"Self-Published Author" or "Independent Author"?

[WolfLarsen]

"Self-Published Author" or "Independent Author"?
An essay by Wolf Larsen

It is extremely difficult to become traditionally published. Something like only one out of every two thousand writers is traditionally published. And even if you are traditionally published you're not out of the woods yet. For every book that becomes a bestseller a couple of hundred go out of print within a few years.

Anyway, are you writing for commercial potential – or do you want to create great literature?

Self-publishing is becoming bigger and bigger. More and more writers are becoming self-published. Self-publishing is more economical than ever, and self-published books are going down in price as technology advances. Self-published books can now compete with traditionally published books.

The beauty of being self published is that you are independent. When you are published by a traditional publisher they can "edit" or mutilate your manuscript to make it more commercial. Many traditionally published authors complain that when the editors are done with their book they scarcely recognize their own book! The traditional publisher can also change the title. Maybe your contract stipulates that they have control of your next book. Basically, you're at the mercy of the publisher. You're basically their employee. And usually they don't do much to promote your book, leaving that burden upon you. Statistically, odds are your traditionally published book will be out of print within a few years.

On the other hand, when you are self published the company works for you. You call them up and they ask you, "what can we do for you sir?" On top of that, you control your book. You make the decisions. The self-publishing company works for you. If the self-publishing company isn't working for you, then you need a different self-publishing company.

But now, as technology further advances you no longer need a self-publishing company. There are now different ways to make your book available to the public without bothering with self-publishing.
On top of that, we writers can even bypass Amazon.com and bookstores if we want to.
Imagine if people can download your books from your website, and pay via PayPal or something like that. A common royalty per book is two dollars. Why not just bypass all the middle men and charge two dollars for your book? Probably more people will buy your book that way.

And the term "self-published" seems antiquated when publishing is going the way of the horse and buggy. Everything is becoming e-books, in one way or another. So why not call ourselves independent authors? Isn't that what we are – independent authors – independent of the big publishing conglomerates. We are independent authors who don't write "commercial fiction" or "airport novels" or whatever you want to call it.

Soon perhaps the independent authors may become more prestigious than the authors who write commercial fiction for the publishing conglomerates. Independent authors will hopefully write great literature, as opposed to writing commercial fiction.

Looking at this posting board. Most of the work here is better than most of the stuff published by the traditional publishing conglomerates. I see no reason why independent authors cannot become more prestigious than traditionally published authors.

These literary posting boards might become an avenue for this new great literature. If the posting boards start attracting more members of the general public who are readers, rather than writers, than you can see how literary posting boards can help independent authors find their audience. In this way, the literary posting boards can help facilitate great new literature becoming available to the reading public.

Let the traditional publishing conglomerates focus on making money. Let the independent authors focus on creating great literature.

Of course, many of us will not agree on what great literature is, but that's good for the readers. Independent authors will give the readers a greater variety of literature to choose from.

[Steven Hunley]

This is such a good post. It's worth considering.

[Oedipus]

"Independent authors will give the readers a greater variety of literature to choose from." - How? Independent authors as you call them have a reputation for putting out sub-par writing that couldn't make it in traditional publishing. Readers despise independent writers; they hate what they see as arrogant, unctuous pseudo-writers with egos that substitute for writing ability - that is the image of our 'independent' authors. Further; this variety is imaginary because indepedent authors may never get their work to a large audience.

[Lyn05]

I like the idea of an 'independent author'. I know of someone who writes webserials and from readers' donations, he gets at least a thousand a month, according to his Patreon profile. Of course, his situation is different from actual publishing, because ultimately he's writing for free - with or without donations, he's promised to continue. The amount he gets may not justify the effort he puts into writing (50 -60 hours a week), but surely it means something, right?

I've also heard of a couple of other online novelists who've managed to catch the eye of traditional publishers and have gotten their work printed.

These cases could be the exception, but they show that there can be good writing out there, and when your work is online- and on the right platforms- I believe it can reach out to a large audince, or at least, a large enough one. The guy I mentioned earlier? His serial garnered a total of 4 million views with a peak of 60k in one day, and 11k unique viewers at its best.

I could be overly optimistic, but if nothing else, I think independent authorship is a good way to start a career in writing given the difficulties in getting published tradtionally.

[Marbles]

There may be some examples here and there of a good writer rejected by the publishing industry who went independent and made it big (I'm personally not aware of any) but, those who can't get their manuscripts accepted anywhere go to self publishing houses. This perception, let's face it, runs strong, which means it adversely affects the sales of those books too.

There are no checks on the quality of the content published independently. For most of the time it's just blog-level writing getting fancy bookcovers and nothing more. The quality of writing in some books I have come across was simply atrocious, so bad that I felt like going to court to sue the author for damaging my aesthetic sensibilities.

There is also the problem of accessibility. Prima facie, self published e-books are easily accessible worldwide but this is not what actually happens. With the absence of a system to asses self-published works for their relative merits coupled with near-complete lack of sales-making publicity, an average reader doesn't know where to look for what, apart from making blind searches on the web and randomly picking up books with the most scintillating titles. (Come to think of it, only low-grade porn seems to get some sales for independent ebooks). And considering the scary multitude of self published ebooks in the last half-a-decade-or-so and the embarrassing quality of writing, it is likely that your independently published book will get far fewer sales than if it was published by a regular publisher.

This is not saying there aren't many serious problems with the uber-commercialisation of literature in the mainstream publishing houses. According to capitalist morality art should earn its keep, and this has led publishers to focus only on one thing: sales, sales, sales - and this is their triple bottom line now - without paying any mind to their professional ethics which not so long ago required them to look out for quality writing, groom an author, put trust in them, encourage them to write, publish them and wait to reap the eventual monetary rewards in due time. In short, do a little service to literature by virtue of their position in addition to making bankloads of moolah. But these days if a book is not expected to get instant sales, as good as your work may be, they just won't invest in you. The end result is that there's been a qualitative decline of writing: what we have is gradual degeneration of language and ideas into topical, circumstantial, event-based caricatures adorning front shop shelves which hardly pass for serious literature.

My advice to serious writers is to secure an agent and get published like it should be. Wait a long time if you can't find agents/publishers, hold it on. Meanwhile pay attention to the reasons of refusals and try to better your writing. Be patient....And leave the self publishing to blog-writers.

[WolfLarsen]

The status quo in literature is not working except for those making money. It's not working for readers who are bored. And it's not working for most writers. The status quo – which is based on money – discourages writers from being creative. The result is monotony and conformity. The result is a lot of potential readers are turned off from the literary world, and they do not read books.

Whose fault is it that more people don't read books? Maybe, if there was a greater variety of books to choose from people would read more books. Maybe, if there was more creativity people would read more. Publishing conglomerates are boring potential readers with a sea of monotony. And all too many writers are complicit in producing this sea of monotony. What is good writing? Merely knowing the rules of grammar? Is a good writing if it's not original? Don't get me wrong – if a conventional novel is VERY interesting I'll read it – but most of the stuff receiving prestigious literary awards is hardly original or creative.

If you just want well-written conventional literature this posting board is filled with it. Most of the writers here are as good or better than writers published by the publishing conglomerates. And I think there are writers here on this posting board who are far better than those writers receiving prestigious literary awards.

But one thing most of the writers here share with the writers published by the publishing conglomerates is that they are one trick ponies. They write conventional literature only. They do not know how to write anything creative. I don't think they even want to write anything creative. They are in their comfort zone writing conventionally, writing in a creative manner would require them to use more of their brains, it actually requires a great deal of effort at first, and perhaps they are just too intellectually lazy to do so. They are only capable of painting (with words) what is there. They appear to have no imagination. To be traditionally published you need only lack imagination, and know where the commas and periods go, and know the right people and say the right things to them, (it also doesn't hurt to mention to the traditional publishing conglomerate that you have a bunch of money to subsidize the publicity), and then you too can become a traditionally-published author. And once the authors start subsidizing in one form or another, doesn't it all just become subsidy publishing?

Moving on, the literary world is now challenged not only with television, but also with social media. Either the literary world offers people more variety and more creativity, or the literary world will reach a smaller and smaller percentage of the potential audience. People have other things to do besides be bored with a sea of conventional literary monotony.

I've read that publishers have been experimenting with multi-media forms in some of their e-books. So what? Multimedia has been around for a while now, and you can find it practically everywhere, that the publishing world is finally catching on to this is rather like a dinosaur trying to tread water. The basic monotonous airport novel structure is the same – albeit with a few bells and whistles – the airport novel product is still the same: monotonous.

The literary world is dominated by the corporate structure of publishing. Large conglomerates are often hostile to creativity. They become ossified. For literature to be creative and exciting it must free itself of the corporate structure of publishing.

In my mind, this means that literature goes in one direction – and the publishing corporations go in the other. I'm talking about a mutually beneficial divorce. Let the publishing corporations concern themselves with Harlequin romances, spy-thrillers, and "literary novels" that help people fall asleep at night. And let independent authors construct a great new exciting literature independent of the publishing conglomerates.

The publishing conglomerates have already divorced themselves from creative literature, it only remains for writers to get off their knees and stop kissing the *** of the publishing conglomerates. It only remains for writers to stand on their 2 feet and become independent authors of a great new creative literature!

And as to those respectable, prestigious, puritanical elements who babble nonsense out of the holes in their faces at literary gatherings all I can say about them is that they are a rotting putrid element. They are also an obstacle to a great, free, exciting, creative literature. When the respectable & prestigious & puritanical elements of the literary world open the holes in their faces at literary gatherings you practically need a pair of boots and a shovel it gets so deep! And there are many Puritans in the literary world who are having a chilling effect upon what is being written & published, there is all kinds of various degrees of censorship in the literary world. Many of the same elements who denounce the censorship of the past, are themselves guilty of promoting an environment of censorship in the literary world today.

Anyway, at least those who write spy-thrillers and Harlequin romances do not delude themselves of what their product is. Those who write "literary novels" that put people to sleep are not contributing any more to literature than the authors of spy-thrillers and Harlequin romances. They delude themselves that they are contributing something to literature. All they are contributing to is an endless chorus of yawns. But that's the intended result, no? Is not the purpose of "literary novels" to help people relax so that they can fall asleep at night?

Many of those that run the literary world believe that literature should be free of anything perverse, different, "vulgar", or creative. They are hostile to any literature that doesn't conform to the Lysol-clean-prose that defines most of what is heralded as "good literature". As far as I'm concerned, "good" literature written in good taste should be used as toilet paper! Whatever the puritanical guardians of "good taste" in literature consider to be worthwhile for publishing is probably a waste of trees!

A positive review of your "literary novel" In the New York Times Book Review may be helpful to the prestige of your literary career. But who reads the New York Times Book Review these days anyway? The same people that publish and read the "literary novels" that help people fall asleep at night.

Perhaps one of the reasons that so few writers want to challenge the status quo is that they don't want to ruffle any feathers in the literary world. They are afraid. They don't want to endanger their future "literary career". In the case of other writers, it never occurred to them that there's anything wrong with the sea of monotony that defines the literary world. Perhaps their minds are also a sea of monotony.

It may be true that much self-published literature is bad. But how does that make it any different than what's being published today by the publishing conglomerates?

At least in that mountain of self-published literature one will find original voices a lot easier than one will find original voices amongst the mountain of commercial literature. Here and there amongst that mountain of self-published literature you will find independent authors who are exciting to read and who are creative.

If one finds so much bad writing amongst self-published writers it is because they are copying the monotony of corporate fiction. Their dream is not to create great creative literature, but instead to become a respectable member of the literary world, and be a successful author published by a publishing conglomerate.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you not to place your airport novels with a traditional publisher. Go ahead and make some money if you can. Maybe you can even have two pen names. One pen name for writing great creative literature, and the other pen name for prestige and making money and all that.

And a small percentage of the literature published by the publishing conglomerates is actually worth reading. But most of it is little more than the intellectual equivalent of the McDonald's Big Mac. "Published by the publishing conglomerates" – doesn't that phrase sort of sound like an assembly line?

[Pumpkin337]

Independent authors as you call them have a reputation for putting out sub-par writing that couldn't make it in traditional publishing. Readers despise independent writers; they hate what they see as arrogant, unctuous pseudo-writers with egos that substitute for writing ability - that is the image of our 'independent' authors.

OHhhh I just realised you didn't mean the OP. Oops.

[Pumpkin337]

The status quo in literature is not working except for those making money. It's not working for readers who are bored. And it's not working for most writers. The status quo – which is based on money – discourages writers from being creative. The result is monotony and conformity. The result is a lot of potential readers are turned off from the literary world, and they do not read books.

Whose fault is it that more people don't read books? Maybe, if there was a greater variety of books to choose from people would read more books. Maybe, if there was more creativity people would read more. Publishing conglomerates are boring potential readers with a sea of monotony. And all too many writers are complicit in producing this sea of monotony. What is good writing? Merely knowing the rules of grammar? Is a good writing if it's not original? Don't get me wrong – if a conventional novel is VERY interesting I'll read it – but most of the stuff receiving prestigious literary awards is hardly original or creative.

If you just want well-written conventional literature this posting board is filled with it. Most of the writers here are as good or better than writers published by the publishing conglomerates. And I think there are writers here on this posting board who are far better than those writers receiving prestigious literary awards.

But one thing most of the writers here share with the writers published by the publishing conglomerates is that they are one trick ponies. They write conventional literature only. They do not know how to write anything creative. I don't think they even want to write anything creative. They are in their comfort zone writing conventionally, writing in a creative manner would require them to use more of their brains, it actually requires a great deal of effort at first, and perhaps they are just too intellectually lazy to do so. They are only capable of painting (with words) what is there. They appear to have no imagination. To be traditionally published you need only lack imagination, and know where the commas and periods go, and know the right people and say the right things to them, (it also doesn't hurt to mention to the traditional publishing conglomerate that you have a bunch of money to subsidize the publicity), and then you too can become a traditionally-published author. And once the authors start subsidizing in one form or another, doesn't it all just become subsidy publishing?

