Independent vs Self vs Traditional Publishing
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Commercial Traditional Publishing has so boxed the thinking on publishing that it is incredible how most writers have not seen and do not see and may not want to see the falseness of the premise. The premise is: profit is the final end, but the beginning is that Commercial Publishers make the rules and control the operations from Initial Position to Terminal.
An Alternative Premise is: Independent Publishing. For whatever reason, from Necessity (the mother of invention) for X Cause. If it is financially rewarding good; if not, o.k. No matter which, it will cost.
I would like first to acknowledge the "Self Publishing vs. Traditional" panel that spurs me to write this. And so wish to thank in particular MiriamVanScott, mackmeijers141, MinaKelly 137, GaryBabb 108, Copyedit52 and the rest of the inspired gang.
Independent Publishing is much like Church publishing: it has a goal (filling a lack), some family, friends, and devotees, a will to do it, and somewhat flexible time schedules for the patience required for people to be trained and then to pitch in, in orderly ways. There are different Completion dates for different works to be published. One work, for e.g., is now into its 27th year, because of the research for the preliminaries (a professional Journal in the field, the first of its kind in the region, published 2 yrs after the private company was founded as a Family business because those were the only bodies I could trust might last, but I was not trusting -- two non-family members remain; no one is paid; and We Made History.) I had been shocked, upon returning home from college, to find that there was not one single book in the indigenous language that ws well known and read: the Creole that was and is the everyday language of multi-cultured ethnic speakers, and none even in Standard English that relates to the people, place, here, and time. Not in the stores; not in the schools; and hardly in the University (but just starting). So I began to write short stories and promptly published them. They sold. I made the initial mistake however (smile) of allowing a University colleague the right to xerox the stories -- which he and others are still doing 33 years now. I am, frankly, gratified; because it was obviously a conscious attempt to "go local" for locals and bring the nonlocal to locals and the reverse; but of course, it is easier for a man to move himself than to move his horse: any move can be taken as an advance, one step at a time, for village, city,world -- and back. I had to leave for the South Pacific, but I continued there, this time with a second novel, of that place, and so forth. I went to Central America: another novel; then to French Polynesia, and so forth. I did not publish the novels because I had no time. The Traditional cultures were withering, the Modern overwhelming. I wrote in academic, in Creole, minimally in my native language, because it was overwhelmingly an oral affair, and I introduced papers by Students in First language (Polynesian) culture subjects like on Ethnobotany and Poetry, but in English, in the end. We published them. Independently. An Asian and then a Cross-Pacific Art and Writing Group and now "All American" Publishing Group had begun a year earlier than my familyʻs company. They are successful: they are University-hanging, who began from the grassroots public schools ("Poets in the Schools"). They have the business know-how and bodiesʻ mass for volunteer work, a ready-made readership, hungry to see itself in storied print, ethnically intact, labelled American with a difference. (The WWII Japanese Internment experience remains fresh and bleeding, from the trauma -- for which they will neither forget (rightly) nor forgive, and say so by strange self-compensations like finding themselves 1400 strong Medal of Honour medallists, with a single medal, split in 1400 ways, honouring the 442nd Infantry 100th Battalion that were singularly of themselves, with a handful of exceptions (one Chinese, one Puerto Rican - - politically spelling "multi-ethnic," avoiding the race trump with which Continental racists are expected to label them otherwise. Such aggressive compensations of reward they believe is justice and American. Their need for their ethnic experiences being read is therefore genuinely constructive, if arguably unfair to other Americans who are awarded the same medal in solitary loneliness, with massive evidence for each contender from only a small but choice Short List.) Everyone has a history. Will history relieve the suffering by writing and publishing? I believe for writers there is no real other way. It is not even, for some, a choice. The indigenous Hawaiians (Dr. Kekuni Blaisdellʻs medical, social, political, economic and educational statistics were a shock.) The trauma is seen by social workers like Kai Davenport and University of Hawaiʻi collaborators in a Report as abiding, after these many long years, in the young, in particular,despite the enormous modern opportunities from the federal and state governments, even private entrepreneurs. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs addresses this as best it can, by the light of its Board of Trustees; but as in any government supported entity (and not?) consensus is in need of being redefined. The OHA newspaper is a great asset for "letting off steam" and so encouraging journalism at least, but not, consciously, with a sense of the "Humanities." Cultural catch-up needs keep it culture-bound. It does not defend attackers like that mentioned above -- it is a public entity that understands the physical and material well but the more universal issues, especially philosophical, not well, so far, although individuals on the Board do try. I say this because the Group that attacked me had once said bitterly it had no such resource, presuming my family company does. It may, but it will do so only in a business way, too complicated and long term and exhausting to be worth considering. By contrast, my family companyʻs geographical circumference, stated clearly: Pacific centered Looking East and Looking West, is what it is, I submit, humbly. Life is very, very short.
