Rebel Without A Cause
I’m trying to decide if this comment is going to come off judgmental, self-righteous, extremist, whiny— but I’m just gonna say it anyway. I would already be a published author if I were:
- Gay
- Minority
- Celebrity
- Someone with an obvious political agenda
- Someone with ANY agenda
I feel I’m somewhat qualified to say this because I’ve spent the past several months educating myself about the book publishing industry. Having gone through the Writer’s Market three times now, I’ve found myself continually skipping entries because of their rigid editorial requirements. I’m not a political activist or gay. I’m not from North Carolina. I don’t write about Eskimos. I don’t have a particular religious slant. I don’t have an agent. I don’t write stories about bodies of water or roads or sailing. SKIP, SKIP, SKIP, SKIP. I don’t do any of these things. I’m an outsider, a rebel without a cause. I just write. Where’s the market for that?
Authors with agendas—that’s nothing new. There are plenty of authors throughout history who’ve spoken out against the political and cultural conventions of their day via their art. But there were also plenty of authors whose work got distributed simply because it was interesting or good, not because he or she wanted to change the world. Emily Dickinson scarcely left her little home in Amherst, Massachusetts and yet she is considered one of our greatest and most published poets of all time. She was essentially a recluse, with a lot of imagination, and talent.
I’ve spent the past sixmonths or so educating myself about the world of publishing, and I’ve come to realize that the industry itself is in a state of transition that, sadly, will leave a lot of authors perplexed, if not completely baffled (myself among the latter). While snagging a publisher for a book has never been considered easy, authors are now up against a number of roadblocks that previous generations would have never imagined. Technology and cultural diversity are impacting the prospects of traditional publishing. Publishers have become so specialized and exclusive that it’s nearly impossible to find mainstream outlets.
Authorship is no longer the quiet, solitary profession it once was—gone are the days when words were carefully crafted, slowly digested, and quietly discovered. We now live in a world that literally runs on communication. We think faster than we can get words onto paper. We launch lightning fast emails and comments on social networking sites, often without even thinking about what we are saying. We have to think fast, know what we want, and be ever-ready for the next turn in the conversation. I think this constant barrage of communication is one of the reasons we have difficulty finding time to read or focusing on what we’re reading. I have personally found myself skimming books lately. In ten years, we will probably all be speed readers, and it’s a lot easier to scan pages on a touch screen than it is to flip pages in a book.
Electronic publishing, for some, remains the only alternative. While e-book sales are currently only about 10 percent of actual book sales, some say that eventually, books will join eight track tapes, albums, cassettes, floppy disks, and CDs in the catacombs of antiquated media. Part of me absolutely believes this. It just makes sense. Digital media is faster, most cost effective—it’s environmentally and economically forward thinking. And yet—part of me isn’t sold yet. Books have been around a heck of a lot longer than CDs. The only predecessors to the book are the spoken word and scribed documents. Maybe books are just late bloomers when it comes to keeping up with their media cousins. But then again, maybe there’s something in our collective psyche that just isn’t ready to give up the dream—the feel, the smell of a real book in our hands, the hard evidence of knowledge, belief and thought. There’s something inalterably authentic about a book. Digital media can be copied, pasted, mass produced in a matter of minutes. Does instant and far-reaching access only serve to cheapen the content? Should the form of access even matter? It’s still the same content—there’s just more and more of it, every day. Perhaps what will ultimately cheapen literature is this endless variety.
So I’m hanging on—rather loosely at this point. It’s a dream, but sometimes, a dream is better than a thousand empty realities.
