Broken Systems

When I first started doing ‘zines with friends we were all about the DIY ethos. We were just kids, teenagers, and we didn’t have any money to put into anything, to be honest, so we cut pictures out of old magazines, printed things off of computer printers, and made copies at copy centers or on copiers we had access to. 

We lived in the gray area of doing it ourselves and doing it on someone else’s dime, the sort of crap you do when you’re a kid. 

We had big ideas and no money but we still wanted to reach out into the world. 

And did. 

I eventually got a small copier to do our ‘zines that way but the cost of maintaining it was crazy. Better to make copies at a job I had. 

It didn’t matter how it was done, just that it WAS done and that we got them out. We never sold them, simply handing them out or putting them atop stacks of other papers or ‘zines. We just wanted to get them into people’s hands. That was the world back in the ‘90s and before. When some other friends and I started a new ‘zine it was the same schtick with the same motives – to get our weirdness out into the world. For anyone that’s creative, that’s what it’s about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want to make money. We want to make a living by being creative. Most folks don’t though and don’t expect to. So you try to get your work out into the world however you are able. 

By the time print-on-demand had really started to grow past the realm of vanity publishing and became a viable option I had been doing things the DIY way for nearly twenty years. Self-publishing was a miracle. It meant that I had a chance to get my writing out into the world again. Before then I had put my first book out – old story that’s been covered a lot in the blog but I went through a vanity press not knowing better – and didn’t have to rely on chapbooks to try to reach out to an audience. It was 2009 when my first self-published book came out through what was then called Createspace, a subsidiary of Amazon. It was my second book and since then I have put out twenty other books alone and a few with other people. Without that option, I am not sure I wouldn’t have just given up writing altogether. Writing is my outlet and my passion. 

I had tried traditional publishing and no one was interested. I had sent dozens and dozens of letters to publishers and agents and no one bit. I didn’t even get any pointers. I had met some other writers at a big horror writing convention and that led to me being published in a magazine and then in three story collections. It was great but I still wasn’t making inroads as a writer. 

What I learned at that con, which again, I have talked about before, was that most authors have day jobs and write as a hobby. Even people with fans couldn’t survive on book sales alone. 

My eyes really opened with that. 

That, and the fact that anyone can be a gatekeeper, you just need to find a gate to keep. 

This isn’t to say I deserved to be published because no one DESERVES it but you find that it’s as much about fitting a niche as it is about writing a compelling piece. There’s a lot of stuff out in the world that’s of varying skill and talent but it fits a niche and that’s what matters. 

I have been publishing through Amazon’s print-on-demand service for fourteen years now and while it’s not perfect, it’s worked well for me. The thing is though, like every other service, I am at its mercy. If a day comes when Amazon decides that they no longer want to be in that business then I suddenly lose my publisher. A lot has changed since the years when I was looking for a publisher but the gates are still in place and I have yet to find a door open to me. 

Maybe that’s due to my skill as a writer, or my poor query skills, or I just don’t fit a niche. 

I dunno. 

It’s scary though as corporate interests shift and companies devour one another, thus taking away options for consumers and creators. There’s a point where the corporations will start deciding what is seen and what isn’t.
They will become the gatekeepers to art. 

As we move into a future where physical media is no longer prioritized it opens a door as it closes another. Sure, you could still get your work out to the world digitally if you can find a marketplace for it and a means for people to read it, but it also means that books will slowly become fewer and fewer. Books are a tangible thing, a physical thing, a tactile thing that elicits memories that digital files do not. We are beings of sense and our senses connect us to things, and those connections come via memories either new or old. 

Will we ever connect to a digital file, a digital mix-tape like we do a cassette or CD mix?

Will we cherish an e-book as much as we do that first paperback book we ever read?

It’s sad that we are so excited to do less to get more, even if it means that our options are decided for us and whittled down to a handful of companies that, when they fail, everything they devoured fails as well. 

And all of it will disappear. 

I’d say there have to be better ways, better ways to do this, and there may be, but unless it makes the creator more money than the methods employed now, why bother? Why does Amazon, Lulu, or any other POD bookseller care if there’s a better way when they just want to make it easy enough for anyone to put work out they can take a percentage of? And the publishing world is no better as publishing houses got too big and shuttered or sold themselves to competitors and we’re inundated with whatever fad is current. Murder books? Horror books? Mysteries? 

Whatever it is, they’ll have it. 

There’s not as much interest in the next big thing, or in finding something different.

It doesn’t pay to do that. 

You see that even with the streamers. 

So what will it be?

A subscription service to e-books?

Moving books into podcasts and not just books on audio?

How many of us will be lost in the next seismic shift?

The authors good, bad, and just OK. 

We have seen how movies and music are moving towards streaming only and in that we lose something. We lose ownership and we lose the artifacts that create the memories. The things deeper than the art itself and far more personal. 

We are being told what we want doesn’t matter. 

What we feel doesn’t matter. 

And we’re being told what will be preserved for the future. 

And as always, it’s all about money. 

It’s a weird, scary time to love art, to love books, to love music, and to love movies. It’s a hard time to love physical media and what it stands for beyond what it is. 

I don’t know what will come next but I hope by that time, by the time the curtain comes down, I will have put out enough books that I’ll be ready to say – that’s enough – and mean it. 

…c…

The Haunted Bookstore