Moving on, the literary world is now challenged not only with television, but also with social media. Either the literary world offers people more variety and more creativity, or the literary world will reach a smaller and smaller percentage of the potential audience. People have other things to do besides be bored with a sea of conventional literary monotony.

I've read that publishers have been experimenting with multi-media forms in some of their e-books. So what? Multimedia has been around for a while now, and you can find it practically everywhere, that the publishing world is finally catching on to this is rather like a dinosaur trying to tread water. The basic monotonous airport novel structure is the same – albeit with a few bells and whistles – the airport novel product is still the same: monotonous.

The literary world is dominated by the corporate structure of publishing. Large conglomerates are often hostile to creativity. They become ossified. For literature to be creative and exciting it must free itself of the corporate structure of publishing.

In my mind, this means that literature goes in one direction – and the publishing corporations go in the other. I'm talking about a mutually beneficial divorce. Let the publishing corporations concern themselves with Harlequin romances, spy-thrillers, and "literary novels" that help people fall asleep at night. And let independent authors construct a great new exciting literature independent of the publishing conglomerates.

The publishing conglomerates have already divorced themselves from creative literature, it only remains for writers to get off their knees and stop kissing the *** of the publishing conglomerates. It only remains for writers to stand on their 2 feet and become independent authors of a great new creative literature!

And as to those respectable, prestigious, puritanical elements who babble nonsense out of the holes in their faces at literary gatherings all I can say about them is that they are a rotting putrid element. They are also an obstacle to a great, free, exciting, creative literature. When the respectable & prestigious & puritanical elements of the literary world open the holes in their faces at literary gatherings you practically need a pair of boots and a shovel it gets so deep! And there are many Puritans in the literary world who are having a chilling effect upon what is being written & published, there is all kinds of various degrees of censorship in the literary world. Many of the same elements who denounce the censorship of the past, are themselves guilty of promoting an environment of censorship in the literary world today.

Anyway, at least those who write spy-thrillers and Harlequin romances do not delude themselves of what their product is. Those who write "literary novels" that put people to sleep are not contributing any more to literature than the authors of spy-thrillers and Harlequin romances. They delude themselves that they are contributing something to literature. All they are contributing to is an endless chorus of yawns. But that's the intended result, no? Is not the purpose of "literary novels" to help people relax so that they can fall asleep at night?

Many of those that run the literary world believe that literature should be free of anything perverse, different, "vulgar", or creative. They are hostile to any literature that doesn't conform to the Lysol-clean-prose that defines most of what is heralded as "good literature". As far as I'm concerned, "good" literature written in good taste should be used as toilet paper! Whatever the puritanical guardians of "good taste" in literature consider to be worthwhile for publishing is probably a waste of trees!

A positive review of your "literary novel" In the New York Times Book Review may be helpful to the prestige of your literary career. But who reads the New York Times Book Review these days anyway? The same people that publish and read the "literary novels" that help people fall asleep at night.

Perhaps one of the reasons that so few writers want to challenge the status quo is that they don't want to ruffle any feathers in the literary world. They are afraid. They don't want to endanger their future "literary career". In the case of other writers, it never occurred to them that there's anything wrong with the sea of monotony that defines the literary world. Perhaps their minds are also a sea of monotony.

It may be true that much self-published literature is bad. But how does that make it any different than what's being published today by the publishing conglomerates?

At least in that mountain of self-published literature one will find original voices a lot easier than one will find original voices amongst the mountain of commercial literature. Here and there amongst that mountain of self-published literature you will find independent authors who are exciting to read and who are creative.

If one finds so much bad writing amongst self-published writers it is because they are copying the monotony of corporate fiction. Their dream is not to create great creative literature, but instead to become a respectable member of the literary world, and be a successful author published by a publishing conglomerate.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you not to place your airport novels with a traditional publisher. Go ahead and make some money if you can. Maybe you can even have two pen names. One pen name for writing great creative literature, and the other pen name for prestige and making money and all that.

And a small percentage of the literature published by the publishing conglomerates is actually worth reading. But most of it is little more than the intellectual equivalent of the McDonald's Big Mac. "Published by the publishing conglomerates" – doesn't that phrase sort of sound like an assembly line?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

[WolfLarsen]

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

Oh yeah, when I dress up like a lady I'll tell you I'm one sexy lady!

[WolfLarsen]

In a previous post I was rather strong worded in regards to those of a more puritanical nature.

But I just remembered that there are those of a puritanical nature who do not force their puritanical nature on others. They do not seek to censor anything.

But as to those who seek to force their puritanical nature on others, all I can say is imagine if those of us with a less than puritanical nature sought to enforce our way of writing upon them! Imagine if it was a requirement to write in a "obscene" or "vulgar" manner! But that is exactly what many with a puritanical nature are trying to do to everyone else, to force them to write in a puritanical manner or be censored.

And there are those who claim that those of us who write in a less than puritanical nature are merely trying to use "shock value". What they are forgetting is that what may seem shocking to them is normal to others. For those who grow up or live in a sheltered environment perhaps being shocked is all too easy.

This poses a problem for the writer. When I noticed that my self-censored poetry was far more likely to get published in literary magazines than the stuff I wasn't self-censoring I simply stopped submitting to literary magazines. It poses a dilemma.

The other thing I'm thinking about is how do self-published or independent authors make the general public aware that their work exists?

It seems that the main problem for the self-published or independent author is simply getting the general public to know about his work.

[illiterate1]

i think there's a real dilemma, in that often self-published material *is* just material that couldn't be published elsewhere because it's of a lower quality.

i think that's true of the things i've self-published under pseudonyms.

i think the issue is with figuring out what and how is strategically unpublishable. that is, i recognize and relate to your commitment to self-determination in writing, wolf, and your sense that the really real work--the writing that might actually move things forward--might be in many ways unpublishable.

it's a question of how to find the strategically unpublishable forms that are unpublishable because they're a threat, rather than simply because they stink--and also on finding and developing the kinds of quality-control networks on the "outside" that the publishing conglomerates represent for the "inside"

finding and establishing communities committed to high-quality, strategically unpublishable work

[Marbles]

it's a question of how to find the strategically unpublishable forms that are unpublishable because they're a threat, rather than simply because they stink--

Good point. To date I have not seen any independently published author convincingly enunciate the difference between the two phenomena. It's usually blog-writers whingeing ad nauseam when agents and publishers reject their trash masquerading as 'experimentation.'

[WolfLarsen]

Good point. To date I have not seen any independently published author convincingly enunciate the difference between the two phenomena. It's usually blog-writers whingeing ad nauseam when agents and publishers reject their trash masquerading as 'experimentation.'

Why would anybody send anything experimental to an agent or a traditional publisher?

[Marbles]

Why would anybody send anything experimental to an agent or a traditional publisher?

Every successful experimental work which augurs break from the tradition is met with resistance by the traditionalists but there are always those who take up that work and, in time, that work comes to be seen as the first drop, upon which a whole new tradition is built, and then when that tradition goes past its sell-by date, someone of the new age tries their hand on another new, experimental work, which augurs yet another break from the hitherto established norm. In short, what we collectively and myopically call old ways of tradition or convention has a full history of experimental breaks which have advanced the cause of art.

It is in this sense I consider new works to be experimental, unconventional, different, special, and even dangerous. And it goes without saying that no break from the tradition survives without some inquisitive mind in the publishing world chancing upon it, believing in it, and investing in its future potential.

[Pumpkin337]

I agree, but sometimes it is still just offensive rubbish :)

[WolfLarsen]

Every successful experimental work which augurs break from the tradition is met with resistance by the traditionalists but there are always those who take up that work and, in time, that work comes to be seen as the first drop, upon which a whole new tradition is built, and then when that tradition goes past its sell-by date, someone of the new age tries their hand on another new, experimental work, which augurs yet another break from the hitherto established norm. In short, what we collectively and myopically call old ways of tradition or convention has a full history of experimental breaks which have advanced the cause of art.

It is in this sense I consider new works to be experimental, unconventional, different, special, and even dangerous. And it goes without saying that no break from the tradition survives without some inquisitive mind in the publishing world chancing upon it, believing in it, and investing in its future potential.

What era of publishing are we talking about?

Today publishing conglomerates (owned by people like Rupert Murdoch) are mostly publishing books based on their commercial potential, and little else. And literary agents are looking for books that make them money.

If you want unconventional writing – you can find it – but you have to look for it.

As regards conventional writing it seems easier to find good conventional writing on literary posting boards like this one than it is to find it amongst traditionally published books.

I'm not saying that you can't find good contemporary conventional writing amongst traditionally published books, but it seems like you do have to look for it amongst a sea of airport novels.

[Marbles]

What era of publishing are we talking about?

Today publishing conglomerates (owned by people like Rupert Murdoch) are mostly publishing books based on their commercial potential, and little else. And literary agents are looking for books that make them money.

If you want unconventional writing – you can find it – but you have to look for it.

As regards conventional writing it seems easier to find good conventional writing on literary posting boards like this one than it is to find it amongst traditionally published books.

I'm not saying that you can't find good contemporary conventional writing amongst traditionally published books, but it seems like you do have to look for it amongst a sea of airport novels.

Most literature that's produced during a time period is of throwaway variety. One has to always seek out good writing amid the sea of mediocrities. This is as true now as it was in the past.

[WolfLarsen]

Most literature that's produced during a time period is of throwaway variety. One has to always seek out good writing amid the sea of mediocrities. This is as true now as it was in the past.

Well, certainly, my guess is that most literature does get thrown away. An unfamous writer dies and his manuscripts get thrown away.

Is this a good thing? Not always. Perhaps lots of masterpieces are throw away in this manner. I think that there should be some repository for manuscripts, so that great works of literature do not die with the writer.

I think the question of traditional publishing versus self-publishing is a tactical question for the writer. If the writer cannot get traditionally published then the writer can use self-publishing. This is also true for many traditionally published writers at some point, because so many traditionally published books go out of print so quickly.

I think the main question facing self-published or independent authors is how to reach the general public. Most people don't realize your books are there. How do you reach the general public?

[illiterati]

i'm tired of getting kicked off of discussion forums. i'm thinking about starting a small press--or less ambitiously, to start with, a lit mag. i'd like to avoid the models of lit-mag-as-a-place-to-pad-your-dumb-c-v that are currently available, and i have some ideas about how to do that, but i'd be curious as to what you think. if you're interesting in the possibility of collaborating on a project like this, or would like to help brainstorming at the conceptual stage, i'm all ears. email me at [email protected]

we could call it "Strategically Unpublishable"

[WolfLarsen]

i'm tired of getting kicked off of discussion forums. i'm thinking about starting a small press--or less ambitiously, to start with, a lit mag. i'd like to avoid the models of lit-mag-as-a-place-to-pad-your-dumb-c-v that are currently available, and i have some ideas about how to do that, but i'd be curious as to what you think. if you're interesting in the possibility of collaborating on a project like this, or would like to help brainstorming at the conceptual stage, i'm all ears. email me at [email protected]

we could call it "Strategically Unpublishable"

Something needs to be done. We writers (most of us) are in a situation worse than fast food workers. If you're not successfully traditionally published than you're treated like a leper. Well most of us are lepers then!

You know what I find inspiring: the Stonewall riots. To be a writer today is like to be gay before the Stonewall riots. I'm not saying we should riot, but we need to do something!

Even if you get traditionally published there's a good chance that they'll mutilate your manuscript, not sufficiently promote it, and then surprise surprise you are then one of the legions of FORMALLY traditionally published writers, because now your book is out of print.

And editors are paid stingy wages and work long hours. Why do they even bother? The publishing industry is owned by people like Rupert Murdoch.

If you write airport novels like romance, action, country-Western, detective stories, and the like than the place for you is the publishing conglomerates.

But what about the rest of us? And when I say the rest of us I'm not just talking about those that write experimental works, I'm also talking about those that write good conventional literature as well. What can we do to reach the general public?

Yes there are things like giving interviews, book signings (when you can get them), but what else can we do? Do others have ideas?

(Even getting interviews in mainstream news media can be difficult for many self-published or independent authors. The publishing conglomerates are owned by the same conglomerates that own news media corporations.)

They say that all self-published work is bad, but so much of the traditionally published stuff is also bad. Overall, I don't think the traditionally published stuff is any better than the self published stuff. I will say you are more likely to find something unusual amongst the self published stuff. I think that the traditionally published books are more like mainstream radio stations, and self-published books are more like college stations where there's more variety. Perhaps saying that self published work is bad has more to do with the self-interest of those connected to the book publishing conglomerates.

[Pumpkin337]

i'm tired of getting kicked off of discussion forums. i'm thinking about starting a small press--or less ambitiously, to start with, a lit mag. i'd like to avoid the models of lit-mag-as-a-place-to-pad-your-dumb-c-v that are currently available, and i have some ideas about how to do that, but i'd be curious as to what you think. if you're interesting in the possibility of collaborating on a project like this, or would like to help brainstorming at the conceptual stage, i'm all ears. email me at [email protected]

we could call it "Strategically Unpublishable"

Not a bad idea, but you will still need to have some standards and criteria as you can not publish every thing and you will then just be doing what every one else does ... judging what is creative, interesting, sellable (because I assume this will not be a free publication?) and excluding what is deemed not creative, interesting, sellable. And the authors you don't publish will moan just as you are about the 'establishment' which you will have become.


Something needs to be done. We writers (most of us) are in a situation worse than fast food workers. If you're not successfully traditionally published than you're treated like a leper. Well most of us are lepers then!

This I can somewhat agree with. If you aren't published you aren't given much credit or cache BUT .... there is a REASON for this attitude. If you aren't good enough to be published (or in the case of self-published author - not good enough to actually sell more than 5 copies to your friends and family) then well you are a wannabe (or a bitter and twisted person whose ambitions exceed their ability).