Curiously sometime ago, my familyʻs company was soundly censured by this very high profiled non-Inc. but Inc.-behaving Non-Profit Group. (I was not aware of the charge until two years later!) It transpired, I discovered, that there was a defender: an Independent Publisher (loner with good and gifted friends), Asian American, who translates Hawaiian and publishes it and sells. Here is a Reverse Cross-Cultural leader enriching the battle ground with his almost anti-Asian America for Themselves notion? He was an Asian American himself, pro-Indigenes. He checkmated the moves, better than turns like that happen in the movies. (Itʻs almost like a regional tribal "rivalry" although we really are against nobody making camp. But we may appear, I think, like seemingly University-based confederates, at our respective fronts: the University of Hawaiʻi- centered base; my East Coast MHC and Penn ideal base. That amounts to Home base, Northeast, and West Coast. Feudal, tribal, not reflecting but playing out territorial claims? And the brave lone Samurai ethic conscious warrior who is UC-Berkeley based is, by being centrally located in his demographic front, not for one but for all, I think; because we canʻt survive if we, small compared to the real Inc.s, kill each other, or even maim ourselves, in self-protecting moves. (The namings are my designations just for this discourse.) The strangest point is that the name calling Group is one of writers who publish themselves, exactly as my family company does our material (not just my literary entrepreneur efforts). I see them as INDEPENDENT, though en groupe, compared to my familyʻs company, which works silently, writing/translating/editing/printing, publishing as we can. We have made mistakes, as loners often do; but never again (at least that mistake) . The en groupe Independent Group that consists of very fine writers, expanded from Asian Americans First to Open House, but carefully selective, is focused on writing literature that gets into book stores, that pays. This last condition is written in the National Pen Womenʻs Association for membership, too: you must have earned $, evidenced by receipt or receipts. The Authorsʻ Guildʻs requirements are also cash based, in the end: in the past 18, one must have earned y number of $. So MiriamVanScott, copyedit52, and others are right to warn writers, especially loners, to be careful.
They are absolutely right. But there is no requirement to join the PEN WOMEN or the AUTHORSʻ GUILD. Which is why I am sure, in the end, exceptions must always be made, or the rules treated as intended, for human beings, first, who are writers by chance and/or choice, happily for some, for many others, at their peril. LT members that point out the serious repercussions about the negatives have my thanks.
From necessity, my family company is "for profit," rather than "non-profit" as our friends on their fronts are, mainly, because itʻs cheaper, in the end: Small is Beautiful, is to Survive, is to Focus.)
Things happen, karma or not. Small or big. One day, I suppose, perhaps out of the boredom of their great success, a member? of the most successful Writersʻ Group thought to send out a scandal about "self-publishing and Self-Publishers." (I wasnʻt aware of it, as usual. I am a very busy person, living at the end of the island, twenty feet from the surging ocean that is at high tide deafening). They are Commercial "Traditional", the reasoning seems to have been. They are in business. We, mere aspirers. Focused Asian in America are now, to Asians, American i.e., the American Dream, perhaps even Pure Capitalists, which is certainly an appealing option to the sane, it seems. But the point is: EVERY INDIGENOUS GROUP THAT HAS NO WRITING OUTLET FOR ITSELF IS DOOMED, IF THEY BELIEVE THE COMMERCIAL TRADITIONAL COMPANIES.
