I came across this piece in the NY Times by Garrison Keillor bemoaning the new world of self-publishing via the twitter feed of Austin Kleon, who suggested Keillor should “just put a gun in your mouth & spare us yr ‘you missed the good ol’ days’ monologue.” How could I not click on a link with that as an introduction?
It’s not surprising that Keillor would take this position, given his writerly persona, so it’s difficult for me to get angry at him. But I do get tired of this nostalgic crap in general, and if at some point in the future, I turn into a curmudgeonly “things were better in the old days” type of person, I hope someone will smack the hell out of me and tell me to wake up.
Because, as a general rule, things were never better in the past, not even if you were a white male. The privilege you gained by being in power was offset by poorer health, fewer economic opportunities, less flexibility in your career options, etc. I can’t think of a single way in which life in the past–even the recent past–was better than in the present. Advances in technology alone make the present better, and the future potentially better than that.
And it’s those advances in technology which are causing the changes that Keillor is moaning about.
Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you’re like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.
Point 1: It’s not all free. In fact, a large part of the tussle between publishers and Amazon (with Apple stirring things up) is over how much they’re going to charge for this reading material. Yes, the web is full of free stuff–blogs, journals, webzines, journalism–but that’s not the whole of publishing, and it’s especially not the whole when you look at the world of contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Point 2: You’re not really committed to finishing a book you’ve paid $30 for, or at least you don’t have to be. And if it’s the cost that’s driving you to finish a book, I think that says something about what you value in literature. Also, when was the last time anyone paid full price for a new hardback? Books are like cars–you never pay full price for them.
But this is only the start for Keillor. He’s on a roll now.
And if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.
Did you know that before the web, you needed a publisher and permission? That probably shocks the hell out of Walt Whitman, or would if he were still around to be shocked. Self-publication has been around a long time. All that’s changed is the cost of entry and ease of distribution.
Keillor’s not completely wrong here. The business model is changing, though that’s been in the works for a while now. And part of that change involves writers becoming brands, becoming more involved in their own publicity and getting closer to their readers–interacting with them personally instead of just being a distant figure who imparts art from on high.
And it’s clear that that’s what Keillor is really sad about–the power of the gatekeeper to determine who will and won’t be a writer is disappearing.
Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check and our babies got shoes….Self-publishing will destroy the aura of martyrdom that writers have enjoyed for centuries. Tortured geniuses, rejected by publishers, etc., etc. If you publish yourself, this doesn’t work anymore, alas.
Maybe that’s how it worked for you, Garrison. If so, count your blessings, because you’re lucky beyond all belief. Most writers don’t make enough solely from their writing to survive, much less thrive. That era of martyrdom isn’t disappearing (though I wish it would–the stereotype damages a writer’s ability to make a decent living), and self-publishing won’t kill it because it’s not rejection that creates the stereotype of the starving artist–it’s the economics. And the economics of self-publication haven’t changed, really. Yes, you can self-publish your book online, but who’s going to market it for you? Who’s going to get paper copies of it into bookstores? Who’s going to set up a book tour? Who’s going to get reviewers to take a look at it, much less champion it?
But there’s one more reason why Keillor’s piece is so off base. He doesn’t seem to value the joy that someone can get simply from finding his or her work in print (or online). For him, there’s only value if an outside power has deemed the work worthy of publication, and I say that’s crap. Arrogant, self-important crap. There is value in writing a book even if no one else ever reads it, even if you never make a penny from it. Just count your blessings, Garrison, and leave it at that.
25 responses
Right on.
My two points:
1. The authors most vocally against the current tectonic shifts in the publishing industry are the ones who stand to lose the most: the blockbuster authors like Keillor.
2. Even in Keillor’s “day” 90+% of authors didn’t make very much from writing. Now those same 90+% make way LESS due the strangle-hold publishers are putting them in to stay, themselves, afloat.