You know what I find inspiring: the Stonewall riots. To be a writer today is like to be gay before the Stonewall riots. I'm not saying we should riot, but we need to do something!

Yes write something decent with something to say in understandable well edited English and either do the rounds of publishers or publish it yourself and then do the work other indie authors do in having an online presence via blog, FB, twitter, etc, promote it to every avenue online there is (and there are many) until you get sales. OR you could just moan in forums like this one... your choice.




Even if you get traditionally published there's a good chance that they'll mutilate your manuscript, not sufficiently promote it, and then surprise surprise you are then one of the legions of FORMALLY traditionally published writers, because now your book is out of print.

Sour grapes ... write something else, take it back to the publisher, but they probably already told you ... some stuff does not sell and please write something sellable. Instead of doing that you publish it on forums where you get the same negative feedback either directly or people just ignore it which you ignore completely.



And editors are paid stingy wages and work long hours. Why do they even bother? The publishing industry is owned by people like Rupert Murdoch.

What did he do to you? You seem to have a major beef with the guy that is more than just a little personal. Was it one of his companies that told you that your vulgarities were unpublishable?



If you write airport novels like romance, action, country-Western, detective stories, and the like than the place for you is the publishing conglomerates.

And what may I ask is wrong with all these genres? Just because YOU don't like them, does not mean that the people who do like them are wrong and that the people writing them are wrong for doing so. Or even that their writing is bad. I've read many action, detective and Westerns that are really good.



But what about the rest of us? And when I say the rest of us I'm not just talking about those that write experimental works, I'm also talking about those that write good conventional literature as well. What can we do to reach the general public?

Yes there are things like giving interviews, book signings (when you can get them), but what else can we do? Do others have ideas?

Well it bears repeating:

1. Write something decent in good English, without an excess of anger and swearing that actually says something worth reading.

2. EITHER take it to a publisher or publish it yourself through one of the many options available.

3. Stop moaning, get off your proverbial and run a blog, FB, Twitter, social media account of your choice and interact with people in a non-angry meaningful way and build a fan base.

4. Promote your book through the multiplicity of online avenues to do so. (Its hard work, but others have made a success for themselves this way)



(Even getting interviews in mainstream news media can be difficult for many self-published or independent authors. The publishing conglomerates are owned by the same conglomerates that own news media corporations.)

They say that all self-published work is bad, but so much of the traditionally published stuff is also bad. Overall, I don't think the traditionally published stuff is any better than the self published stuff. I will say you are more likely to find something unusual amongst the self published stuff. I think that the traditionally published books are more like mainstream radio stations, and self-published books are more like college stations where there's more variety. Perhaps saying that self published work is bad has more to do with the self-interest of those connected to the book publishing conglomerates.

Sour grapes my friend, sour grapes. Get off your hobby horse and instead of endlessly beating that tired old drum get off your bum and DO SOMETHING because ... the people in publishing you think did you a dirty DO NOT GIVE A RAT'S @R$3, will not ever read one of your rants and even if by some miracle they did, WOULD NOT GIVE A RAT'S @R$3 ... all you sound like is yet another disgruntled author who can't write moaning about how the system rejected his 'masterpiece'.

And here is another bit of unsolicited advice.... most people who buy books do not buy stuff that is just an angry meaningless rant ... the vast majority want a nice story, with characters they can identify with, that takes them out of their lives and provides a few hours entertainment. This is why the best selling books of all time are romance stories. You can rant about it, you can say how wrong it is, how badly written they are blah blah blah ... but this will not change the reality of the situation one teeny tiny bit.

Regardless of where you publish ... if you do not write something that people want it won't sell. End of Story. If you want to write angry, vulgar, rants, 'avante garde' 'cutting edge' stuff then you must know from the get go it won't sell, won't make you famous, won't earn you a living. Do it because you enjoy doing it, even publish it if you want, be the disenfranchised angry artist in your attic .... but .. moaning about the situation isn't going to change squat.

The problem is not the publishing system ... you have a very deep fundamental misunderstanding there, the "problem" is that they cater to what people will buy .... and what people buy is a few hours of escapist entertainment.



PS most self-published stuff is appallingly badly written, has never seen an editor, is filled with typos, grammatical errors etc. The FEW that aren't sell.

[illiterati]

LITTACHUR


History of small independent presses
printing tny runs of 100 copies
of noBODY gawnna READ it books =
history of the avant-garde =
history of littachur.

You look back at what we call
literary histry last 100
years or so & what you find
a succession of small & mostly
insular groups, people making
a big to-do about each
other’s books—but actually
READING & getting BEHIND
each other’s books around a
shared aesthetic—& into a
COMMUNIY—viz. 1863 in Paris,

Exhibition of Rejected Artists
first technically so-called avant-
garde, the rejects of the
school-run popularity contests
who GOT TOGETHER
& DID something about it—viz.

William Carlos Williams Spring &
ALL—big fresh new book of
American idiom writ by small town
doctor, grew up Puerto Rican
mother Spanish language spoke
@ home—printed 1923 tiny run
of 100 copies not even those
could sell, known to whom? no one
but eZ Pound & co.—now re-released
as stand-alone volume bought
by crowds (in relative terms) almost
a century later—so much depends
upon / a red wheel / barrow—

look back last 100 years literary
histry—littaCHUR—find
succession of “movements”—
after mummery & cheap
parlor tricks of paid academics
pulled away, all that’s left
a handful of rugged individuals
committed to each other’s
WORK—

from Transcendentalism --> modernism
--> Beat Generation --> Language:

What difference between Johnnie
HandBinder in the basement hand-
binding by hand bright pages of
bilge fr summary disposal @
CreatASPACE (r OUTERspace)
& yr regular typical official unofficial
avant-garde MOVEMENT /
future of the littachur CANON?

only DIFFERENCE is
a COMMUNITY writ
as SOCIAL POEM—
a SCHOOL outside the
SCHOOL—he is eZra
POUND who is
eZra POUND in
SPIRIT—

channeling eZ Pound right now—
just finished in my chair tonight
reading General eZ’s Italian Radio
broadcasts—that old fascist sure
was a sorry anti-semite f**K—
I don’t feel a bit sorry for him
that they threw him in a metal box,
Italian war camp, prizner uv
WAR & on to St. Elizabeth’s
mental lockdown charged as
TRAITOR for spouting bile
on public airways while Dachau
plugged away a nation over—serves
him right—but he sure did know a
thing or two about how
kulchur works—

Ol’ eZ knew you need
a community, a structure—
you need yr professors &
students & journalists &
propagandists & biographers &
hooligans & printers & presses
& public relations people—you need
yr littachur historians & web
designers, yr administrators
& philologists—& most times
y’re playing every role yrself—

put all THAT together in
competition w/ the school, &
the school will have to write
you into littachur just to
shut you UP—

easiest to see the mechanics
of it in more recent quote
unquote movements, but since
no one KNOWS anything about
any verse writ after 1945, it’s NOT
so easy to see—

yr general lay reader having
in mind as poetry rhymed
couplets, he a Washington Irving
having gone to SLEEP these
past twelve DECADES—
even those claiming the mantle
POET, what it means most
times, is having read &really
comprehended at most two
or three committed verse-workers
of recent years & accounting
himself an EXPERT—
and sadder still, in practical
& relative terms him BEING
a kind of EXPERT—

What yr typical self-published
author lacks, what separates
him from yr official unofficial
avant-garde, is exactly the
kind of cultural capital
the school guards very closely—
& on the other hand the ones
who have the school’s capital,
why—they’re teaching
in its classrooms & publishing
in its magazines & generally
having HEALTH insurance—

they have their reward in
this life!

an avant-garde is a community
outside the school that perpetuates,
for itself, the kind of
cultural capital the school
protects, a community
that has the form of a school
but isn’t one—

STRATEGICALLY UNPUBLISHABLE—
to comprehend what’s current
as well as what is past, &
what’s current about
the past and past about
the current: & to use
that knowledge to stand against
the current in the kind of way
that shapes it—

[WolfLarsen]

Great piece by Illiterati there!

Somebody said he likes many country-Western, spy-thriller, kind of writing – and he hates, or seems to hate, avant-garde writing. All I can say is to each his own.

For a few laughs I looked up The New York Times fiction bestseller list. It appears to be mostly low-quality airport novels. I don't see how anyone can argue that the traditional publishing conglomerates are turning out quality. Maybe some quality books are getting traditionally published, but it's mostly stuff like cops & robbers and international espionage thrillers. No surprise there.
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/hardcover-fiction/list.html

What did surprise me is that according to Forbes magazine 15 out of the 100 best-selling Kindle books in Britain are self published. No wonder those that defend the publishing conglomerates don't like the new wave of self-publishing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/01/14/self-published-books-hit-kindle-bestseller-list/

With self-published books by independent authors beginning to reach success I think it's wonderful that writers have an alternative to traditional publishers. 20 years ago writers were basically the slaves to traditional publishers. There were six publishing conglomerates – known as the six sisters – and they stood as the six gods of Olympus hoarding it over writers.

If you want to go with a traditional publisher than go with a traditional publisher. I read a decade ago that for every traditionally published author there were 2000 writers that were not traditionally published. And for every book that became a bestseller, hundreds of others went out of print. I don't know if that's changed in the past decade, but I doubt it. The defenders of the traditional publishing industry seem to argue that only the greatest works of literature survive. Actually, the opposite seems to be the case, at least when it comes to contemporary fiction. Just look at all the airport novel garbage on the New York Times bestseller list.

I really think the most important question is how do serious writers get their works to the general public. Whether you are writing good-quality conventional stuff, or whether you're writing experimental stuff, how do you reach the general public?

Most writers – whether they are self-published or traditionally published – whether they are writing conventional or experimental literature – are just not reaching the general public.

Pumpkin pointed out that with social media and the Internet in general more avenues for writers to reach the general public are opening up. That's true. But what else can we do? Are we missing something here?

[Marbles]

Much repetition here. I don't see why people are going on and on about it.

If a writer has his or her work rejected numerous times from various publishers, the first thing they need to do is do some self-questioning. The questions they should be asking themselves are: if they have a conscious understating of the art they are attempting to create? If they know the rules of the game? If what they have written stands for good writing in the light of the unwritten (and written) rules set out by their master predecessors? etc. What they should do is set aside their personal delusions about them being 'born artists' who have 'something great to say' and be humble and realistic.

Second - and it's really important - they must be widely read. They must have a decent reading history because the only way to write well is to be well read. Further, for direct instruction in the art of writing, invest some time reading the essays, diaries and lectures of master-writers to see what they have to say about the art of writing, what criteria they set out for the new writers and then decide if their writings fit the bill. For starters, to list a few, please read Gustave Flaubert's Collected Letters, Anton Chekhov's essays, William Faulkner's correspondences, Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, Milan Kundera's collection of essays on the art of writing called The Curtain and the same writer's The Art of Novel, Flannery O'Conner's Mystery and Manners.

This material which I have listed alone should be required reading for the budding writer, for it will instruct them in the craft of writing in a manner the formal 'creative writing' courses cannot. One major lesson to learn from the listed masters is that a story that reads like journalistic reporting and moves by frequent info dumps and that which is vulgar in its expression, is a heap of rubbish.

If you absorb their ideas and make them the natural chemistry of your writing style and manner you cannot possibly go wrong - unless, of course, if you are completely devoid of talent.

[WolfLarsen]

You must be widely read to write airport novels? Really?

[Marbles]

You must be widely read to write airport novels? Really?

But don't we both agree that those "airport novels" are bad?

By the way, did you spare a thought to what I wrote?

[WolfLarsen]

But don't we both agree that those "airport novels" are bad?

By the way, did you spare a thought to what I wrote?

Do we both agree that airport novels are bad? But isn't publishing airport novels the main pastime of publishing conglomerates?

As far as being well read I have a BA in English literature cum laude. I've read a lot too. A whole lot! And I'm one of the dumb ones around here. There are lots of well-educated well-read people on this very website who write excellent conventional literature, if that's your thing. After reading conventional literature for decades I'm frankly just tired of it. But if you just wanna read well-written conventional literature there's tons of that around here on this site, and on other sites too.

Regarding traditionally published books: why should anyone bother wading through all the airport novels to try and find good conventional literature, when there's tons of it on literary posting boards like this one. And why are these people posting on literary boards? Probably because most of them can't get traditionally published.

[Marbles]

Do we both agree that airport novels are bad? But isn't publishing airport novels the main pastime of publishing conglomerates?

As far as being well read I have a BA in English literature cum laude. I've read a lot too. A whole lot! And I'm one of the dumb ones around here. There are lots of well-educated well-read people on this very website who write excellent conventional literature, if that's your thing. After reading conventional literature for decades I'm frankly just tired of it. But if you just wanna read well-written conventional literature there's tons of that around here on this site, and on other sites too.

Regarding traditionally published books: why should anyone bother wading through all the airport novels to try and find good conventional literature, when there's tons of it on literary posting boards like this one. And why are these people posting on literary boards? Probably because most of them can't get traditionally published.

I disagree with your division of literature into conventional and unconventional, or avant-garde. The literature, the writing, is either good or it is bad. The content does not matter; the words do. What is said is not important; how it is said is important. Going by these standards if I am a writer I will focus on improving the style and form of my writing while reading widely, with attendant care to detail, paying heed to what the recognised masters have said of this art rather than complaining incessantly about what the publishing houses are producing. As for the latter, they produce a lot of junk but good writing also comes out from the same publishers. After all, give me one fantastic fiction writer who has not found a publisher after as many tries as the so called 'experimental' fiction writers who mistake stylistic anarchy for originality, vulgarity for open-mindedness, and kitsch for art.

[WolfLarsen]

Wouldn't it be nice to have something original to read?

Why does everybody have to write the same?

[illiterati]

here's yr favorite author:

Lolita, svet moej zhizni, ogon’ moih chresel. Greh moj, dusha moja. Lo-li-ta: konchik jazyka sovershaet put’ v tri shazhka vniz po nëbu, chtoby na tret’em tolknut’sja o zuby. Lo. Li. Ta.