In highly developed countries, the population shift points to more complex writing and publishing for new peoples in new demographics. I love science and dislike science fiction (with exceptions: Jules Verneʻs 40,000 Under the Sea and Lucasʻ great Star Wars); but the rise of violence in much that is published is not only how our young people are finding the world developing. The violence is what our Commercial Tradition Publishers must produce, they think, to stay alive. At that point, the Earth is being Abandoned. And we modeled in panoramas as though we are, like the giant insects of Kafka and Bulgakov, the insects that the insects must fear.
Brisk trades. Then silence?
This is AMERICA. Weʻve all made history, by our Bare Feet or Boot Straps, following many models about writing from an oral past, in different languages, serving multiple cultural readers -- and raising our individual and collective writing and reading standards. One day, my family company may want to turn to "make money." That is good. But no where in the world is it a necessity for writing and publishing.
A few of my supposed rivals are very successful writers, delivered out of Continental publishing houses, now, and out of their respective foreign countries. LTʻs @macmeijers speaks of "brand;" MinaKelly, of knowing who you are; others, what the procedures and costs may be for "self" publishing with or without the POD etc. One emphasized the quality of the editing and its cost: yes. That is undeniable, I well know. Editing is not a single issue. Nor kinds. Contents, in my situation, determine everything for it aligns with receiverships and distribution. Of English; there are Englishes. The languages, grammars and spellings have their own histories, from ways of speaking that are not dialect but consistently non-Standard
without being Sub-standard. So the ideals differ, but so do the times. Change provokes and challenges. There are different kinds of Creole, as Derek Bickerton and Carolyn Oda long ago demonstrated: they have pronounced Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Puerto Rican generational patterns, as well as vocabularic inventory ranges between the readers and non-readers, even the TV watchers and the non. References are in multilingual and multicultural modes. Yet only the writer who must dispose of the wares on paper in words, phrases, sentences, on themes, with intonations native to reader and listener, old and young, less schooled and well -- it is a writerʻs nightmare. Joe Balaz and ʻImai Kalahele are master Creole speakers and writers -- the first mainly publishes; the second, holds Listenings from a royal associated institute, where for years he has been janitor (the greatest poet among us who preferred such freedom because it allowed him to raise a large family, meet everybody his royal sponsors find important, etc.). They represent a generation very different from mine, which is older -- and rawer, for I grew up in a tri-lingual household (Hawaiian, English, Chinese).
Late Hawaiian Creole writers/speakers are closer to Standard English. "Bugger," in my generation was a GOOD word, meaning fellow, pronouonced "da bugga" (duh bahguh). Post Balaz and Kalahele, the word is "Bugger." Never did any of us suspect it originally meant "pimp" or hint at homosexuality (a no-no idea then, socially to pronounce even). And in the mid-1980s, I heard a McKinley High School local student defend her motherʻs school janitorial union by spieling her outrage in "Pidgin English" (ongoing Creole). I did not understand a single sentence. Now, I wouldnʻt touch that for money, to print -- who could edit it? No matter: to do or not to do costs.
The market for which an Independent, like my familyʻs, company works in, was expected to be basically a niche market of producers, but that is not exactly true: there are translations. In the U.S., every ethnicity and indigenous group is of special interest, e.g. of the Asian Americans for the Asia Asians. For the Asian Americans, after acculturation seek their own pasts, and reconfigure their stories for the understanding of their fellow (ancestral) Asians. In America, they are Asian Americans; in Asia, they are American Asians. Every group needs multiple accesses to self identity, for survival. That is the social end that may lead to good monetary returns on writing books, niche oriented, originally, or not.
