid their dues.\"\u00a0 Their work made the grade.\u00a0They'd crawled their way to the front of the agent line and their books were enough like all the other books already out there to be published by companies - those\u00a0owned by shareholders and governed by a board, or those\u00a0owned by a small group of\u00a0people who didn't answer to shareholders. \u00a0Those authors could look down their newly entitled noses at the fools peddling their work out of\u00a0their cars.<\/p>\n
Then a revolution happened.\u00a0 In the beginning, the first e-books were sneered at and denigrated by agents, publishers and company-approved authors.\u00a0 All of them could still\u00a0 look down their privileged noses at the poor fools who'd just found\u00a0new trunks to peddle from.\u00a0 Then the early digital efforts were joined by the biggest bookstore in the world - Amazon.\u00a0 And Amazon started saying that ebooks were the way of the future and Amazon would\u00a0make it happen.\u00a0 That started\u00a0a rumble of discontent from the agents, publishers and company-approved authors. But the rumble couldn't stop the tide as Barnes & Noble, Sony, KOBO, Google and Apple put out their own reader devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the car trunks grew and grew until they were as big as the audience to which they could\u00a0download and deliver.\u00a0 Readers used to cooking at the speed of the microwave could get their books delivered at the same rate without ever having to leave home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The old system shuddered and its walls quaked until they began to crumble.\u00a0 Today it makes\u00a0no difference\u00a0whether a book is uploaded by a shareholder owned company, a self owned company or by the author.\u00a0 All\u00a0 the books will sit side by side on the virtual shelves. All of 'em get\u00a0delivered the same way to readers.<\/p>\n
How amazing, right?\u00a0 Now it's all about the work.\u00a0 All writers have a shot at building a big enough audience to support their work full time.\u00a0 So across the globe, more and more writers have the chance to earn their living from writing books. It's a gigantic Kumbayah moment - or it should be.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it's not.<\/p>\n
See, the new world reality doesn't suit a group of those company-approved authors.\u00a0They want another way to separate themselves from the former trunk-peddlers.\u00a0 They want a way to make it clear to the world that they are - by God - superior to all other writers on the planet.\u00a0 Sales figures don't matter because after all - what do readers know?\u00a0 The disenfranchised former privileged class of writers\u00a0think they've found their rallying cry in LABELS.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the writers with a company seal of approval, here's how the labels should work.\u00a0 TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED should mean only writers published by a big publishing house. That means one of those big ole ' companies with shareholders and a board of directors and all the\u00a0corporate accompaniments.\u00a0 INDIE\u00a0should mean only writers published by a\u00a0privately owned company.\u00a0 SELF PUBLISHED should mean those former trunk peddlers who put out their own work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, wouldn't that make everyone happy?\u00a0 Well, not so much.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, it doesn't make sense.\u00a0\u00a0The former lines are blurred all over the place.\u00a0 Traditionally published today should mean that there is a company staffed by people who format the work, edit the work, and market the work.\u00a0 It doesn't matter\u00a0whether that company is big or small or whether it has shareholders or is privately owned.\u00a0\u00a0An indie company\u00a0would include very, very tiny companies that might be an author putting out his or her work in the name of a\u00a0company he or she created that might or might not exist on paper.\u00a0\u00a0That means that self published would apply to Writer X who puts out a book labeled as published by Writer X.\u00a0\u00a0Self published wouldn't apply if Writer X put out a book and listed the publisher as The House of X. \u00a0<\/p>\n
How about a writer like yours truly who has books out on Amazon that are published by Quacking Alone Romances but has the same books out and about everywhere else as being published by Smashwords?\u00a0 None of the books are published by Mary Anne Graham. Does that mean I'm not Self Published?\u00a0 Does it mean I'm not a former trunk peddler?<\/p>\n
As it happens, I'm not a former trunk peddler.\u00a0 I don't deserve the honor of that label.\u00a0 Those trunk peddlers had guts up the wazoo.\u00a0 Every man and woman amongst 'em believed in their work enough to pay to print it\u00a0because they were willing to do what it took to get their work out there.\u00a0 In the\u00a0ranks of any idiotic heirarchy, in my book, the former trunk peddlers should be at the very top rung, looking down on everyone who hid behind the mantle of any company.\u00a0 \u00a0I wish I'd had guts enough to do that.\u00a0 I didn't.\u00a0 I just tried to crawl and claw to the front of the agent's line and kept getting pushed back.\u00a0 And when I made it to the front, I got pushed back by Publishers who found my work too different from the cookie cutter.\u00a0 I can't claim the honor of having been a trunk peddler but they all claim my eternal admiration.<\/p>\n
None of the labels make sense and none of them serve a single purpose.\u00a0 Those who advocate for them claim that\u00a0company published books are edited better and are \"more professisonal.\"\u00a0 I'm reading one of those now by an author I won't name but adore.\u00a0 And I've found mistake after mistake in the thing - words that are misspelled,\u00a0words that are incorrectly used, grammatical errors enough to make an English teacher cry.\u00a0 But they don't detract from the story.\u00a0 IT'S ABOUT THE STORY, STUPID.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trying to define a term in a way that gives one group of writers cause to feel superior to another group of writers does nothing useful and it does nothing to help any of us. Let's celebrate our fellow authors.\u00a0 I like the term indie because I've been a rebel since my first breath of blessed South Carolina air.\u00a0 But whatever I call myself or you call yourself doesn't matter a hill of beans.\u00a0 All that matters is that the writing community should be a place where we\u00a0cheer for each other's\u00a0 successes and\u00a0mourn each other's\u00a0failures.\u00a0 I don't make enough (yet) off my work to write full time\u00a0but I hope to soon. And on that day of liberation,\u00a0I'd like to hear virtual cheers from across the Blogosphere, fanned by the Facebook militia, and crowding the Twitterverse. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The publishing world no longer fits in a box.\u00a0 The days of one size fits all are over - if they ever existed.\u00a0 And that's a good thing. That's an AMAZING THING. Let's\u00a0kick the boxes and the labelmakers to the curb and celebrate the possibilities that are open to all.<\/p>\n
We don't need labels.\u00a0 We need\u00a0readers to like our work. The books have never been about the authors. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STORY AND IT'S ALL ABOUT THE READERS. So let's not be stupidly trying to crawl back into boxes.\u00a0 Let's support each other.<\/p>\n
And if you're a writer, you can call yourself whatever\u00a0you like -\u00a0 I'll cheer for you\u00a0regardless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There's been a growing attempt\u00a0by some\u00a0authors to make the writing world a society of classes.\u00a0\u00a0Certain status-hungry\u00a0authors want to define terms\u00a0as labels.\u00a0 The labels\u00a0 allow\u00a0those writers\u00a0to cling to\u00a0the status that apparently means more to them than their relationships with other writers or their readers. In other words, the name game is really the fame game. Back ...continue reading \"Indie vs Self Published: What’s In A Name If The Game’s The Same?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739"}],"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=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1757,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}