Ona byla Lo, prosto Lo, po utram, rostom v pjat’ futov (bez dvuh vershkov i v odnom noske). Ona byla Lola v dlinnyh shtanah. Ona byla Dolli v shkole. Ona byla Dolores na punktire blankov. No v moih ob’’jat’jah ona byla vsegda: Lolita.


now, it might be the best piece of writing yu've ever seen, but without any russian, and without the context to guess it's the beginning of lolita, it's all gibberish.

my point is there are grammars within a language, not just the brute things called basic competency, then standard english, then "style." style's a complex grammar within the language that comes into being over time. it has a history. it changes. now if all you want to do is reproduce that grammar, first in your head and then in your soul and then on the page--fine. but some of us want to say new things in new ways, the grammars for which haven't yet seen light of day, and writing is our way of practicing those new grammars and modes and forms of meaning making: meta-style.

now, if i'm working in a meta-style, a crystalline abstraction of very fine and tenuous grammar, that you've never seen or thought of before, to you it will be gibberish, to one degree or another. maybe not a brute gibberish of words (although, it may be that), but a finer gibberish of style. it's true that in many cases, a writer misunderstands what is in fact a deficiency in some more or less basic capacity of that meta-grammar called literary production as something wild and innovative and new. turns out they just fell short. that's the phenomenon y're thinking of, marbles and pumpkin. but what an avant-garde writer does is attempt to develop novel grammars of meaning style and significance that can gain enough leverage to go out into the world and alter it, first through small communities (the avant-garde), then through the academies, and finally, a hundred years from now, Marbles, you are recommending Wolf Larsen's diaries on some website and getting all preachy about how cultured writers need to use the word 'penis' all the time if they want to be A students.

[MANICHAEAN]

In a way Wolf I agree with you. It's so long since I have read anything original, that I take refuge in the "classics."

[Pumpkin337]

There is nothing new under the sun, there are only 7 basic plots that get told over and over since man first put pen, brush, ink to paper, scroll, parchment ... the skill of the author is in how you construct that tale which would be where things like grammar, construction, ability to tell a meaningful story that interests readers etc comes into play. And if you want to sell your masterpiece of story telling it has to be something which more than 10 people would be interested in buying. You can determine this by approaching people who do have some idea of what sells ie publishers or you can put it into the market place yourself ... ultimately the determination of good / bad / sellable / unsellable is determined by the customer who has to be willing to part with his/her hard earned cash for your writing regardless of whether you or a publishing company put it out there.

[Marbles]

here's yr favorite author:

Lolita, svet moej zhizni, ogon’ moih chresel. Greh moj, dusha moja. Lo-li-ta: konchik jazyka sovershaet put’ v tri shazhka vniz po nëbu, chtoby na tret’em tolknut’sja o zuby. Lo. Li. Ta.

Ona byla Lo, prosto Lo, po utram, rostom v pjat’ futov (bez dvuh vershkov i v odnom noske). Ona byla Lola v dlinnyh shtanah. Ona byla Dolli v shkole. Ona byla Dolores na punktire blankov. No v moih ob’’jat’jah ona byla vsegda: Lolita.


now, it might be the best piece of writing yu've ever seen, but without any russian, and without the context to guess it's the beginning of lolita, it's all gibberish.

my point is there are grammars within a language, not just the brute things called basic competency, then standard english, then "style." style's a complex grammar within the language that comes into being over time. it has a history. it changes. now if all you want to do is reproduce that grammar, first in your head and then in your soul and then on the page--fine. but some of us want to say new things in new ways, the grammars for which haven't yet seen light of day, and writing is our way of practicing those new grammars and modes and forms of meaning making: meta-style.

now, if i'm working in a meta-style, a crystalline abstraction of very fine and tenuous grammar, that you've never seen or thought of before, to you it will be gibberish, to one degree or another. maybe not a brute gibberish of words (although, it may be that), but a finer gibberish of style. it's true that in many cases, a writer misunderstands what is in fact a deficiency in some more or less basic capacity of that meta-grammar called literary production as something wild and innovative and new. turns out they just fell short. that's the phenomenon y're thinking of, marbles and pumpkin. but what an avant-garde writer does is attempt to develop novel grammars of meaning style and significance that can gain enough leverage to go out into the world and alter it, first through small communities (the avant-garde), then through the academies, and finally, a hundred years from now, Marbles, you are recommending Wolf Larsen's diaries on some website and getting all preachy about how cultured writers need to use the word 'penis' all the time if they want to be A students.

Yes, Vladimir Nabokov, one of my favourite writers. And because there is so much that is wrong with what you've written [new form and style I can understand, but what does creating new grammar mean anyway?] that a quote from the very Nabokov would suffice: "My difficulty...is that not all the readers to whom I talk...are experienced. A good third...do not know the difference between real literature and pseudo-literature."

This was in Nabokov's time. In our age, given the degeneration of good writing owing to the compulsions of profit-driven publishing industry and given the availability of wide array of mediums to blog-writers for spreading their tawdry writings masquerading as 'experimental' work in cool-looking online spaces, and given also that people's attention spans have been reduced to reading and writing only twitter-length substance, in my estimation, a good four-fifth have forgotten the difference between profound, timeless, multidimensional writing of a genius and the ramblings of a narcissistic, self-obsessed, deranged mind.

[Pumpkin337]

yes, vladimir nabokov, one of my favourite writers. And because there is so much that is wrong with what you've written [new form and style i can understand, but what does creating new grammar mean anyway?] that a quote from the very nabokov would suffice: "my difficulty...is that not all the readers to whom i talk...are experienced. A good third...do not know the difference between real literature and pseudo-literature."

this was in nabokov's time. In our age, given the degeneration of good writing owing to the compulsions of profit-driven publishing industry and given the availability of wide array of mediums to blog-writers for spreading their tawdry writings masquerading as 'experimental' work in cool-looking online spaces, and given also that people's attention spans have been reduced to reading and writing only twitter-length substance, in my estimation, a good four-fifth have forgotten the difference between profound, timeless, multidimensional writing of a genius and the ramblings of a narcissistic, self-obsessed, deranged mind.

kudos!! I agree fully. Just because it is 'new' or breaks the rules or is 'avante garde' does not make it the work of a genius. And I would remind every one that often so-called avante garde in the art world just turns out to be kitsch of the worst possible kind.

[WolfLarsen]

What Socialist Publishing Might Look Like
An essay by Wolf Larsen

What would socialist publishing look like? First of all, on this side of the Atlantic all of the publishing executives and all of the literary agents could go flip hamburgers. On the other side of the Atlantic they could fry fish and chips.

Under socialism the writers would control the publishing process. In addition, union wages would be paid to all those working in the publishing industry, including editors. There would also be compensation for any overtime. Hence, the white-collar sweatshop conditions that exist today in the publishing industry would come to an end. (And please do not confuse socialism with Stalinism.)

It seems to me that it would be logical to organize the publishing industry in the following manner: one division of each publishing house would be devoted to "genre literature". Under this division you would publish books that fell under the country-Western genre, the Harlequin romance genre, the spy thriller genre, etc. I think that to this could be added a puritanical genre for those who are easily upset by just about anything, including even the lightest sexuality. Better to have a Puritan genre for these people than to have censorship. Instead of trying to impose their Puritanism on everybody else, these people could just stick to the Puritan genre.

Then there would be a "serious" literary fiction division. Most of the stuff on this site would be published in this division. These would be well-written conventional stories.

Then there would be an experimental division. Those who hate experimental works need not read books published by this division. Seems simple enough.

And then there would be a nonfiction division. My guess is this is where most of the editors would be employed. Not every expert on such-and-such a subject is a good writer.

Given the technology that now exists I think it would be economical to basically publish every manuscript submitted. Yes, that's right, publish every manuscript submitted. Why not? It could be arranged so that putting out an e-book would cost virtually nothing. And with print-on-demand softcover books can be cheaply produced as well.

An authors cooperative could take the place of Amazon.

Basically, changes in technology have made book publishing as we know it obsolete. There is no reason to continue with the status quo.

[Pumpkin337]

What Socialist Publishing Might Look Like
An essay by Wolf Larsen

What would socialist publishing look like? First of all, on this side of the Atlantic all of the publishing executives and all of the literary agents could go flip hamburgers. On the other side of the Atlantic they could fry fish and chips.

Under socialism the writers would control the publishing process. In addition, union wages would be paid to all those working in the publishing industry, including editors. There would also be compensation for any overtime. Hence, the white-collar sweatshop conditions that exist today in the publishing industry would come to an end. (And please do not confuse socialism with Stalinism.)

It seems to me that it would be logical to organize the publishing industry in the following manner: one division of each publishing house would be devoted to "genre literature". Under this division you would publish books that fell under the country-Western genre, the Harlequin romance genre, the spy thriller genre, etc. I think that to this could be added a puritanical genre for those who are easily upset by just about anything, including even the lightest sexuality. Better to have a Puritan genre for these people than to have censorship. Instead of trying to impose their Puritanism on everybody else, these people could just stick to the Puritan genre.

Then there would be a "serious" literary fiction division. Most of the stuff on this site would be published in this division. These would be well-written conventional stories.

Then there would be an experimental division. Those who hate experimental works need not read books published by this division. Seems simple enough.

And then there would be a nonfiction division. My guess is this is where most of the editors would be employed. Not every expert on such-and-such a subject is a good writer.

Given the technology that now exists I think it would be economical to basically publish every manuscript submitted. Yes, that's right, publish every manuscript submitted. Why not? It could be arranged so that putting out an e-book would cost virtually nothing. And with print-on-demand softcover books can be cheaply produced as well.

An authors cooperative could take the place of Amazon.

Basically, changes in technology have made book publishing as we know it obsolete. There is no reason to continue with the status quo.

ROFLMAO .... and.... ROFLMAO .... and .... ROLFMAO

*pauses to wipe tears of laughter from my eyes*

oh thank you so much for what has to be the funniest thing I have read today .... finally a piece of fantastical fiction from Wolf Larson that is not puerile, fixated on sexual organs, or vulgar and is actually genuinely funny.

You do know that socialism is 100% guaranteed to fail? Every time. Without fail? For the very very obvious reason that why should you do jack**** if you get paid regardless of how much work you actually do? It doesn't take long for even the biggest fool to work out that his buddy who does half the work he does still gets the same share .... and it doesn't take too much longer before he thinks ... why the hell am I busting my balls? .... and soon every one thinks the same thing and no-one does any work at all and it all goes to hell in a handbasket .... just ask the Russians what happened to their marvelous social experiment.

And who cares if EVERY book is published ... the natural selective process of just WHO will actually READ them will still ensure that the cr@p falls to the bottom of the pile ... almost exactly how the process of publishing and sales works today. IDIOT!

[WolfLarsen]

Who Should Control the Publishing Industry?
Some thoughts by Wolf Larsen

Who should control the publishing industry? Currently, executives like Rupert Murdoch preside over big publishing corporations. Under the status quo editors are paid stingy wages, and work in white-collar sweatshop conditions. Editors often bring work home with them, and are not compensated for this extra work. Editors deserve better working conditions and better pay. Let the publishing executives like Rupert Murdoch go get a job!

In addition, the contention that publishing executives are concerned with the quality of the books available to the reading public is undermined by just looking at what books are being published. The publishing conglomerates favor airport novels like spy thrillers and Harlequin romances over quality fiction. That's not surprising, because the main concern of publishing conglomerates is their bottom line.

I propose that writers should run the publishing conglomerates, and that every manuscript submitted should be published. Why not? With current technologies it is now possible to publish all manuscripts on an economical basis. It takes very little money to create an e-book, and with print-on-demand technology even less popular paperbacks need not lose money. Of course, some tweaking of the publishing system would be required.

Since it is now affordable to publish everything why should anybody choose what's to be available to readers, and what's not to be available to readers? Why not let readers choose for themselves what they want to read? One reader may wish to purchase an action thriller, another may wish to purchase literary fiction, and still another reader may wish to purchase an experimental work. Let each reader decide for himself what is bad and good. Let each reader decide for himself what he wants to read. If all manuscripts are published are available to readers, than the readers can read whatever they want, without some middleman deciding what will be available and what will not be available.

Of course, more traditionally minded people would argue that quality would suffer. No it wouldn't! Just look at the New York Times best-selling list, and you'll know that in terms of quality the situation couldn't possibly get any worse than it already is. The fact of the matter is, not only are publishing conglomerates not interested in quality, but apparently large numbers of the reading public are not interested in quality either.

The economics of capitalist publishing do not favor good quality fiction. On the contrary, the economics of capitalist publishing seems to favor airport novels. And if the reading public wants to read airport novels that should be their right. But, at the same time both experimental works and quality conventional fiction should be available as well, even if it's not going to make any money.

Before the current technologies it was impossible to publish all books. Hence, it was necessary for somebody to choose which books would become available to the reading public, and which books not. However, there's no need anymore for anyone to choose which books become available, because it's now economically feasible to make all manuscripts available.

This will also help to ensure that manuscripts do not wind up in the garbage once a writer dies. God knows how many masterpieces have been lost this way.

[HCabret]

Who Should Control the Publishing Industry?
Some thoughts by Wolf Larsen

Who should control the publishing industry? Currently, executives like Rupert Murdoch preside over big publishing corporations. Under the status quo editors are paid stingy wages, and work in white-collar sweatshop conditions. Editors often bring work home with them, and are not compensated for this extra work. Editors deserve better working conditions and better pay. Let the publishing executives like Rupert Murdoch go get a job!

In addition, the contention that publishing executives are concerned with the quality of the books available to the reading public is undermined by just looking at what books are being published. The publishing conglomerates favor airport novels like spy thrillers and Harlequin romances over quality fiction. That's not surprising, because the main concern of publishing conglomerates is their bottom line.