Then there are the accidents of nature, of history. Good and bad simultaneously. Even I was surprised how some things end. The greatest surprise was finding what I had never ever dreamed of: Rare Books. That the scarcity of copies of the first collected short stories and of the novel was advertised as Rare Books. The Short Stories, sold originally for $10.00, and over time, then, for less. On the Internet, an original i.e. 1st edition was being sold for $499.91. We could have reprinted it, but the original would remain valued as it was, I suppose. We reprinted from demand, not POD -- for individual Continental and island/oceanic schools and universities (Ethnic Studies, Cross Cultural Literature courses, Pacific Linguistics, Feminist Literature, Creoles of the World, etc.) And now the novel (of which there are many fewer copies published than the two short story anthologies) are selling for prices that I cannot help laughing over. My best wishes to everybody
My family publishing company is an Independent Publishing Co. for the reasons above and not a Commercial Traditional Publishing company for attendant reasons and more. One is: youʻve got to know there are limits. Two: take care to take care of yourself, first, which for writers means your mind and ambition in this other-peoplesʻ world too. Three: there is a possibility you may never complete what you set out to do. Four: Donʻt expect people will care or care as you do. The Times are upon us all. Five. There are alternatives one may point out to readers: of the Present that behaves like the Future these days. And that is -- Try Writing, yourself and then reading the writing. TRY Not writing but drama, YOUTUBE. DVD, Computers re: SKYPE. Cds I love. We are here.
There is a major study yet to be done and papers of historic value for research which were given to me for my care. In ten years, I hope to end this enterprise; it is possible the company will no longer be needed. Works are being written in Hawaiʻi and printed and bound in China. We have relatives there, as well as in England and Scotland. Perhaps they might like the business of at least selling the novel, three of which have not yet been published. There is just no time.
I love the Russian writers -- and learned that Mikhail Bulgakovʻs novel took twenty-five years to be published. Now, that is a magnificent piece of writing. So I am only a decade or so behind him. Perhaps when Revolution In Oceania is published (itʻs long), New Caledonia will be so changed, no one will even recognize colonial Noumea and its wonderful adjoining islands, so the novel may be not only "historical" but harmless as well.
An Alternative Premise is: Independent Publishing. For whatever reason, from Necessity (the mother of invention) for X Cause. If it is financially rewarding good; if not, o.k. No matter which, it will cost.
I would like first to acknowledge the "Self Publishing vs. Traditional" panel that spurs me to write this. And so wish to thank in particular MiriamVanScott, mackmeijers141, MinaKelly 137, GaryBabb 108, Copyedit52 and the rest of the inspired gang.
Independent Publishing is much like Church publishing: it has a goal (filling a lack), some family, friends, and devotees, a will to do it, and somewhat flexible time schedules for the patience required for people to be trained and then to pitch in, in orderly ways. There are different Completion dates for different works to be published. One work, for e.g., is now into its 27th year, because of the research for the preliminaries (a professional Journal in the field, the first of its kind in the region, published 2 yrs after the private company was founded as a Family business because those were the only bodies I could trust might last, but I was not trusting -- two non-family members remain; no one is paid; and We Made History.) I had been shocked, upon returning home from college, to find that there was not one single book in the indigenous language that ws well known and read: the Creole that was and is the everyday language of multi-cultured ethnic speakers, and none even in Standard English that relates to the people, place, here, and time. Not in the stores; not in the schools; and hardly in the University (but just starting). So I began to write short stories and promptly published them. They sold. I made the initial mistake however (smile) of allowing a University colleague the right to xerox the stories -- which he and others are still doing 33 years now. I am, frankly, gratified; because it was obviously a conscious attempt to "go local" for locals and bring the nonlocal to locals and the reverse; but of course, it is easier for a man to move himself than to move his horse: any move can be taken as an advance, one step at a time, for village, city,world -- and back. I had to leave for the South Pacific, but I continued there, this time with a second novel, of that place, and so forth. I went to Central America: another novel; then to French Polynesia, and so forth. I did not publish the novels because I had no time. The Traditional cultures were withering, the Modern overwhelming. I wrote in academic, in Creole, minimally in my native language, because it was overwhelmingly an oral affair, and I introduced papers by Students in First language (Polynesian) culture subjects like on Ethnobotany and Poetry, but in English, in the end. We published them. Independently. An Asian and