The age-old vision of the artist or writer toiling away at his craft, alone and hungry and living in compromised conditions, is certainly an enduring one, and it is also one that most artists and writers readily reject if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, most developing artists must endure at least a period of abject poverty as they hone their craft and struggle for recognition. The public, rather than support society’s creative brain trust, customarily engages in mocking those who have not yet achieved notoriety, while often lavishing ridiculous rewards on those who are fortunate enough to be underwritten by large publishing and promotion interests. The late (and beloved) writer Kurt Vonnegut often reiterated the sentiment that he considered himself incredibly lucky, because he personally knew at least a dozen writers who were every bit as talented, or perhaps more so, than he was and had achieved no recognition whatsoever (not to mention no financial rewards).
Without a doubt, a certain amount of luck is involved when a writer signs a contract with a major publisher. Many aspire to such recognition (worthy or not), because what artist does not wish his work to be exhibited to a large audience? In this age of high budget promotion, mass media, and instant gratification, it is easy to forget that such works as Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen were originally private publications for the benefit of the authors and their friends and families. In fact, the list of self-published titles, and writers who acted as their own publisher, is quite longer than one might expect:
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust Ulysses by James Joyce
The Adventures of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton
The Bridges of Madison County by James Waller
What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles
In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple by Jenny Joseph
And here are a few other now famous authors who have self-published their work:
Deepak Chopra Gertrude Stein
Zane Grey
Upton Sinclair
Carl Sandburg
Ezra Pound
Mark Twain
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Stephen Crane
George Bernard Shaw
Anais Nin
Thomas Paine
Virginia Wolff
e. e . cummings
Edgar Allen Poe
Rudyard Kipling
Henry David Thoreau
Benjamin Franklin
Walt Whitman
Alexander Dumas
Even though it is easy to see from this list of well-known titles and esteemed authors that the so-called industry has often overlooked books that it should have embraced, there is perhaps a single overriding reason for this negligence, and that reason is not ignorance or lack of editorial insight, it is strictly financial.
Consider the fact that for the past several hundred years (more or less) book publishing (and most other art forms as well) has operated on the royalty system, whereby publishers pay authors or producers a percentage of revenues derived from the sale of the published work, the production cost of which is originally, and customarily, underwritten by the publisher. But this has not always been the dominant system by which writers and other artists have been paid for their work. In times past, patrons were the customary financiers of artistic works, commissioning artists to create a specific work for a particular purpose. Most of the great art produced over the past millennium in Europe was produced under the system of patronage; and therefore it can be acknowledged that the so-called royalty system is, for all intents and purposes, a relatively new one, and also one which has emerged largely since the emergence of democratic and capitalistic societies.
As a result of the system of royalty publishing, never have so few artists been paid so well, while the rest of the field (whether their efforts are noble or feeble) are condemned to obscurity, silence, poverty, and even scorn. For those lucky enough to sign a contract with a major publisher that is willing and able to finance a significant promotion campaign to drive book sales, rewards can be staggering, offering writers who were recently unknown and toiling away in their garrets (or in Stephen King’s case, his trailer) millions literally overnight. Consider the good luck (and good fortune) of authors such as J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown.
This system (now consolidated into a consortium if not a virtual monopoly), which necessarily celebrates the few and condemns the rest to relative obscurity, defends its exclusionary practices by telling one and all that only the best writers and the best literary works manage to make it through the hierarchy of the screening system (beginning with literary agents who are in many cases only slightly more literary minded than used car salesmen and ending with accountants – not editors – who ultimately determine which titles might have a chance for financial success, and therefore which titles a publisher shall ultimately publish and offer to the public as the best and most worthy literary art of the times). But does this system accomplish such a worthy purpose, or has it now been thoroughly corrupted by the motive of profit and left the public with offerings that merely pretend to aspire to a lofty plane?
One of the chief reasons that the current system of publishing and distribution has evolved into a clumsy and distended financial machine (often short-sighted and usually self-righteous) that often rewards mediocrity by targeting the lowest common denominator and while ignoring, if not purposely bypassing, inspiration, is its tenacious effort to maintain exclusivity. However, in keeping with the trends of modern-day capitalism, the once fiercely independent publishing industry has subjected itself to concentric consolidation, thereby standardizing editorial policies to conform to the marketing strategies of bean counters and PR men. Twenty years ago, there were about thirty frontline publishers in the United States; today (by my count) there is but one. The rest have been swallowed up – one by one – into the A. E. Bertlesman publishing consortium, where objectives are global, and where the bottom line rules.