I propose that writers should run the publishing conglomerates, and that every manuscript submitted should be published. Why not? With current technologies it is now possible to publish all manuscripts on an economical basis. It takes very little money to create an e-book, and with print-on-demand technology even less popular paperbacks need not lose money. Of course, some tweaking of the publishing system would be required.

Since it is now affordable to publish everything why should anybody choose what's to be available to readers, and what's not to be available to readers? Why not let readers choose for themselves what they want to read? One reader may wish to purchase an action thriller, another may wish to purchase literary fiction, and still another reader may wish to purchase an experimental work. Let each reader decide for himself what is bad and good. Let each reader decide for himself what he wants to read. If all manuscripts are published are available to readers, than the readers can read whatever they want, without some middleman deciding what will be available and what will not be available.

Of course, more traditionally minded people would argue that quality would suffer. No it wouldn't! Just look at the New York Times best-selling list, and you'll know that in terms of quality the situation couldn't possibly get any worse than it already is. The fact of the matter is, not only are publishing conglomerates not interested in quality, but apparently large numbers of the reading public are not interested in quality either.

The economics of capitalist publishing do not favor good quality fiction. On the contrary, the economics of capitalist publishing seems to favor airport novels. And if the reading public wants to read airport novels that should be their right. But, at the same time both experimental works and quality conventional fiction should be available as well, even if it's not going to make any money.

Before the current technologies it was impossible to publish all books. Hence, it was necessary for somebody to choose which books would become available to the reading public, and which books not. However, there's no need anymore for anyone to choose which books become available, because it's now economically feasible to make all manuscripts available.

This will also help to ensure that manuscripts do not wind up in the garbage once a writer dies. God knows how many masterpieces have been lost this way.

Is art derived from mass production less valid than the art derived from independent production?

The Beatles suck because I hate parlophone. Lion King sucks because I hate Disney. Martin Creed sucks because I hate the Tate.

[HCabret]

Wouldn't it be nice to have something original to read?

Why does everybody have to write the same?
Good writers borrow, great writers steal, only god's creations are original.

[illiterati]

Yes, Vladimir Nabokov, one of my favourite writers. And because there is so much that is wrong with what you've written [new form and style I can understand, but what does creating new grammar mean anyway?] that a quote from the very Nabokov would suffice: "My difficulty...is that not all the readers to whom I talk...are experienced. A good third...do not know the difference between real literature and pseudo-literature."

This was in Nabokov's time. In our age, given the degeneration of good writing owing to the compulsions of profit-driven publishing industry and given the availability of wide array of mediums to blog-writers for spreading their tawdry writings masquerading as 'experimental' work in cool-looking online spaces, and given also that people's attention spans have been reduced to reading and writing only twitter-length substance, in my estimation, a good four-fifth have forgotten the difference between profound, timeless, multidimensional writing of a genius and the ramblings of a narcissistic, self-obsessed, deranged mind.

7/27/14, 12:30 PM
passenger seat, somewhere between MI & MS

Dearie Mahblez,

I’d like to think I’m making the effort to carefully read and charitably interpret yr comments. I’m not convinced the reverse is true, but I implore you to prove me wrong.

Now see, it seems to me that one of our main sticking points in this here debate comes down to the difference between intelligibility and value, construed objectively.

If I can figure yr logic right, it seems like these two qualities (intelligibility & value) are—if not equivalent, at least coextensive. Where there’s no intelligibility, there’s no value, & that holds true as a pretty good measure of things all the way down or up.

To take a smaller & more manageable example of the kind of logic that, correct me if I’m wrong, motivates yr position on the broader topic: What I mean is, in the comment above, the move from, “I don’t understand,” to “there is so much that is wrong with…” For you, because the idea of generating new grammars don’t make no sense, it therefore has no value; & that this bears some analogy with yr stance on experimentalism more generally: if it doesn’t fit into the established models of generating literary value & significance—intelligibility as literature—it has no value or at least a reduced & far more limited kind of value.

Now, as I’ve made explicit more that once, I too accept this idea of things as a PARTIAL explanation of literary value—to take it back to the smaller example (which we’re using as a kind of metaphor for the bigger question), I accept the possibility that my comments on grammar or meta-style might be unintelligible to you because fundamentally or intrinsically unintelligible; or ultimately without substance, or power as ideas; or because poorly expressed; &c. &c.

[but also the reverse possibility: that it is not intelligible for you because y’re not party to the forms of grammar that might make it intelligible AS value]

Likewise, I accept as a valid but PARTIAL interpretation yr take on questions of literary value & experimentalism. Well geez—tired of the sound of my own voice—have made myself clear on this point (“avant-garde” often = a failure of art rather than the creation of new forms of value)—go back & read what I writ—BUT—if you care to know my point:

It seems to me so much of what goes by the name of grammar--& that more nuanced grammar called style—isn’t about style at all, or competency or intelligibility—it’s about a gotcha game of cultural authority. In the same way that the rhetoric of style, in yr comments Marbles, has several times appeared in conjunction with a kind of infantilizing resort to pedagogy: I am the Master and you are the student—submit to me.

So much of the actual material practice of grammar & the rhetoric of grammar is about an exercise of force, regulating who is in and who is out, who has authority to write and speak, and who does not.

Now, if we want to play a gotcha game of cultural authority, I won’t end up the student. I mean if we’re going to play that kind of priggish game—where to even start? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to imagine that I’ve spent a good one-third of my waking life reading & writing. That’s about ten years, clock time, spent reading. I have a genius IQ. I scored in the top percentile on my SATs—in SEVENTH GRADE. I’ve had a college reading level since I was 7—gone on to terminal degrees—better call me Dr., Mr. Marbles—have writ big tomes of scholarly research, am accounted an expert in my fields—have taught @ top ten schools—my verse’s appeared in print & electronic all over the place, reputable mags—have published articles & articles & articles—

if we want to PLAY that kind of gotcha game—

but I think we both see how obnoxious such displays can be—so let’s, please, approach each other as peers or not at all.

& so much of what goes by the name of grammar boils down to exactly that kind of vulgar display—sometimes more & sometimes less subtle.

~

“timeless & eternal classics”

We all remember a first approach @ Shakespeare. We come to it knowing it’s supposed to have value—we’re told it has value—we want it to have value—to be part of the conversation—& then we get to the text itself and—that stuff is DENSE—At 12 or 13, it’s not a thing the timeless value of which is immediately apparent, or easily got at. My point is, being able to apprehend that value takes TRAINING—3 letters, now: J-O-B-S.

Now, I don’t dismiss the fact of value, or even what you refer to as “genius”—(though there are some problems with the concept, certainly—it too has a history & context, it’s not a transcendent universal essence—see Bob Perelman’s “Trouble with Genius”)—

Just because I acknowledge the dependence on training our ability to recognize & access the value of a Shakespeare, don’t mean I believe just any old thing could have the same effect. It’s not that I’m walking you into an empty room in the museum, to trigger the epiphany: “you are the work of art.”

The point I am making is that new forms of value, literary or otherwise, are often unrecognizable as such. The “grammar” according to which they might be understood as value doesn’t yet exist or hasn’t yet been acquired.

I’ve got a very flexible definition of ‘avant-garde—maybe distinguish from Berger’s definition of the historical avant-garde—Dada, Futurist, etc.—shake the words up in a hat & spit em out, there’s yr poem.

No—I mean as ‘avant-garde’ those new forms of writing & literary value which are difficult, in their moment, to recognize as such; but which go on to generate & proliferate the grammars by means of which we recognize their value (Dante writing in the vernacular, Shakespeare illiterate of Greek & Latin); by means of which they sometimes come to be confused with value as such, as I feel has happened in yr (& many people’s) conception of things—There has always been a cultural police force using the rhetoric of grammar to DENY new articulations of value.

So for me, I have the very weird idea that “literary canon” and “avant-garde” are the same phenomenon viewed from different perspectives of historical distance or nearness; IMPORTANTLY:

that it’s just as difficult to recognize the value of ‘classical’ literary texts as it is to recognize the value of those rare ‘avant-garde’ works which go on to become the future face of the canon; that many of the same people attempting to forcefully police the boundaries of literary value with recourse to the rhetoric of “timeless classics” & grammar & style, are the very same people who would have decried the vulgarity & unfitness of the classical before they were classics. These people are parasites, basically, leeching off the cultural capital of literary texts without any real understanding of what’s at stake.

Now, do I think Wolf Larsen is our next Shakespeare? Not really. I was being a little bit facetious with the ‘cultured writers use the word penis all the time’ example—but I respect his commitment to self-determination & the integrity of his commitment to the insight that creating NEW value isn’t a question of consensus—from a popular readership or a publishing house or the guardians of culture.

[Pumpkin337]

I mostly don't disagree in principle .. evolution is the natural process of human endeavor. We build on what came before ... sometimes we manage to improve on it (I am yet to be convinced that say modern art is an improvement on more representational works where an actual ability to draw something recognisable is a requirement) ... sometimes we don't ... but in general each generation attempts to do something 'new' and 'different' that often somehow ends up being rather similar to something done in the past (there is nothing new under the sun after all) and regardless of when it happens ultimately its the court of public opinion that determines whether or not something survives. And that you can not deny. We have Shakespeare and other classics because enough people agree that these are good enough to keep to pass on. Ultimately it is demand (or what sells) that determines what is passed on. If no one had wanted copies of Shakespeare, none would have been printed and we would go 'Shakespeare who?' if a rare copy had survived, but there was a demand and copies were made and audiences paid money to see the plays performed, still pay money to see the plays performed, so its all very well to be all idealistic or intellectual about it, but bottom line ... its the people who are prepared to part with money for the books that determine the longevity of it.

Regardless of how you may feel about it, the market place is where goods fail or succeed. We have seen this throughout history ... why don't we have a store selling handchipped stone age axes? No demand! Why don't we have illustrated hand lettered texts any more? No demand! Why don't we have hand made parchment to write on freely available? No demand! The list of goods no longer available because there is no market for them is very long. History is littered with examples.

[WolfLarsen]

Shakespeare is overrated. I decimated his sonnets with my cantos. I admit, Shakespeare's plays are much better than his sonnets. At the present moment I am vandalizing one of his plays – the one entitled "Much Ado about Nothing". My version is entitled "Much Shift on My Dick". Unfortunately, my voice recognition software will not say shift – there it goes again – because of the prudery of our society. The prudery of our society is literally programmed into my voice recognition software – I hate it. I have to train it to say bad words – the best words – in the English language.

Anyway, you know my play "Much Shift on My Dick" is going to be waaaaaaaay more interesting than Shakespeare's! And if I can do it – if I can be better than Shakespeare – why can't others on this website be better than Shakespeare too? Challenge the assumptions of the literary establishment! Why except anything as true? Gravity is true. But let me tell you something – unless there's a nuclear war first – the greatest literature of mankind is in its future – not in its past. When literature is free of the profit motive – than literature will truly blossom into the greatness it is destined to achieve!

This goes to what illiteratti was saying about the "guardians of culture". Let the "guardians of culture" go find some creativity!

There are some here who contend that there are no more plots. That we must steal from each other. Then why not write books with no plots? Or invent new plots! Every single one of my creative books shows that this contention that there are only so many plots is pure nonsense! And considering that there are so many people on this website and everywhere who are smarter than I am, the possibility of endless plots not yet invented are infinite! The problem is a lack of imagination. You might be brilliant. Brilliant is not enough. You need imagination too, so that you're not redoing what a zillion people have already done. What's the point of that?

And I like illiteratti's point about grammar too, and the way that he makes his point with the style of writing he uses in his post. I will never forget a predominantly African-American posting board, where the inventive style of the comments were far better than the conventional prose that they were commenting on. I think these were predominantly college-educated African-Americans whose prose (because of academic training) was just as boring as their white American counterparts. But they loved to have fun with each other getting the **** (oh the voice recognition software finally said it) of the English language on their Dicks or pens.

Since I'm not African-American, they did not seem very enthusiastic about me joining them getting the **** of the English language on my Dick or pen. So, as a second-generation Québecois (& Irish & Norman) I will do it on my own. I guess we all have a role to play in getting the **** of the English language on our Dicks or pens, our pens being a phallus symbol. We will each get the **** of the English language on our Dicks or pens in our own individualistic creative manner. We will march together in the same protest against Puritanism, against censorship, against conventional mediocrity, against the corporate profit motive destroying literature. We will march together for individualism, creativity, freedom from the chains of corporate fiction, and freedom from the constraints that the "guardians of culture" seek to impose on us! But we will do so with our own individual manuscripts in our hands. Each writer will invent his own literary movement! Each writer will write completely different than all the other writers! We will march together to achieve whatever goals we have in common – but when we sit at the desk to create great innovative literature we will simultaneously be celebrating our own individualism!

When you tell people how to write – which is what the conventionalists or the "guardians of culture" are trying to do – then you are trampling on individualism. When you whine incessantly about this or that being "vulgar" – when you are promoting censorship – then you are trampling upon the free expression of the writer.

These "guardians of culture" along with the corporate profit motive in literature, are the biggest threats to literary culture that I could possibly imagine! Long live freedom of expression! Down with censorship! Long live creativity! And may the day arrive when we writers are finally free of the corporate structure that dominates literature, and may the day arrive when we are free of academic conservativism, and may the day arrive when we are free of censorship, and we are free of these stale "guardians of culture".

[HCabret]

Shakespeare is overrated. I decimated his sonnets with my cantos. I admit, Shakespeare's plays are much better than his sonnets. At the present moment I am vandalizing one of his plays – the one entitled "Much Ado about Nothing". My version is entitled "Much Shift on My Dick". Unfortunately, my voice recognition software will not say shift – there it goes again – because of the prudery of our society. The prudery of our society is literally programmed into my voice recognition software – I hate it. I have to train it to say bad words – the best words – in the English language.