then a Cross-Pacific Art and Writing Group and now "All American" Publishing Group had begun a year earlier than my familyʻs company. They are successful: they are University-hanging, who began from the grassroots public schools ("Poets in the Schools"). They have the business know-how and bodiesʻ mass for volunteer work, a ready-made readership, hungry to see itself in storied print, ethnically intact, labelled American with a difference. (The WWII Japanese Internment experience remains fresh and bleeding, from the trauma -- for which they will neither forget (rightly) nor forgive, and say so by strange self-compensations like finding themselves 1400 strong Medal of Honour medallists, with a single medal, split in 1400 ways, honouring the 442nd Infantry 100th Battalion that were singularly of themselves, with a handful of exceptions (one Chinese, one Puerto Rican - - politically spelling "multi-ethnic," avoiding the race trump with which Continental racists are expected to label them otherwise. Such aggressive compensations of reward they believe is justice and American. Their need for their ethnic experiences being read is therefore genuinely constructive, if arguably unfair to other Americans who are awarded the same medal in solitary loneliness, with massive evidence for each contender from only a small but choice Short List.) Everyone has a history. Will history relieve the suffering by writing and publishing? I believe for writers there is no real other way. It is not even, for some, a choice. The indigenous Hawaiians (Dr. Kekuni Blaisdellʻs medical, social, political, economic and educational statistics were a shock.) The trauma is seen by social workers like Kai Davenport and University of Hawaiʻi collaborators in a Report as abiding, after these many long years, in the young, in particular,despite the enormous modern opportunities from the federal and state governments, even private entrepreneurs. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs addresses this as best it can, by the light of its Board of Trustees; but as in any government supported entity (and not?) consensus is in need of being redefined. The OHA newspaper is a great asset for "letting off steam" and so encouraging journalism at least, but not, consciously, with a sense of the "Humanities." Cultural catch-up needs keep it culture-bound. It does not defend attackers like that mentioned above -- it is a public entity that understands the physical and material well but the more universal issues, especially philosophical, not well, so far, although individuals on the Board do try. I say this because the Group that attacked me had once said bitterly it had no such resource, presuming my family company does. It may, but it will do so only in a business way, too complicated and long term and exhausting to be worth considering. By contrast, my family companyʻs geographical circumference, stated clearly: Pacific centered Looking East and Looking West, is what it is, I submit, humbly. Life is very, very short.
Curiously sometime ago, my familyʻs company was soundly censured by this very high profiled non-Inc. but Inc.-behaving Non-Profit Group. (I was not aware of the charge until two years later!) It transpired, I discovered, that there was a defender: an Independent Publisher (loner with good and gifted friends), Asian American, who translates Hawaiian and publishes it and sells. Here is a Reverse Cross-Cultural leader enriching the battle ground with his almost anti-Asian America for Themselves notion? He was an Asian American himself, pro-Indigenes. He checkmated the moves, better than turns like that happen in the movies. (Itʻs almost like a regional tribal "rivalry" although we really are against nobody making camp. But we may appear, I think, like seemingly University-based confederates, at our respective fronts: the University of Hawaiʻi- centered base; my East Coast MHC and Penn ideal base. That amounts to Home base, Northeast, and West Coast. Feudal, tribal, not reflecting but playing out territorial claims? And the brave lone Samurai ethic conscious warrior who is UC-Berkeley based is, by being centrally located in his demographic front, not for one but for all, I think; because we canʻt survive if we, small compared to the real Inc.s, kill each other, or even maim ourselves, in self-protecting moves. (The namings are my designations just for this discourse.) The strangest point is that the name calling Group is one of writers who publish themselves, exactly as my family company does our material (not just my literary entrepreneur efforts). I see them as INDEPENDENT, though en groupe, compared to my familyʻs company, which works silently, writing/translating/editing/printing, publishing as we can. We have made mistakes, as loners often do; but never again (at least that mistake) . The en groupe Independent Group that consists of very fine writers, expanded from Asian Americans First to Open House, but carefully selective, is focused on writing literature that gets into book stores, that pays. This last condition is written in the National Pen Womenʻs Association for membership, too: you must have earned $, evidenced by receipt or receipts. The Authorsʻ Guildʻs requirements are also cash based, in the end: in the past 18, one must have earned y number of $. So MiriamVanScott, copyedit52, and others are right to warn writers, especially loners, to be careful.