In a system that methodically turns art into a commodity – quality be damned if sales are brisk – supporting entities quickly learn how to feed off the all-powerful, all-consuming giant. Consider that Barnes & Noble, once a corner bookshop in New York City, now operates a thousand stores nationwide selling not only the day’s best selling Bertlesman titles, but a wide range of coffee drinks as well, the latest self-help sold with a complimentary double latté grandé, while James Joyce’s classic, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is now stocked in the store’s darkest corner, or is perhaps only available in Cliff’s Notes. On the Internet, Amazon.com stocks every title ever printed on a printing press – or so they maintain – even as the price of a less than venerable title has been reduced to virtually zero! Indeed, Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Portrait of Dorian Grey, may have achieved negative value in today’s publishing and book retail system – two entities that are joined at the hip. And when art itself is devalued to the level of a widget sold on a late night infomercial, then society and culture are themselves degraded, and we are all poorer for that degradation, and perhaps all responsible for it, too.
Ensconced as this system certainly is, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Internet publishing now offers any writer a venue for his work. What’s more, the web enables anyone to promote virtually anything till the cows come home. Infinite low cost space, the possibility of infinite connections with like-minded and other interested individuals worldwide, virtual retail space and virtual meeting places, media synergies, and cheap technology all combine to provide not only writers, but artists in every discipline, with a new venue – one with seemingly endless possibilities, and one available to everybody at a cost so low it is incidental. The field is wide open, and it is vast, and it is egalitarian. Place like YouTube and Second Life offer both new artists and those long ignored a showcase for their work and their talents. The potential audience is worldwide, and it is also seemingly eager for something more than the all-too-often mediocre offerings of monolithic profiteers. The Internet is the venue of the people, and art has by its very nature always been a local expression. Except now the concept of local has been expanded – exponentially! The prospect of one’s book being stocked (among a hundred thousand other titles) in a thousand B&N stores from Miami to Seattle and from San Diego to Bangor must certainly pale in comparison with a potential worldwide Internet audience in the hundreds of millions (with Google as the head librarian). It’s a brave new world in the history of publishing, nothing less, and possibly infinitely more significant, than the invention of the printing press (which replaced the hand-tooled scroll), or the use of parchment (which replaced the stone tablet). Of course those in the conventional publishing industry will try their best to deny the impact of Internet publishing, but try as they might, they will not be able to preserve the status quo, nor will they be able to hold back the future. Some will recognize the inevitability of this transformation and try to adapt. Others will cling onto the past even as their sales figures (and their influence) steadily decrease. But whether one is an old hand at publishing, or whether one is a relative newcomer, the fact is that in Internet publishing the playing field is level, and nobody enjoys a distinct advantage simply because he is well financed. In fact, money may well be out of the picture altogether…
In a capitalistic system where supply and demand always determines availability and price, all bets may be off once Internet publishing assumes the foothold that it surely must. Assuming that the demand for media at all levels of quality continues to expand – and there is no reason to assume otherwise – and also assuming that the supply line – namely, Internet publishers in every artistic discipline – continues to expand as well, a virtual price war (similar to what has occurred in the telecommunications industry) will ensue, eventually rendering all media free to consumers. Imagine that! But if art is free (and thereby freed of the constraints of commercialism and bottom-line thinking), then how is the artist, or the producer, to be paid?
As the pendulum swings, it will be necessary for the royalty system, as we currently know it, to give way (grudgingly in many cases, we can suppose) to a much older one – namely, the age-old system of patronage. Already public television stations in the US operate largely through the contributions of those willing to finance quality programming and elevated content. Several small press publishers still publishing print on paper also operate largely through the contributions of patrons. It is a system that must re-emerge because of the dispersion possible through a new medium. Is it altogether unthinkable that instead of buying a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at a neighborhood B&N or Borders store to read to your child, you might simply contribute to its upkeep online and access it on your home computer?
At Open Books, an online publisher of classic literature, contemporary fiction and non-fiction of high quality, and of experimental writing and multi-media presentations, we think the answer to that proposition is an obvious one. Open Books publishes its titles online, and all titles are available for anyone to read free of charge. In publishing its books online, Open Books endeavors to publish books in an environmentally friendly way, and to offer its publications to all the people of the world, regardless of location or economic status. At Open Books, we offer classics that might otherwise not be available; we showcase contemporary authors that might not otherwise be heard, and we expose artists whose work might otherwise be too far out of the mainstream for commercial enterprises to risk investment. At Open Books we believe that for art to be freed, art must indeed be free.