Anyway, you know my play "Much Shift on My Dick" is going to be waaaaaaaay more interesting than Shakespeare's! And if I can do it – if I can be better than Shakespeare – why can't others on this website be better than Shakespeare too? Challenge the assumptions of the literary establishment! Why except anything as true? Gravity is true. But let me tell you something – unless there's a nuclear war first – the greatest literature of mankind is in its future – not in its past. When literature is free of the profit motive – than literature will truly blossom into the greatness it is destined to achieve!

This goes to what illiteratti was saying about the "guardians of culture". Let the "guardians of culture" go find some creativity!

There are some here who contend that there are no more plots. That we must steal from each other. Then why not write books with no plots? Or invent new plots! Every single one of my creative books shows that this contention that there are only so many plots is pure nonsense! And considering that there are so many people on this website and everywhere who are smarter than I am, the possibility of endless plots not yet invented are infinite! The problem is a lack of imagination. You might be brilliant. Brilliant is not enough. You need imagination too, so that you're not redoing what a zillion people have already done. What's the point of that?

And I like illiteratti's point about grammar too, and the way that he makes his point with the style of writing he uses in his post. I will never forget a predominantly African-American posting board, where the inventive style of the comments were far better than the conventional prose that they were commenting on. I think these were predominantly college-educated African-Americans whose prose (because of academic training) was just as boring as their white American counterparts. But they loved to have fun with each other getting the **** (oh the voice recognition software finally said it) of the English language on their Dicks or pens.

Since I'm not African-American, they did not seem very enthusiastic about me joining them getting the **** of the English language on my Dick or pen. So, as a second-generation Québecois (& Irish & Norman) I will do it on my own. I guess we all have a role to play in getting the **** of the English language on our Dicks or pens, our pens being a phallus symbol. We will each get the **** of the English language on our Dicks or pens in our own individualistic creative manner. We will march together in the same protest against Puritanism, against censorship, against conventional mediocrity, against the corporate profit motive destroying literature. We will march together for individualism, creativity, freedom from the chains of corporate fiction, and freedom from the constraints that the "guardians of culture" seek to impose on us! But we will do so with our own individual manuscripts in our hands. Each writer will invent his own literary movement! Each writer will write completely different than all the other writers! We will march together to achieve whatever goals we have in common – but when we sit at the desk to create great innovative literature we will simultaneously be celebrating our own individualism!

When you tell people how to write – which is what the conventionalists or the "guardians of culture" are trying to do – then you are trampling on individualism. When you whine incessantly about this or that being "vulgar" – when you are promoting censorship – then you are trampling upon the free expression of the writer.

These "guardians of culture" along with the corporate profit motive in literature, are the biggest threats to literary culture that I could possibly imagine! Long live freedom of expression! Down with censorship! Long live creativity! And may the day arrive when we writers are finally free of the corporate structure that dominates literature, and may the day arrive when we are free of academic conservativism, and may the day arrive when we are free of censorship, and we are free of these stale "guardians of culture".
Hamlet does the horny teenage boy routine better and Othello does melanin better. Is the space bar also a phallic symbol?

[HCabret]

What Socialist Publishing Might Look Like
An essay by Wolf Larsen

What would socialist publishing look like? First of all, on this side of the Atlantic all of the publishing executives and all of the literary agents could go flip hamburgers. On the other side of the Atlantic they could fry fish and chips.

Under socialism the writers would control the publishing process. In addition, union wages would be paid to all those working in the publishing industry, including editors. There would also be compensation for any overtime. Hence, the white-collar sweatshop conditions that exist today in the publishing industry would come to an end. (And please do not confuse socialism with Stalinism.)

It seems to me that it would be logical to organize the publishing industry in the following manner: one division of each publishing house would be devoted to "genre literature". Under this division you would publish books that fell under the country-Western genre, the Harlequin romance genre, the spy thriller genre, etc. I think that to this could be added a puritanical genre for those who are easily upset by just about anything, including even the lightest sexuality. Better to have a Puritan genre for these people than to have censorship. Instead of trying to impose their Puritanism on everybody else, these people could just stick to the Puritan genre.

Then there would be a "serious" literary fiction division. Most of the stuff on this site would be published in this division. These would be well-written conventional stories.

Then there would be an experimental division. Those who hate experimental works need not read books published by this division. Seems simple enough.

And then there would be a nonfiction division. My guess is this is where most of the editors would be employed. Not every expert on such-and-such a subject is a good writer.

Given the technology that now exists I think it would be economical to basically publish every manuscript submitted. Yes, that's right, publish every manuscript submitted. Why not? It could be arranged so that putting out an e-book would cost virtually nothing. And with print-on-demand softcover books can be cheaply produced as well.

An authors cooperative could take the place of Amazon.

Basically, changes in technology have made book publishing as we know it obsolete. There is no reason to continue with the status quo.
Do mean "socialism" more in vein of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Roseanne Barr?

[Marbles]

@ illiterati

My apologies if I appeared to be some stuck up proponent of classics and a dismisser of new forms, new style and new language (I'm not). This was not the intention. I agree with the main thrust of your argument, about the classics and avant-garde, and about the need to practice new approaches to literature. My point is only that one needs to cast a cautious look at what's being produced and sold as 'avant-garde'. Sadly, in our digital age, everyone who can spell and scores good CGPA in their BAs thinks she's some born artist incarnate whose genius is overlooked.

[WolfLarsen]

Sadly, in our digital age, everyone who can spell and scores good CGPA in their BAs thinks she's some born artist incarnate whose genius is overlooked.

Maybe we need to learn how to un-spell, how to spell them words incorrectly, how to damage grammar, how to mutilate English or whatever other language we write in.

And you're right that anybody can spell correctly, even the illiterate, thanks to voice recognition software.

Why spell correctly? What for?

I envy the rest of you. If I weren't chained to voice recognition software because of medical problems I would be spelling everything incorrectly!

[Pumpkin337]

James Joyce does a similar stream of consciousness thing as you attempt Wolf Larsen .. the difference is ... his work actually makes sense, is literate, funny, intelligent, thought provoking, the drifts into stream of consciousness writing make sense if you care to disentangle them .... they aren't the puerile ravings of a disillusioned naartjie moaning about how awful the world is because it won't buy his cr@p. I would have said 'possibly drug induced' but then some other drug induced visions in the hands of some one who didn't think that using certain 4 letter words was 'art' (why does this remind me of those 'avante garde' art installations of a pile of feces and the like?) produced such works as Kubla Khan and Upon Westminster Bridge.


FYI you are confusing profanity with vulgarity. You might want to get out that old dictionary from where-ever you tossed it, meanings of words are actually fairly important to avoid making even more of an dick of yourself.



Opinions on profanity in poetry:

http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/56799

I rather liked this one:

"Profanity is the common crutch of the conversational cripple."

[HCabret]

Maybe we need to learn how to un-spell, how to spell them words incorrectly, how to damage grammar, how to mutilate English or whatever other language we write in.

And you're right that anybody can spell correctly, even the illiterate, thanks to voice recognition software.

Why spell correctly? What for?

I envy the rest of you. If I weren't chained to voice recognition software because of medical problems I would be spelling everything incorrectly!
The monk of the aldgate was much better at respelling words. Does the lack of an extra letter in favorite really change the meaning of the word all that much? Writing is kind of like building with legos, youve got all he pieces and can either build something new or you can randomly construct something.

Think of natalie portman in garden state.

I pity those in the world who wish nothing more than to dictate their own personal whims and tastes on others. I suggest that people use language however they personally please to do so. If you want to spell words wrong, then by god do it!, if you want to spell them right, then do it! Creativity is about removing the boundries of rules and constraints, not just redefining the already existing rules and boundries.

There is much to be said for sublty. The imagination is much more active when some can be left for it.

[WolfLarsen]

Cabret has interesting things to say.

Illiteratti also has interesting things to say.

And other people have this to say: the publishing industry is good because Wolf Larsen sucks.

Regarding the argument that the publishing industry is good because Wolf Larsen sucks – well, this argument is bogus. These people want our sympathy because... of Wolf Larsen. I am not sympathetic – because I have to put up with Wolf Larsen all of the time – imagine what that must be like! No, you couldn't possibly imagine what that must be like.

So if anybody has the right to complain about Wolf Larsen it's me Wolf Larsen! I've been to over 50 countries – and this Wolf Larsen guy has followed me through all of them – wherever I go I cannot escape Wolf Larsen.

But even if Wolf Larsen sucks – so what? These individuals cannot come up with one convincing argument of anything good about the publishing conglomerates – except that Wolf Larsen sucks.

I'm not really annoyed about this contention that Wolf Larsen sucks. But shouldn't it be a different thread? They could have the Wolf Larsen sucks thread.

What I find annoying is this seemingly roundabout way of promoting censorship. They whine about things not being Lysol squeaky clean. And I even give them a big warning that it's not Lysol squeaky clean!

I'll tell you censorship – and those that promote it – is still very much a reality in the literary world.

If something is not squeaky clean enough for your puritanical tastes then don't read it!

I'm still waiting for somebody to say something in defense of the traditional publishing conglomerates – an argument other than Wolf Larsen sucks.

[HCabret]

Cabret has interesting things to say.

Illiteratti also has interesting things to say.

And other people have this to say: the publishing industry is good because Wolf Larsen sucks.

Regarding the argument that the publishing industry is good because Wolf Larsen sucks – well, this argument is bogus. These people want our sympathy because... of Wolf Larsen. I am not sympathetic – because I have to put up with Wolf Larsen all of the time – imagine what that must be like! No, you couldn't possibly imagine what that must be like.

So if anybody has the right to complain about Wolf Larsen it's me Wolf Larsen! I've been to over 50 countries – and this Wolf Larsen guy has followed me through all of them – wherever I go I cannot escape Wolf Larsen.

But even if Wolf Larsen sucks – so what? These individuals cannot come up with one convincing argument of anything good about the publishing conglomerates – except that Wolf Larsen sucks.

I'm not really annoyed about this contention that Wolf Larsen sucks. But shouldn't it be a different thread? They could have the Wolf Larsen sucks thread.

What I find annoying is this seemingly roundabout way of promoting censorship. They whine about things not being Lysol squeaky clean. And I even give them a big warning that it's not Lysol squeaky clean!

I'll tell you censorship – and those that promote it – is still very much a reality in the literary world.

If something is not squeaky clean enough for your puritanical tastes then don't read it!

I'm still waiting for somebody to say something in defense of the traditional publishing conglomerates – an argument other than Wolf Larsen sucks.

Adding the word penis to a shakespeare poem does not make you a genius or even a rebel for that matter.

Read my submission to the avant garde contest. A publicly masturbating mdma loving lesbian whose parents are also lesbians, who works at cracker barrel, listens to folk music, lives with a dead cat who lives in a tree and likes strippers and partying, a male nun, a female catholic preist who likes raeding romance novels that involve conspiracy theories, and much more. That doesnt sound very puritanical to me. Or pruddish.

I am not saying that you shouldnt write what ever you want to write or publish it in what ever manner you personally see fit. I actually like some your poetry, especially your last poem which won the avant garde contest. I do not like however when people dictate to others how they should live their lives. I will rhyme all i want, manhood and all, regardless of your opinion on rhyming in poetry. I will use vulgarity in my works, when i see fit and i wont use it when i see fit.

I do not think that socialism is the anwser to anything. Collectivism does not jive with me. Individualism is about self expression, not collective expression. I will continue to write whatever i want and publish in whatever form i want and will criticize whoever or whatever i want, whenever i want, in whatever form i want. And if your puritanical tastes cant handle that, well then, that is your problem my friend.

[Pumpkin337]

1. Wolf Larsen's WRITING is crap not Wolf Larsen himself.

2. Wolf Larsen moans too much. In fact he moans so much ad nauseum about the same things over an over in such highly unoriginal ways that he does not sound like some one with interest thoughts to share, but some one who is moaning because he isn't getting a slice of the cake he wants to have so much.

3. Wolf Larsen has some very unworkable ideas that entirely fail to take into account that they are unoriginal - Marx got there first and that the great socialism experiment failed miserably. Why he think human nature is going to magically change to make it work for publishing alone is beyond me. Not to mention that nothing exists in a vacuum .. socialist publishing could only exist in a socialist world and see previously about how socialism has failed spectacularly. It always was and always will be a bit of idealistic nonsense that is unworkable in the real world with real human beings.

4. I don't give a flying f- how many swear words any one uses .. sure it isn't very refined or elegant or creative but there is a place for them IF (and that is the huge qualifying IF) they are used appropriately in the right context to make a point, or as a form of expression that is true to the character, although I will continue to maintain that there are better ways of expressing things that also make the same point with better language. I think it is lazy writing to resort to swear words and even lazier writing if your only point is to shock ... and what is actually shocking about dropping an F-bomb anymore? My objection is that it isn't clever, or shocking, or creative ... it's lazy, lazy, lazy. If you have something to say and want people to pay attention to it, you need to say it in language that gets your point across - this is the first rule of communication. Demanding that YOUR 'wonderful' 'new' (in reality boring boring boring old old old rubbish) method of throwing whatever swear words into the mix like some one with Tourette's Syndrome neither makes a point, nor says it in any kind of way that is going to garner you an audience. you can not demand people come to you, you have to go to the people. And that is the point at which Wolf Larsen sticks, which might be why, his penis-ridden rubbish languishes ignored on forums like this. (And exactly what his fascination is with that portion of the male anatomy is beyond me as well ... it doesn't have any particularly shocking, meaningful, or even particularly attractive qualities in and of itself. All men have one ... oh wait .. maybe it's an expression of an outside sense of inadequacy)

5. Reality is that no matter what, it is the people who BUY stuff who determine what survives. As I said regards Shakespeare. I happen to think he is highly over-rated and in places, just as crude and coarse as Wolf Larsen (except Shakespeare actually attempts to be semi-clever about it in facile kind of way) however he is popular with the masses who have kept the plays alive over the last 400 odd years. If it wasn't for demand they would have vanished as many of his contemporaries have. The very basic laws of supply and demand dictate what gets kept and what doesn't. Clearly Shakespeare is an example that the masses perhaps don't have as good a sense of taste as they think they have, but nonetheless without demand .... there is nothing.