They are absolutely right. But there is no requirement to join the PEN WOMEN or the AUTHORSʻ GUILD. Which is why I am sure, in the end, exceptions must always be made, or the rules treated as intended, for human beings, first, who are writers by chance and/or choice, happily for some, for many others, at their peril. LT members that point out the serious repercussions about the negatives have my thanks.
From necessity, my family company is "for profit," rather than "non-profit" as our friends on their fronts are, mainly, because itʻs cheaper, in the end: Small is Beautiful, is to Survive, is to Focus.)
Things happen, karma or not. Small or big. One day, I suppose, perhaps out of the boredom of their great success, a member? of the most successful Writersʻ Group thought to send out a scandal about "self-publishing and Self-Publishers." (I wasnʻt aware of it, as usual. I am a very busy person, living at the end of the island, twenty feet from the surging ocean that is at high tide deafening). They are Commercial "Traditional", the reasoning seems to have been. They are in business. We, mere aspirers. Focused Asian in America are now, to Asians, American i.e., the American Dream, perhaps even Pure Capitalists, which is certainly an appealing option to the sane, it seems. But the point is: EVERY INDIGENOUS GROUP THAT HAS NO WRITING OUTLET FOR ITSELF IS DOOMED, IF THEY BELIEVE THE COMMERCIAL TRADITIONAL COMPANIES.
In highly developed countries, the population shift points to more complex writing and publishing for new peoples in new demographics. I love science and dislike science fiction (with exceptions: Jules Verneʻs 40,000 Under the Sea and Lucasʻ great Star Wars); but the rise of violence in much that is published is not only how our young people are finding the world developing. The violence is what our Commercial Tradition Publishers must produce, they think, to stay alive. At that point, the Earth is being Abandoned. And we modeled in panoramas as though we are, like the giant insects of Kafka and Bulgakov, the insects that the insects must fear.
Brisk trades. Then silence?
This is AMERICA. Weʻve all made history, by our Bare Feet or Boot Straps, following many models about writing from an oral past, in different languages, serving multiple cultural readers -- and raising our individual and collective writing and reading standards. One day, my family company may want to turn to "make money." That is good. But no where in the world is it a necessity for writing and publishing.
A few of my supposed rivals are very successful writers, delivered out of Continental publishing houses, now, and out of their respective foreign countries. LTʻs @macmeijers speaks of "brand;" MinaKelly, of knowing who you are; others, what the procedures and costs may be for "self" publishing with or without the POD etc. One emphasized the quality of the editing and its cost: yes. That is undeniable, I well know. Editing is not a single issue. Nor kinds. Contents, in my situation, determine everything for it aligns with receiverships and distribution. Of English; there are Englishes. The languages, grammars and spellings have their own histories, from ways of speaking that are not dialect but consistently non-Standard
without being Sub-standard. So the ideals differ, but so do the times. Change provokes and challenges. There are different kinds of Creole, as Derek Bickerton and Carolyn Oda long ago demonstrated: they have pronounced Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Puerto Rican generational patterns, as well as vocabularic inventory ranges between the readers and non-readers, even the TV watchers and the non. References are in multilingual and multicultural modes. Yet only the writer who must dispose of the wares on paper in words, phrases, sentences, on themes, with intonations native to reader and listener, old and young, less schooled and well -- it is a writerʻs nightmare. Joe Balaz and ʻImai Kalahele are master Creole speakers and writers -- the first mainly publishes; the second, holds Listenings from a royal associated institute, where for years he has been janitor (the greatest poet among us who preferred such freedom because it allowed him to raise a large family, meet everybody his royal sponsors find important, etc.). They represent a generation very different from mine, which is older -- and rawer, for I grew up in a tri-lingual household (Hawaiian, English, Chinese).