I do agree, though, that the distinction between Writer and Author is almost gone and, thus, someone who “just writes” will not be able to make ANY money doing that alone. Writing will become a commodity with a $ value of 0. “Writers” will have to become more. Creators. Content Managers. One-Person-Shows.
Maybe that sounds meh to high Artist writers, or at least to those who want to publish, have an audience, make a living at it, etc. But no soup for us. To stand out you’ll need to stand up.
Chris
Maybe the writer of this article isn’t very familiar with the work of Garrison Keillor. In any case, I think the article misses two key points:
1) Keillor is a humorist (whether one appreciates his style of humor is another matter)
2) “Nostalgic crap,” as the author calls it, is Keillor’s stock in trade.
No doubt Keillor does miss some things about the old days of publishing, but some (much?) of his NYT piece seems to have been written with tongue firmly in cheek. I don’t really believe that Keillor believes in an “aura of martyrdom” for writers, or feels that they are all “tortured geniuses.”
Keillor’s radio show is heavy on nostalgia, while simultaneously mocking it. Books and publishing are not exempt from this; in fact one recurring segment consists of poking fun at English majors and their literary pretensions.
Thank you for this. I’ve been annoyed all day by Keillor’s article, and too busy to vent about it, so I’m glad someone has taken up the fight. I love the bit where he bemoans the days when you could just write something, send it off, and get a letter back with a big check. Sure man, we all miss that. We also all miss the days when merit was always rewarded, evil always punished, and cowboys were gruff but really sensitive souls. I’m glad it worked for old Garrison. But I hope he’ll come to understand that those of us who have self-published our novels in the face of economic catastrophe and shrinking attention to mid-list authors (largely due to the blockbuster strategy that has benefited people like Garrison Keillor)have enough trouble on our hands without being blamed for the demise of western civilization, thank you very much. Garrison, if your vision of culture cannot survive my flirtation with Createspace, then it wasn’t worth saving. Yes, there’s a white noise of garbage flying around out there. But there are still gatekeepers, it’s just that the locus of gatekeeper-dom is shifting. I’m not sure that that’s such a bad thing. What I am sure about is that the flippant comparison of self-published authors to text-messaging teenagers is spiteful, nasty and unworthy of anyone who hopes to be regarded by posterity as anything other than an angry old crank.
This backlashing against a perceived “angry crank” smacks of…angry cranks!
It’s fine to be wary of those who glorify the past, but does this mean we are supposed to roll over in the face of any change that comes along? Does technological progress always have humankind’s best interest in mind?
Besides, I should think that making fun of the curmudgeon for glorying the past is just as much of a cliched response as the curmudgeon’s itself. Both sides are painting with too broad a brush, I’d say.
And as for the idea that “all” that’s changed with regard to self-publication is “the cost of entry and ease of distribution,” wow, that’s kind of a disingenuous critique. Those are huge changes! That’s sort of like saying “all” that changed with the printing press was that books could now be manufactured quickly and cheaply.
I’m with Dave B. Please prove me wrong, Brian, if you are actually familiar with Keillor’s persona. I can’t imagine someone who was would find his piece remotely noteworthy.
Heh – I’m with Dave B. here. Folks – the complainers are showing their serious lack of understanding related to Garrison Keillor’s sense of humor. I too was a little annoyed, at first, taking Keillor’s piece at face value. Then I remembered the tone of the Prairie Home Companion show, and his piece made sudden, less serious, sense.
What is more interesting to me now is how Garrison has outed the defensiveness of some(myself included) who want the technological literary revolution to succeed – publishers be damned.
I’m familiar with Keillor’s work and schtick, by which I mean I’ve listened to Prairie Home Companion a number of times and I’ve read a handful of his essays and Op-Ed pieces. But I didn’t feel this piece had the same sort of self-conscious mockery that “where all the children are above-average” does. This seemed a bit more mournful to me, and I wasn’t alone in my assessment of it that way. I wrote this for my blog because I heard a lot of other people aggravated by this nostalgic look at publishing.