[WolfLarsen]

Same old same old. Wolf Larsen sucks. Wolf Larsen's writing sucks.

What I want to say right now is that I remember back when there was no Internet. And really, the bookstores were filled with endless conventional writing. I wanted something different.

I discovered zines. It was the only way around the monotony put out by the traditional publishers and the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. The cool thing about zines is that there was all kinds of "weird" literary stuff there. It was also not puritanical like the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. The zines were the best.

Now, zines have been replaced by the Internet. You can find creative writing on the Internet, you can find places to read & post that have less censorship, but you have to look for them. The same way you had to look for the zines.

And like I said before, I think overall the writing on literary posting boards is better than the stuff put out by the traditional publishing industry. I'm just not much into airport novels.

If that makes me a bad person than so be it. If my writing is bad so be it. But I'm just not into airport novels.

[HCabret]

Same old same old. Wolf Larsen sucks. Wolf Larsen's writing sucks.

What I want to say right now is that I remember back when there was no Internet. And really, the bookstores were filled with endless conventional writing. I wanted something different.

I discovered zines. It was the only way around the monotony put out by the traditional publishers and the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. The cool thing about zines is that there was all kinds of "weird" literary stuff there. It was also not puritanical like the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. The zines were the best.

Now, zines have been replaced by the Internet. You can find creative writing on the Internet, you can find places to read & post that have less censorship, but you have to look for them. The same way you had to look for the zines.

And like I said before, I think overall the writing on literary posting boards is better than the stuff put out by the traditional publishing industry. I'm just not much into airport novels.

If that makes me a bad person than so be it. If my writing is bad so be it. But I'm just not into airport novels.and i like airport novels. Does that make my opinion any less valid than yours?

[WolfLarsen]

I remember the great debates the immigrant side of my family had at family dinners. People were jovial, passionate, and civilized. Perhaps civilized debate is just not part of the Anglo-Saxon "culture", regardless of which side of the Atlantic people are on. So I don't get upset at people raised in Anglo-Saxon "cultures" for their lack of exposure to good debating manners. They just don't know maybe. But I myself don't get upset if someone thinks differently than me, or expresses their own idea. Anyway, a big hug to everybody!

I grew up around the University of Chicago. There was very little emphasis on conformity, everyone was expected to think for themselves.

Then I spent a few years in the suburbs. I was shocked how the others around me took everything for granted. They did not seem to prize independent thinking as much.

I remember college. I was majoring in history, and then I took my first literature course. I was hooked! That was it – I had to change majors.

I remember the assigned readings in college. The authors that I liked I took out all their other books too out of the library and read them all. But there were other authors that I didn't think much of, even though they were part of something called the "canon" or is it "cannon"? Who cares? Some of that cannon stuff was good but some of it obviously wasn't very good.

I took a whole semester of Shakespeare. I remember smoking weed and reading Shakespeare at City College of New York with a view of the beautiful Harlem lights below. I was more impressed with Shakespeare's plays than with his sonnets.

I read so much. I kept reading after graduating from college when I had time. It was all conventional. At this time in my life I was actually hostile to anything remotely avant-garde or experimental, whether it was in literature or architecture or in the arts.

But then I started working in Alaska. I worked very long hours. It was seasonal. I was off most of the year.

A 100 day Eurail pass trip through Europe changed everything. I was exposed to so much! Trips to Brazil exposed me to Afro-Brazilian music and its powerful drums. Then I started living in New York City again, and was exposed to the avant-garde there. Meanwhile, I had read too many conventional books, and I was starting to get bored of everything conventional. Very bored.

There was no Internet. The bookstores didn't have much that wasn't conventional. I discovered zines, which were these non-fancy literary magazines that were not pretentious or prestigious at all. They were the best! They had the most exciting writing! They would print stuff that you would never see in the fancier pretentious literary magazines. The pretentious literary magazines were like the equivalent of the old Saloon in Paris, which painters later rejected as being too pretentious and conservative. Anyway, these zines would print "obscene" stuff way more "obscene" then Wolf Larsen posts on literary boards. They were so un-censored. You couldn't find these zines in most bookstores, you had to seek them out. They had the best literature you could find anywhere! It was sort of like an underground literary scene.

Meanwhile, my hunger for something unusual – anything unusual – in literature grew and grew. I now had been exposed to all kinds of paintings and art galleries and art books – the opening of the big bookstores made it possible to see all kinds of amazing art in art books – all you had to do was buy an overpriced cup of coffee. I went through the entire poetry section at the Manhattan public library looking for interesting poetry. Then I went through the entire poetry section at the Brooklyn Public Library looking for more interesting poetry. I would read a little bit in each book, before deciding whether was worth taking out or not. I did this after going through the entire poetry section at the New York City mega-bookstores.

It made me frustrated that literature was not doing the great things that painting was doing. It made me frustrated that literature was not doing the great things that 20th century classical music was doing. (My uncle was a piano teacher at the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and he exposed me to so much great stuff back when I lived in Chicago.) And now in New York City, I was being exposed to modern dance and free jazz at places like the Knitting Factory.

My hostility to the avant-garde was replaced with adoration. And I became sick and tired of the endless conventional monotony of the literary section at the bookstores. As a result, I have been far more influenced by the avant-garde in the other arts than by any of the contemporary "literature" published by the publishing conglomerates.

I think the glory days of the publishing houses are gone. But they have good backlists though. Backlists are what they published in the past. You'll find some good contemporary literature published by the publishing conglomerates, but you have to wade through a lot of airport novels to find it.

[HCabret]

I remember the great debates the immigrant side of my family had at family dinners. People were jovial, passionate, and civilized. Perhaps civilized debate is just not part of the Anglo-Saxon "culture", regardless of which side of the Atlantic people are on. So I don't get upset at people raised in Anglo-Saxon "cultures" for their lack of exposure to good debating manners. They just don't know maybe. But I myself don't get upset if someone thinks differently than me, or expresses their own idea. Anyway, a big hug to everybody!

I grew up around the University of Chicago. There was very little emphasis on conformity, everyone was expected to think for themselves.

Then I spent a few years in the suburbs. I was shocked how the others around me took everything for granted. They did not seem to prize independent thinking as much.

I remember college. I was majoring in history, and then I took my first literature course. I was hooked! That was it – I had to change majors.

I remember the assigned readings in college. The authors that I liked I took out all their other books too out of the library and read them all. But there were other authors that I didn't think much of, even though they were part of something called the "canon" or is it "cannon"? Who cares? Some of that cannon stuff was good but some of it obviously wasn't very good.

I took a whole semester of Shakespeare. I remember smoking weed and reading Shakespeare at City College of New York with a view of the beautiful Harlem lights below. I was more impressed with Shakespeare's plays than with his sonnets.

I read so much. I kept reading after graduating from college when I had time. It was all conventional. At this time in my life I was actually hostile to anything remotely avant-garde or experimental, whether it was in literature or architecture or in the arts.

But then I started working in Alaska. I worked very long hours. It was seasonal. I was off most of the year.

A 100 day Eurail pass trip through Europe changed everything. I was exposed to so much! Trips to Brazil exposed me to Afro-Brazilian music and its powerful drums. Then I started living in New York City again, and was exposed to the avant-garde there. Meanwhile, I had read too many conventional books, and I was starting to get bored of everything conventional. Very bored.

There was no Internet. The bookstores didn't have much that wasn't conventional. I discovered zines, which were these non-fancy literary magazines that were not pretentious or prestigious at all. They were the best! They had the most exciting writing! They would print stuff that you would never see in the fancier pretentious literary magazines. The pretentious literary magazines were like the equivalent of the old Saloon in Paris, which painters later rejected as being too pretentious and conservative. Anyway, these zines would print "obscene" stuff way more "obscene" then Wolf Larsen posts on literary boards. They were so un-censored. You couldn't find these zines in most bookstores, you had to seek them out. They had the best literature you could find anywhere! It was sort of like an underground literary scene.

Meanwhile, my hunger for something unusual – anything unusual – in literature grew and grew. I now had been exposed to all kinds of paintings and art galleries and art books – the opening of the big bookstores made it possible to see all kinds of amazing art in art books – all you had to do was buy an overpriced cup of coffee. I went through the entire poetry section at the Manhattan public library looking for interesting poetry. Then I went through the entire poetry section at the Brooklyn Public Library looking for more interesting poetry. I would read a little bit in each book, before deciding whether was worth taking out or not. I did this after going through the entire poetry section at the New York City mega-bookstores.

It made me frustrated that literature was not doing the great things that painting was doing. It made me frustrated that literature was not doing the great things that 20th century classical music was doing. (My uncle was a piano teacher at the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and he exposed me to so much great stuff back when I lived in Chicago.) And now in New York City, I was being exposed to modern dance and free jazz at places like the Knitting Factory.

My hostility to the avant-garde was replaced with adoration. And I became sick and tired of the endless conventional monotony of the literary section at the bookstores. As a result, I have been far more influenced by the avant-garde in the other arts than by any of the contemporary "literature" published by the publishing conglomerates.

I think the glory days of the publishing houses are gone. But they have good backlists though. Backlists are what they published in the past. You'll find some good contemporary literature published by the publishing conglomerates, but you have to wade through a lot of airport novels to find it.

First of all, why do you assume that I or anyone else on this site is part of "the Anglo-Saxon culture". I've been to O'Hare a couple of times, but other than that I've never been to chicago, so I can't speak for anything concerning that city or it's suburbs, other than what I've seen in Ferris Bueller. I have been to Europe and find that there is general admiration for GOOD art, regardless of its form and/or source. Graffiti, as well as, fine art of the past art both display free for the public to view. I understand that you have a particular taste in art, but you must understand that we are individuals capable of thought independent of one another and that we each possess opinions which differ from one another. I don't care how much you or anyone else hypes up socialism, I will resist until the day I die. I cannot support a system of being which puts anyone else's good above my own. I don't care how much money or stuff anyone else has. Material wealth is transient and temporary. I find people like you, Wolf Larsen the never wrong, to be extremely enertaining. It like watching a new world monkey use a remote control with its hands.

[Pumpkin337]

Firstly I want to be clear ... no matter how much I think your writing is awful, I will never say, and have never said that I think YOU are horrible. I may also think your ideas are about 100 years and one giant failed social experiment (Russia) too late, but you, yourself, well you may be a perfectly nice person underneath all that anger. Speaking of which ... you would be happier and almost certainly write better if you found something else to say. You keep hammering a drum which I have to tell you - nobody really cares about. Sure you will get authors to have a moan about that zillionth rejection letter, the indifference of publishers to their masterpiece etc but bottom line ... they all want what you want ... their book published and the $$$ rolling in. They might moan about the Best Seller lists but hey man that's because their book isn't on them.

If you want something original and new out there ... then write it yourself ... I said this before ... no-one is stopping you, write a novel with your favourite word used 90 000 times, if you want to - publish it yourself - but no matter what you do ... bottom line is that it is then up to the buying public to support it with their hard earned money. And the reality is that 90% of those don't want some weirdo wayout **** ... they want a nice story in their favourite genre that they can read on the train, listen to in the car, or in bed last thing at night to unwind, take their mind off their commute and provide a bit of escapist entertainment. This is why this is what is published, what does well on Amazon / Kindle / Nook / whatever.

You and whoever can moan to your hearts content about it if you want, start any number of magazines you like, but if you look at the top sellers on Amazon what are they? A crime book, half a dozen romance novels and a couple of somethings with a vampire / zombie / weirdo monster of the moment. So its not the publishers or the system that is to blame for that ... its what people want to read. Get over it.

[Marbles]

Much ado about nothing.

This thread is not even interesting. It doesn't add anything to our knowledge.

Get over yourself, guys. Enough of this bawdy narcissism.

[YesNo]

I grew up around the University of Chicago.

We have a lot in common even though I suspect you think there's something wrong with me because I like to rhyme the piss out of everything.

After dropping out of college, long ago, I spent several years working downtown and living in an apartment on the corner of 55th and Cornell which is walking distance to the University of Chicago and a lot of bookstores. I love Chicago, especially the parks by the lake.

What I like about your work is that you have not only produced it, but packaged it. I haven't done that packaging part and I am glad to see that it is possible. Your writing is not like what I write, but why should it be? I do find it entertaining. That is all that matters.

Regarding airport novels, I haven't read any. However, I would love to write one. I would quite my job right now, but I'm too lazy to even put an ebook together of my own poetry, so my odds of writing that airport novel are close to 0. You're further along that I am.

[WolfLarsen]

I don't think there's anything wrong with PEOPLE for rhyming in poetry. I actually defend the right to do so. I know I have said "all poets that line should be castrated immediately!" Yes I do hate rhyming poetry – well actually I hate rhyming in contemporary poetry. But, again I defend people's right to write whatever they want to write. Unless they are neo-Nazis or something like that. I defend people's right to write Lysol-clean literature that puts people to sleep. I defend people's right to write airport novels, although I usually don't like them.

But where I draw the line regarding the Lysol-clean crowd is that some of them (not all) promote censorship. They want to tell everybody else what they can or cannot write. This has been a real problem in the literary world for a long time, including today.

But what I want to talk about is how the AVAILABILITY of literature has changed so much in our lifetimes. It used to be your literary choices were pretty much confined to the small bookstore, but then the mega-bookstores opened and the choices were suddenly 10 times as much! That was an awesome experience walking into one of these places for the first time! But then the Internet opened up – and now there was Amazon with 100 times more books than the mega-bookstores, and author's websites, and there were literary posting boards, and there were all kinds of new literary magazines on the Internet that were publishing all kinds of cool literature that was neither censored or conservative like the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. So much more literature to choose from – wonderful!

The next step is to publish all submitted manuscripts. Yes – publish all submitted manuscripts. It is now far more economical to do so than ever!

