self-publishing: what about now?

A friend linked me to this article, “Books Unbound,”by Chris Jackson, in Time Entertainment (online). OK, we’ve had this discussion before, countless times. To self-publish, or not. To submit to the big, gatekeeper publishing houses, or not. And most of the time, the latter has won out. But –what about now? What about now, during the worst economic crisis in decades, when the old school institutions are falling; when technology is making it easier for smaller, more specialized and DIY forms of publishing and distributing to proliferate, and they are?

Books are now circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic, far outside the charmed circle of New York City’s entrenched publishing culture. Old Publishing is stately, quality-controlled and relatively expensive. New Publishing is cheap, promiscuous and unconstrained by paper, money or institutional taste. If Old Publishing is, say, a tidy, well-maintained orchard, New Publishing is a riotous jungle: vast and trackless and chaotic, full of exquisite orchids and undiscovered treasures and a hell of a lot of noxious weeds. — Chris Jackson

Readers, however, will still need someone or something to sort this all out for them. It will still need gatekeepers. But what if those gatekeepers aren’t the big publishing houses? Will reviewers gain more stature in this new game? Or will word-of-mouth blogging or face-to-face discussion within interest groups be sufficient to help finance a good writer’s next book — not to mention, pay the rent?

the path from page to brain

Science and culture writer James Gleick makes a point about books that sounds a bit like the old “sentimental plea,” but makes sense for publishing, too, in “How to Publish Without Perishing.” Via Clay Shirkey’s blog on boingboing.

edit warring

I find this amusing, if only because so much of a corporate editor’s life (I’m talking about the glorified copyediting that so many corporations nowadays label “editing,” i.e. taking on the role of proofreader, copyeditor, developmental editor, AND writer, and sticking it all under the label of “content editor”) consists of allowing reversion of one’s edits on a daily basis, with little or no discussion at all. But then, to edit for a large corporation is to become a cog of sorts, and one must let go of such niceties as “discussion” in the interest of meeting deadlines. [More to follow after I get a good night's sleep...]