I have a real problem with nostalgia. I think it’s one of the worst ways we lie to ourselves, both about the present and the past. So when someone look wistfully back at a past that never was and then concludes with a hint of “too bad you missed it–sucks to be you,” I get a little annoyed, especially since I’m right in the thick of the changing world he’s describing, and frankly, lying about.
Let me add that I think there’s a difference between Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion guy and Garrison Keillor, Op-Ed Writer, or at least I perceive a difference between the two. One is a persona, the other is a person. It’s like the difference between Sasha Baron Cohen and Ali G, though the difference is a bit more subtle in Keillor’s case.
How old are you, anyway? Because however nice it is to think that you will be down with all the latest developments when you are 50 or 60, I doubt that will be the case. For most people, what the world was like when they were between 15 and 35 is the baseline for “normal” forever after. Very, very few are immune to this. Keillor may be right, Keillor may be wrong, but you could show a little more respect to someone who has seen a few more things than you have.
I also think that, as Jeremy indicates, you are trapped in the “fallacy of constant progress.” Not everything gets steadily better (and honestly, I didn’t think so even when I was 25). There are gains, but there are trade-offs. Unjustified “presentism” is just as annoying as unjustified nostalgia.
If Keillor wrote this with the intent of being tongue in cheek he failed. It reads to me as Brian and others have critiqued it: a lament for Publishing Times Gone By. And his last paragraph is indicative of a time gone long before the internet; when large publishing houses read unsolicited manuscripts.
Another thought: To be resolutely anti-nostalgia is to deny yourself the possibility of liking or getting used to anything about the present moment. For it will surely change, but if you continue to like what had been, you will be guilty of the sin you condemn.
As a historian, I am well aware of the dangers of nostalgia, of conjuring a past that never was (although we also have to be careful of thinking that we have fewer illusions about what the past was than the people who actually lived through it). Someone who is utterly incapable or disdainful of all nostalgia is lacking in sentiment in a way that I find unappealing.
Those who think Keillor is writing with tongue in cheek: Read his intro to Good Poems. Seriously.
He is right, though, (in his intro to Good Poems, the book) about the kind of writing that will stand the test of time: memorable writing. And at this time, none of it is memorable. And people’s memories are getting smaller as we outsource all thinking to the Internet. So maybe no one will preserve or save anything at all from right now. In which case, Keillor’s “olden days†are better in the sense that at least we still preserve at least SOME of the writing from that time.
“Point 1: It’s not all free. In fact, a large part of the tussle between publishers and Amazon (with Apple stirring things up) is over how much they’re going to charge for this reading material. Yes, the web is full of free stuff–blogs, journals, webzines, journalism–but that’s not the whole of publishing, and it’s especially not the whole when you look at the world of contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry.”
It IS all free. In Keillor’s formulation e-books are the same as good old fashioned ones; they require the old publishing houses and editors and are sold for profit. What he’s describing is internet publishing. Which is free (Hello, Rumpus), and by-passes all the traditional road bumps to publication. Lost in the commentary is that those road bumps exist in order to polish the material and improve it. Theoretically, all of literature has been improved because of the work of editors. I don’t think anyone would dispute that point. So when Keillor writes, “Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats,” he is not referring to some Old Boy’s Network, he is referring to this process of improvement. He is describing the young learning from the old. Which is really not so appalling a prerequisite to having a public platform. When did we become entitled to fame?
Patrick,
I’ll be 42 in November, and I already recognize that in some ways, I’m falling behind the times. I teach mostly first and second year college students, and while I listen to some of the same music they listen to, I know almost none of their television or movie references–it just doesn’t interest me. But I do my best not to fall into the trap of thinking that my generation’s films or books or music was necessarily better than what’s being done today. For me, the lie of nostalgia is the notion that what came before is necessarily better, and more importantly, that things would be better if we could somehow return to those bygone days. And while not every single thing improves over time, the arc of history bends toward progress. I would rather live now than at any time in the past.