The amount of available literature will be infinite – as infinite as the creativity of the human race! There'll be bad literature published as a result – but lots of bad literature is being published now – look at the New York Times bestseller list.

The fact that all submitted manuscripts would be published, would motivate many who normally would not write a book to go-ahead and do so. Former drug addicts who lived on the streets and had lives way more interesting than any of us can imagine could write a book about their lives. Even illiterate people could write books – thanks to voice-recognition software.

I remember reading a short autobiographical story by a jazz musician. It was one of the best short stories I've ever read. It was very creative, very real as in totally not pretentious, and the writing itself felt very musical. And it was both creative and exciting! And here was somebody who was not a professional writer doing a better job at writing than most of professional writers.

Professional writers may have their place in the literary world, but so should others who are not professional writers. Many people have at least one good book in them.

Although I keep my distance from them, I know there are many intelligent types – and very creative too – amongst the drug-dealing gang-banging types on the South Side of Chicago. If they were to write their novel without being ruined by academic training I can tell you that would be one interesting novel – both in the content – and in the writing style!

(I think some time around university is good. But too much academia and academic training can stifle you. It may not have that effect on everybody – but it does on many.)

I remember buying rap CDs from people selling them on the street – their own work – and anyone can tell – even a "cracker" like me – that this stuff was way better and creative than what was on commercial radio. (Well, usually, not always.)

And for these reasons and many others I say let every manuscript be published! Let the readers decide what they want to read! There is no need any more for some gatekeeper – whether motivated by corporate greed or otherwise – to decide what will be the available to the public and what will not be available to the public.

The time has come to change the publishing industry, including the sweatshop conditions and the wages of peanuts for those who work in it.

As long as we are under capitalism the publishing industry will be run for profit. But there are things we can do today. Like supporting the struggle for unions in the publishing industry, both in the industrial plants and in the offices. Union wages for everybody!

And I wonder if we writers can form cooperatives to advance our interests. Whether we write conventionally or experimentally I do believe we have mutual interests.

[HCabret]

I don't think there's anything wrong with PEOPLE for rhyming in poetry. I actually defend the right to do so. I know I have said "all poets that line should be castrated immediately!" Yes I do hate rhyming poetry – well actually I hate rhyming in contemporary poetry. But, again I defend people's right to write whatever they want to write. Unless they are neo-Nazis or something like that. I defend people's right to write Lysol-clean literature that puts people to sleep. I defend people's right to write airport novels, although I usually don't like them.

But where I draw the line regarding the Lysol-clean crowd is that some of them (not all) promote censorship. They want to tell everybody else what they can or cannot write. This has been a real problem in the literary world for a long time, including today.

But what I want to talk about is how the AVAILABILITY of literature has changed so much in our lifetimes. It used to be your literary choices were pretty much confined to the small bookstore, but then the mega-bookstores opened and the choices were suddenly 10 times as much! That was an awesome experience walking into one of these places for the first time! But then the Internet opened up – and now there was Amazon with 100 times more books than the mega-bookstores, and author's websites, and there were literary posting boards, and there were all kinds of new literary magazines on the Internet that were publishing all kinds of cool literature that was neither censored or conservative like the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. So much more literature to choose from – wonderful!

The next step is to publish all submitted manuscripts. Yes – publish all submitted manuscripts. It is now far more economical to do so than ever!

The amount of available literature will be infinite – as infinite as the creativity of the human race! There'll be bad literature published as a result – but lots of bad literature is being published now – look at the New York Times bestseller list.

The fact that all submitted manuscripts would be published, would motivate many who normally would not write a book to go-ahead and do so. Former drug addicts who lived on the streets and had lives way more interesting than any of us can imagine could write a book about their lives. Even illiterate people could write books – thanks to voice-recognition software.

I remember reading a short autobiographical story by a jazz musician. It was one of the best short stories I've ever read. It was very creative, very real as in totally not pretentious, and the writing itself felt very musical. And it was both creative and exciting! And here was somebody who was not a professional writer doing a better job at writing than most of professional writers.

Professional writers may have their place in the literary world, but so should others who are not professional writers. Many people have at least one good book in them.

Although I keep my distance from them, I know there are many intelligent types – and very creative too – amongst the drug-dealing gang-banging types on the South Side of Chicago. If they were to write their novel without being ruined by academic training I can tell you that would be one interesting novel – both in the content – and in the writing style!

(I think some time around university is good. But too much academia and academic training can stifle you. It may not have that effect on everybody – but it does on many.)

I remember buying rap CDs from people selling them on the street – their own work – and anyone can tell – even a "cracker" like me – that this stuff was way better and creative than what was on commercial radio. (Well, usually, not always.)

And for these reasons and many others I say let every manuscript be published! Let the readers decide what they want to read! There is no need any more for some gatekeeper – whether motivated by corporate greed or otherwise – to decide what will be the available to the public and what will not be available to the public.

The time has come to change the publishing industry, including the sweatshop conditions and the wages of peanuts for those who work in it.

As long as we are under capitalism the publishing industry will be run for profit. But there are things we can do today. Like supporting the struggle for unions in the publishing industry, both in the industrial plants and in the offices. Union wages for everybody!

And I wonder if we writers can form cooperatives to advance our interests. Whether we write conventionally or experimentally I do believe we have mutual interests.
What do you have against neo-nazis or black nationalists for that matter? Freedom of speech is either absolute or it's not.

Are there also creative types in Lincoln Park? Or Park Ridge? Or Des Plaines? Skokie? Morton Grove? Evanston?

Rich pretentious *******s also have brains. Whether you like it or not?

Socialism WILL fail!

[Pumpkin337]

Wolf has been putting these crackpot ideas of his on this since 2005 (or earlier I didn't look). In all this time he hasn't changed his tune one bit so I doubt we are going to convince him of anything. Responding (mea culpa) just encourages him. So why don't we do what every other forum where he publishes his drivel does and ignore him. Vote by not reading, not responding etc. He can waffle away in his self-imposed exile from the publishing world (even though by publishing in these forums he, like every other author, is demonstrating that he does actually want an audience) and we can get on with writing or other more interesting stuff.

[YesNo]

I don't think there's anything wrong with PEOPLE for rhyming in poetry. I actually defend the right to do so. I know I have said "all poets that line should be castrated immediately!" Yes I do hate rhyming poetry – well actually I hate rhyming in contemporary poetry. But, again I defend people's right to write whatever they want to write. Unless they are neo-Nazis or something like that. I defend people's right to write Lysol-clean literature that puts people to sleep. I defend people's right to write airport novels, although I usually don't like them.

Glad to hear it. I wasn't really worried about physical castration as the mental kind.



But where I draw the line regarding the Lysol-clean crowd is that some of them (not all) promote censorship. They want to tell everybody else what they can or cannot write. This has been a real problem in the literary world for a long time, including today.

I agree. Formalist poets can be too picky about what forms are acceptable.



But what I want to talk about is how the AVAILABILITY of literature has changed so much in our lifetimes. It used to be your literary choices were pretty much confined to the small bookstore, but then the mega-bookstores opened and the choices were suddenly 10 times as much! That was an awesome experience walking into one of these places for the first time! But then the Internet opened up – and now there was Amazon with 100 times more books than the mega-bookstores, and author's websites, and there were literary posting boards, and there were all kinds of new literary magazines on the Internet that were publishing all kinds of cool literature that was neither censored or conservative like the pretentious I mean prestigious literary magazines. So much more literature to choose from – wonderful!

I want to keep it open by having competitors to Amazon. I like Smashwords as well (http://www.smashwords.com/) and go there first. Of course having the internet will keep it open.



The next step is to publish all submitted manuscripts. Yes – publish all submitted manuscripts. It is now far more economical to do so than ever!

Some manuscripts are drafts. Most of what I put on these forums are of that type.



The amount of available literature will be infinite – as infinite as the creativity of the human race! There'll be bad literature published as a result – but lots of bad literature is being published now – look at the New York Times bestseller list.

One can sort out the bad literature by viewing the ebook sample.



I remember buying rap CDs from people selling them on the street – their own work – and anyone can tell – even a "cracker" like me – that this stuff was way better and creative than what was on commercial radio. (Well, usually, not always.)

I like purchasing albums from local artists. I recently bought two CDS from a band called Billy Elton. They sing Elton John and Billy Joel songs. I know that probably disgusts you, but the singers did a better job than the originals in my opinion.



And for these reasons and many others I say let every manuscript be published! Let the readers decide what they want to read! There is no need any more for some gatekeeper – whether motivated by corporate greed or otherwise – to decide what will be the available to the public and what will not be available to the public.

I agree with the anti-gatekeeper mentality. I don't mind sharing profits with the greedy.



The time has come to change the publishing industry, including the sweatshop conditions and the wages of peanuts for those who work in it.

As long as we are under capitalism the publishing industry will be run for profit. But there are things we can do today. Like supporting the struggle for unions in the publishing industry, both in the industrial plants and in the offices. Union wages for everybody!

I'm not worried about capitalism. The internet provides a backdoor.



And I wonder if we writers can form cooperatives to advance our interests. Whether we write conventionally or experimentally I do believe we have mutual interests.

That sounds like a good idea. I suspect there are cooperatives already.

[HCabret]

i'm tired of getting kicked off of discussion forums. i'm thinking about starting a small press--or less ambitiously, to start with, a lit mag. i'd like to avoid the models of lit-mag-as-a-place-to-pad-your-dumb-c-v that are currently available, and i have some ideas about how to do that, but i'd be curious as to what you think. if you're interesting in the possibility of collaborating on a project like this, or would like to help brainstorming at the conceptual stage, i'm all ears. email me at [email protected]

we could call it "Strategically Unpublishable"why are you a writer? Is it all about publishing? Or is it about creating?

Do you want fame? Money? Glory? Or do you want enlightenment? Joy? Salvation?

[HCabret]

Wolf has been putting these crackpot ideas of his on this since 2005 (or earlier I didn't look). In all this time he hasn't changed his tune one bit so I doubt we are going to convince him of anything. Responding (mea culpa) just encourages him. So why don't we do what every other forum where he publishes his drivel does and ignore him. Vote by not reading, not responding etc. He can waffle away in his self-imposed exile from the publishing world (even though by publishing in these forums he, like every other author, is demonstrating that he does actually want an audience) and we can get on with writing or other more interesting stuff.its too much fun though. wolf larsen is like glenn beck. Paranoid, alien, and ultimately tremendously entertaining. Its like watching sharknado over and over and over and laughing harder each and every time. The only thing he hates more than no response is a true response.

[illiterati]

why are you a writer? Is it all about publishing? Or is it about creating?

Do you want fame? Money? Glory? Or do you want enlightenment? Joy? Salvation?

I'm not entirely clear about how your response relates what I wrote, there. Clarify?

[HCabret]

I'm not entirely clear about how your response relates what I wrote, there. Clarify?what is the point of all this in the first place? Do you write simply to make money or become famous? Do you desire to have accolades of your genius showered upon you? Or do write simply for the innate pleasure of creation? I hope nothing i write ever gets published. While i hope you end up on the new york times best seller list.

I don't write for anyone but myself and for calanawen.

[illiterati]

Huh well. I refer you to the conversation in the thread "Getting Poetry Published" in the Poets and Poetry forum (I think). I won't debate the initial premise about desiring an audience or a writerly community, but I will say that I would like to carve out a space beyond the MFA/NYC divide. That's precisely the double bind I'm fed up with. I'd like to create a forum that's outside the economy of the professional cv. Hate to tell you, but poetry has been outside the economy of money and fame (outside of academic posts) for a long time.

[HCabret]

Huh well. I refer you to the conversation in the thread "Getting Poetry Published" in the Poets and Poetry forum (I think). I won't debate the initial premise about desiring an audience or a writerly community, but I will say that I would like to carve out a space beyond the MFA/NYC divide. That's precisely the double bind I'm fed up with. I'd like to create a forum that's outside the economy of the professional cv. Hate to tell you, but poetry has been outside the economy of money and fame (outside of academic posts) for a long time.smacks of the pulpit.

[illiterati]

Didn't you just finish suggesting that any kind of publishing reduces writing to a desire for money and fame?

I'll stick with my own, more reasonably sized pulpit.

[HCabret]

Didn't you just finish suggesting that any kind of publishing reduces writing to a desire for money and fame?

I'll stick with my own, more reasonably sized pulpit.i'll wear a garbage bag like a poncho as I preach about commercialism and not throwing away good stuff, like love.

[illiterati]

i'll wear a garbage bag like a poncho as I preach about commercialism and not throwing away good stuff, like love.

I'll throw tiny, sharp-edged pulpits at you from my expensive spaceship. Later, I will collect the tiny pulpits and put them up for sale on eBay, then use the money I make to purchase justice, love, and also commercialism, not because I need those things but because I want to wait until you're sleeping, steal your garbage bag, and throw away my justice, love, and commercialism in it, all as a kind of performative allegory about the importance of charitable discourse.

[HCabret]

I'll throw tiny, sharp-edged pulpits at you from my expensive spaceship. Later, I will collect the tiny pulpits and put them up for sale on eBay, then use the money I make to purchase justice, love, and also commercialism, not because I need those things but because I want to wait until you're sleeping, steal your garbage bag, and throw away my justice, love, and commercialism in it, all as a kind of performative allegory about the importance of charitable discourse.i like you. :D

[mitchstrahsberg]

I agree too. Self-publishing means you have all the control because you have the complete rights of your book. The idea here is literary freedom and freedom to express.

[YesNo]

I'm trying to put together an ebook and I really have WolfLarsen to thank. I don't know what to put in the ebook yet, but I figure if I get something started the words will follow. I was going to title the book: "Monsters, Monsters Everywhere and Not a Bite to Eat". That might be too long.

I've been reading "Publishing E-Books for Dummies" which seems pretty good. The author, Ali Luke, recommended Calibre, so I downloaded it and now I will try formatting some test documents made in MS Word to see how this all works.