Late Hawaiian Creole writers/speakers are closer to Standard English. "Bugger," in my generation was a GOOD word, meaning fellow, pronouonced "da bugga" (duh bahguh). Post Balaz and Kalahele, the word is "Bugger." Never did any of us suspect it originally meant "pimp" or hint at homosexuality (a no-no idea then, socially to pronounce even). And in the mid-1980s, I heard a McKinley High School local student defend her motherʻs school janitorial union by spieling her outrage in "Pidgin English" (ongoing Creole). I did not understand a single sentence. Now, I wouldnʻt touch that for money, to print -- who could edit it? No matter: to do or not to do costs.
The market for which an Independent, like my familyʻs, company works in, was expected to be basically a niche market of producers, but that is not exactly true: there are translations. In the U.S., every ethnicity and indigenous group is of special interest, e.g. of the Asian Americans for the Asia Asians. For the Asian Americans, after acculturation seek their own pasts, and reconfigure their stories for the understanding of their fellow (ancestral) Asians. In America, they are Asian Americans; in Asia, they are American Asians. Every group needs multiple accesses to self identity, for survival. That is the social end that may lead to good monetary returns on writing books, niche oriented, originally, or not.
Then there are the accidents of nature, of history. Good and bad simultaneously. Even I was surprised how some things end. The greatest surprise was finding what I had never ever dreamed of: Rare Books. That the scarcity of copies of the first collected short stories and of the novel was advertised as Rare Books. The Short Stories, sold originally for $10.00, and over time, then, for less. On the Internet, an original i.e. 1st edition was being sold for $499.91. We could have reprinted it, but the original would remain valued as it was, I suppose. We reprinted from demand, not POD -- for individual Continental and island/oceanic schools and universities (Ethnic Studies, Cross Cultural Literature courses, Pacific Linguistics, Feminist Literature, Creoles of the World, etc.) And now the novel (of which there are many fewer copies published than the two short story anthologies) are selling for prices that I cannot help laughing over. My best wishes to everybody
My family publishing company is an Independent Publishing Co. for the reasons above and not a Commercial Traditional Publishing company for attendant reasons and more. One is: youʻve got to know there are limits. Two: take care to take care of yourself, first, which for writers means your mind and ambition in this other-peoplesʻ world too. Three: there is a possibility you may never complete what you set out to do. Four: Donʻt expect people will care or care as you do. The Times are upon us all. Five. There are alternatives one may point out to readers: of the Present that behaves like the Future these days. And that is -- Try Writing, yourself and then reading the writing. TRY Not writing but drama, YOUTUBE. DVD, Computers re: SKYPE. Cds I love. We are here.
There is a major study yet to be done and papers of historic value for research which were given to me for my care. In ten years, I hope to end this enterprise; it is possible the company will no longer be needed. Works are being written in Hawaiʻi and printed and bound in China. We have relatives there, as well as in England and Scotland. Perhaps they might like the business of at least selling the novel, three of which have not yet been published. There is just no time.
I love the Russian writers -- and learned that Mikhail Bulgakovʻs novel took twenty-five years to be published. Now, that is a magnificent piece of writing. So I am only a decade or so behind him. Perhaps when Revolution In Oceania is published (itʻs long), New Caledonia will be so changed, no one will even recognize colonial Noumea and its wonderful adjoining islands, so the novel may be not only "historical" but harmless as well.
2LauraKCurtis
I'll tell you right now that this was too long for me, so I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing.
But mostly, I'll say this: I am a hybrid author. I am traditionally publish and hope to continue to be traditionally published. I also have a self-published novel coming out this spring, once I get it copyedited and get the layout and design done.
Once upon a time "Indie" meant "Small Press." Now it seems to mean "self-published." When it comes to your career, you have to decide for each book, each project, what form of publishing will be best. There is simply no right answer. Which, IMHO, is a good thing.
But mostly, I'll say this: I am a hybrid author. I am traditionally publish and hope to continue to be traditionally published. I also have a self-published novel coming out this spring, once I get it copyedited and get the layout and design done.
Once upon a time "Indie" meant "Small Press." Now it seems to mean "self-published." When it comes to your career, you have to decide for each book, each project, what form of publishing will be best. There is simply no right answer. Which, IMHO, is a good thing.