Chris,
About memory–it’s possible that our memories are contracting. Recent studies seem to indicate that our internet use and our attempts to multitask have changed the ways our brains work. But I think a larger part of what’s happening is what always happens–when you’re in the moment, it’s impossible to know what will be memorable decades down the road. I think we’re still arguing, for instance, over who the canonical poets of the late 20th century are/were, and we’re ten years into the new century. Maybe in another ten we’ll have whittled it down, we’ll have separated the great from the merely good, as Miller Williams once put it in one of his poems. Or perhaps not.
George,
I’d only say that road bumps can polish the work and improve it, and when they do, great. I don’t think, by the way, that Keillor’s vision of the future is an accurate one. I don’t think that publishing is going to die, and I really don’t think that self-publication will deliver the killing blow. But a lot depends on who’s throwing those road bumps up, and I think that very often those road bumps become road blocks thrown up by, among other things, an Old Boy’s network (which Keillor might not have been talking about, but which definitely exists), and it’s good to have options for going off-road (if I may extend this clumsy metaphor). Self-publishing is one of those options. It might not be the best–I’m far more interested in micro-publishing myself–but it is an option.
Let’s not forget the snob factor in what Keillor writes–he wants gatekeepers to prevent the inundation of writers he is already assuming aren’t good enough because they’re self-publishing. But just like self-publishing has been around for a very long time, so have bad writers. Yes, maybe the internet provides a wide open forum so that even MORE bad writers can publish themselves, but it’s not like anyone’s duct taping Keillor to a computer screen and forcing him to read anything. He should just channel his cranky energy into a “these darn kids and their goofy spelling” monologue and move on.
Beating up on Keillor is about as much fun as beating up on your gramps (ie, neither fair nor fun).
Are self-published books inherently worse? Perhaps not, but the circumstances of traditional publishing are certainly more rigorous, which I believe in turn produces better books. In self-publication, the process is radically diminished: author writes the book, sends PDF to Amazon, throws book party. The virtue of traditional publishing is precisely the tediousness of the progression from Word document to book. When the manuscript travels to agent, then editor, then publisher, then businessmen, and perhaps everyone’s spouse in between, more eyes and red pens sift through the manuscript. In short, the manuscript spends much longer in the forge, presumably emerging stronger in the weak spots.
Perhaps this is the snob factor argument, that manuscripts are generally in need of refinement before they become books. What is the alternative view? It is: My Book deserves to exist because it is My Book. Interesting here that the side thought snobbish is not the entitled, egoistic side, but the modest one.
There is lots of talk about the great self-published authors. Nobody here seems to remember their names. How about Virginia Woolf? The trouble with this comparison is that “self-publishing†today bears no relation to “self-publishing†in the time of Hogarth Press. Woolf literally set by hand every letter of every word of every … (etc), a process that involved intimate, lengthy ruminations over every word used. This is to say, any one slaving so is forced to become their own gatekeeper. That is not the process of today’s self-publishing.
In short, this is an argument FOR gatekeepers. Of course, everyone’s blog is entitled to at least 14 readers.
I find this an interesting rebuttal to Keillor’s Op-ed piece, but I have to take issue with “Point 2”. I regularly pay full price for my books, especially hardcovers, as I wish to keep my local independent bookstores and publishing houses in business. I think part of the problem with readers/consumers today is that they look at books as if they are akin to cars. They are not widgets… they are, for the most part, art. Someone took the time to battle with their inner selves and flesh out a work they wish to share, or to allow themselves to get close to the reader. Be it published in a traditional form or self-pub’d and then someone, hopefully had to edit, design and market the book. When you scoff at paying the retail price, you are devaluing the work and the process. Also, you can ask yourself if we continue to bargain shop- Who is going to market these books, set up tours, etc…
I agree that books are, in a lot of cases too expensive… hell I live in Canada, and our currency is almost at par, yet I still pay 10-20 percent more than someone in the US for every book I buy. But, I still am not about to run out and bargain shop from online/big box retailers. If I want to read something, anything, I still go to my local indie and talk with the people who love the books they sell, not as product, but as books. I still see value in this, and to me there is value in supporting it by shelling out the extra couple of bucks… hell a saved a bundle on my car, so I can afford that new small press hardcover.