3LShelby
>2 LauraKCurtis: It wasn't the length that was the problem, IMHO. leialoha is not apparently a native english speaker and the sentences in that post are strung together in a way that is very hard to follow.
>1 leialoha: "EVERY INDIGENOUS GROUP THAT HAS NO WRITING OUTLET FOR ITSELF IS DOOMED, IF THEY BELIEVE THE COMMERCIAL TRADITIONAL COMPANIES."
Actually the commercial traditional companies aren't saying anything other than "this is the way we do things." They do not and never have tried to stop the small presses. Why should they? It's like an elephant worrying about what a gazelle might do it. If a small press grows, a big company might consider buying it--because it looks like it might be profitable, not because they are trying to shut down the outlets of the indigenous groups, or because they perceive independent publishing as a threat, or because of any of the things that you appear to be trying to accuse them of.
Big and small publishing houses have always been complementary systems. The big publishing houses cater to large audiences and publish books with broad appeal, so they can make use of the economies of scale. Small publishing houses cater to niche audiences that the big houses can't effectively reach, because their huge unwieldy infrastructure can't be supported on such a small market base.
It's like the difference between a broom and a toothbrush. They're both good at cleaning, but they aren't good at cleaning the same things.
The reason your indigenous literature needed to be put out by small press, is because it's a niche product. So its not the big publishing companies fault it wasn't happening... it just wasn't happening because nobody had thought to do it. Ignorance is the true enemy.
But I am glad you appear to have started successful projects that carry out this important purpose, and I wish you all the best with your family business.
>1 leialoha: "EVERY INDIGENOUS GROUP THAT HAS NO WRITING OUTLET FOR ITSELF IS DOOMED, IF THEY BELIEVE THE COMMERCIAL TRADITIONAL COMPANIES."
Actually the commercial traditional companies aren't saying anything other than "this is the way we do things." They do not and never have tried to stop the small presses. Why should they? It's like an elephant worrying about what a gazelle might do it. If a small press grows, a big company might consider buying it--because it looks like it might be profitable, not because they are trying to shut down the outlets of the indigenous groups, or because they perceive independent publishing as a threat, or because of any of the things that you appear to be trying to accuse them of.
Big and small publishing houses have always been complementary systems. The big publishing houses cater to large audiences and publish books with broad appeal, so they can make use of the economies of scale. Small publishing houses cater to niche audiences that the big houses can't effectively reach, because their huge unwieldy infrastructure can't be supported on such a small market base.
It's like the difference between a broom and a toothbrush. They're both good at cleaning, but they aren't good at cleaning the same things.
The reason your indigenous literature needed to be put out by small press, is because it's a niche product. So its not the big publishing companies fault it wasn't happening... it just wasn't happening because nobody had thought to do it. Ignorance is the true enemy.
But I am glad you appear to have started successful projects that carry out this important purpose, and I wish you all the best with your family business.
4amysisson
^3 Well said.
I remember when MacAdam/Cage published the first edition of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife in hardcover. I am not a publishing insider by any means, but I got the distinct impression that they were totally blown away by the level of sales, and may not have known how to deal with things on that scale. So the paperback came out from a major house instead. MacAdam always specialized in odd literary titles that I'm sure most of the big houses had no interest in. But The Time Traveler's Wife caught on in a totally unexpected way.
I remember when MacAdam/Cage published the first edition of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife in hardcover. I am not a publishing insider by any means, but I got the distinct impression that they were totally blown away by the level of sales, and may not have known how to deal with things on that scale. So the paperback came out from a major house instead. MacAdam always specialized in odd literary titles that I'm sure most of the big houses had no interest in. But The Time Traveler's Wife caught on in a totally unexpected way.
5MaureenRoy
If you use a print-on-demand company like AuthorHouse, read your contract very carefully. My friend's book was published in November 2014, and you can buy the hardcover edition at any physical or digital bookstore, but you can only buy the paperback and e-book editions at Amazon.
Edit September 2015: The paperback edition is available everywhere this year, it just Took Awhile.
Edit September 2015: The paperback edition is available everywhere this year, it just Took Awhile.