Garrison Keillor is right. Sorry.
I’m in my twenties and I like the internet plenty, but I think Garrison Keillor is right. I’m not really a Keillor fan, but I found just about everything he said to be spot on. And I don’t think he’s joking at all.
I’ve published over 40 books, and been under contract to some of the leading New York mainstream publishers, and friendly and known to some of the leading and most famous editors of the 20th century. None of my books were self-published. I sent the last one to a POD publisher, and he liked it so much he insisted on paying for everything himself. Harper Collins wanted to republish it, but insisted on “editing” and I told them to piss off. (Yes that’s right, I told them to get fucked rather than let a single “idiotor” tamper with my work. That was not a misprint.)
Garrison Keillor is full of shit. Editors are largely incompetent and stupid, and rarely improve an author’s work by messing with it to suit their fragile egos. Figure it out. Most any half-assed author can be an editor, but very few editors can be authors. Where is the editor who could have improved Shakespeare? When they run out of friends to publish, they begrudgingly let real writers into the mix. 85% of their picks fall dead off the presses. In any other line of work, that failure rate would be called incompetence.
Garrison has had any easy road because radio success helped him to get published and supported his books. But he’s a monk in a monastery writing with quill pens. The best thing for writers is to eliminate these crappy gatekeepers who have edited the edge off their work and prevented them from reaching their public. In the new world, writers go direct to readers. And if Garrison can’t take the heat, he should get the fuck out of the kitchen.
If you cut out the publisher and self-publish through lulu or wherever, the author will see a bigger percentage of the revenue so the money argument is weak. Sales may not compare, but if it’s a question of zero sales because the book isnt published AT ALL versus some sales because you self publish…duh?
Sure, sure, there were the good ol’ days of publishing. Of everything. Change, evolution are natural and important. Every industry needs to grow and change to meet the needs of all the players–readers, writers, editors, composition houses, printing presses, ap makers… whatever.
We head this whole nostalgic whine from the music industry years ago. and music is still around and we have better access to different music than ever before. Pretty awesome that it applies to other media now, too.
I guess my question is… AND? What’s your suggestion, GK? I say, let’s focus on the good–people are reading and they’re interested in stories of all stripes and that’s pretty rad. Keep writing good books and getting them out there however we can, whatever works best for authors and publishers and readers. Make books accessible, keep supporting libraries if you like the idea of a physical book that’s free more than a low-priced ebook. Don’t be a hater, yo.
There may have been a bit of self-mockery in Keillor’s piece, but if so, then he just missed the mark. It happens to everyone, even big-name authors who wrote their first manuscripts by pressing reeds into wet clay.
The process of refinement that a book can undergo while being readied for publication is often useful and needed, and sorely lacking from many self-published books. Of course editors rarely edit; their position is more traffic manager, ensuring enough of the right books are in the proper stages of the pipeline to make the quarterly profit goals. From what I understand the actual editing process is handled — if at all — by a variety of people, from copy-editing sweatshops in Mumbai to agents hoping to make your book more option-able.
The larger issue is that the publishing industry has spent too many years aping Hollywood’s blockbuster mentality. Why bother to publish a new author unless you can snag a film option and guarantee trailer-loads of sales? There’s too little money in it, otherwise. Clearly self-publishing doesn’t threaten that business model at all; if it did, someone would have bought enough politicians to legislate it out of existence by now.
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