Posted on December 12, 2011 by Anne Trubek Put “independent” in front of an art form–think film and music–and you often get a built-in niche of consumers. It is helpful shorthand for describing your tastes at cocktail parties and gaining street cred. It helps artists, too, as they have a specific market to target, a group of like-minded supporters who might be compelled to spend their dwindling recessionary dollars on independently produced culture. t is easy to label oneself as a fan of indie film and music. But this does not hold true for authors—yet.
When you think “indie” and “books,” you likely think of “independent bookstore.” There is a system of recognizing independent bookstores as there is for independent-friendly movie theaters and music makers. You could certainly brand yourself as a certain type of reader by saying “I only shop at my local indie bookstore.” You gain a certain moral righteousness by avoiding Barnes & Noble and Amazon (and we don’t’ have to worry about Borders anymore). It feels good to buy your books at the indie store.
But what do you buy in those bookstores? Most indie bookstores purchase titles from all publishers, stocking Dan Brown, Harlan Coben, Jodi Picolout and other bestselling authors published by conglomerates. By purchasing a blockbuster at an indie bookstore you are helping the store itself, but not necessarily artists who are working outside traditional system, as indie filmmakers and musicians do.
Very few consumers could rattle off the names of independent presses such as Algonquin or Unbridled. Publishers in general have very little “brand presence” amongst consumers. Most Americans have no idea which press publishes the books they read. Quick: who published that literary darling of 2010, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom? Most readers ignore the publisher’s imprint on the spine of their books. Few independent presses have developed enough of a brand presence for like-minded readers to find their titles. Some have succeeded– McSweeney’s is probably the most successful of these now, and Grove, New Directions and City Lights accomplished this in the past.
We do have a consumer concept of independent bookstores. But not so much with independent presses. And we are left with a black hole, or raised eyebrows, with the term “independent authors.” It is not a phrase with any of cultural currency. It has no wikipedia page.
Does it matter? Do we need independent authors? Yes. Because as film and music have demonstrated, the independent label comes with a certain consumer cache that draws purchases. As the publishing and bookstore businesses tumble around in an endless dry cycle of figuring out how to weather the perfect economic storm of national recession coupled with a shift to digital books, now is a time for authors to step up to the independent plate.
The closest thing we currently have to an “independent author” is someone who self-publishes. Yet unlike with film and music, self-publishing has (or has had—more on that later) a stigma associated with it. (For film, this might stigma might be associated with “home movies” and for music, the cd put out by those middle-aged guys who practice once a week after the kids are in bed). Authors who self-publish are, in the minds of most, those who could not get a traditional publisher. They are the desperate ones, willing to anything to get into print. Their books are not worth reviewing or reading, and are just all around kind of embarrassing.
Until, maybe, now. We may have reached a tipping point with self-publishing. The stigma is fading. As we topple to another era in publishing, we might think about corralling that consumer-friendly “indie” label onto authors. It is time to snag this term.
Consider Barry Eisler, the bestselling author of thrillers. He recently turned down a $500,000 two-book contract from St. Martin’s Press to self-publish his next book, The Detachment. He made this choice for financial reasons: he can make more money on his own than with a traditional publisher. Eisler, however, is more Lady Gaga or Iron Man than indie. As his website tells visitors: “If you like edge-of-your seat action, exotic locations, realistic spycraft, steamy sex, and protagonists who are “the stuff great characters are made of” (Entertainment Weekly), you’ve come to the right place…”
In a reverse move made in the same week, the 26-year old successful self-publishing author Amanda Hocking signed a $2 million dollar deal with St. Martin’s Press to publish her next young adult paranormal book. Hocking has sold over 1 million copies of her previous nine, self-published novels. Her decision led the New York Times to call her an “indie heroine.”
Both Eisler and Hocking are genre writers, and genre has been thus far the most successful fiction (or any category) for self-publishing, as it has a built-in fan base and tight community of readers that spread the word. Eisler and Hocking’s mass-produced titles come with connotations closer to hack work than the ones indie film and music deliver (difficult, complicated, high brow, etc.). Arcade Fire and David Cronenberg they are not.
In a recent essay for the New York Times Book Review titled “The Case For Self-Publishing,” Neil Pollack, a writer who fits nicely into the established American “indie” category, wrote about his decision to self-publish his next novel. A mid-list writer who never earns out his advances and is finding it increasingly hard to be heard in the pile of new titles put out by major presses, Pollack will upload his next novel works directly to the web via an e-book platform. As he explains, “for a writer like me, which is to say, most working writers — midcareer, midlist, middle-aged, more or less middlebrow, and somewhat Internet savvy — self-publishing seems to make a lot of sense at this point. Early in my career, because of some lucky breaks and a kinder economy, I was able to get advances that helped me support my family over the months it took to write a book. I haven’t been a huge best seller, and I’ve never seen a residual check except for an independently published book of crime stories that I edited, and that was only because I got nothing up front. But I’ve built a modest audience and a name. Now that the advances are smaller and the technology is available, why not start appealing directly to those readers?
Pollack makes a good case. But he makes it just for himself, and a few authors deciding to self-publish here and there does not a movement make, nor will it create what I am arguing is important: a consumer friendly niche. I am thinking like a marketer here: an indie author brand brings with it buyers. What if Pollock were to gain a reputation as an independent author—a writer whose work aims to be more literary than commercial and who takes control of the production and distribution of his works as well? And what if a few dozen other authors were similarly identified as this kind of indie? At some point, readers might decide they would prefer to support such artists, and buy their books before any others. In an encouraging development, the well-known writer Jon Krakauer recently published his expose of Greg Mortenson with long-form start-up Byliner.com, selling 50,000 copies as a Kindle e-book.
One model that authors might look to would be to comics. Unlike traditional publishing, comics have a very strong publishing brand familiarity. Comics fans know immediately which books are put out by DC and which put out by Marvel. Perhaps because there were only two monoliths, it was easier for those working outside those confines to create a a coterie of independent author/artists: think Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb. Jeff Smith self-published Bone for many years before Scholastic picked it up, and is self-publishing his new series RASL. One of the biggest comics publishers, Image, is essentially a vanity press: creators pay out of pocket for production costs and overhead, but then get all the profits–and the creators that work with them include some very big names. The business model of comics—which includes single, non-returnable pamphlets and few distributors—is one reason indie comics have done well.
Digital books and self-publishing obviates the need for someone else to handle production and distribution. Marketing and publicity remain an issue, but most publishers shirk on publicity now, anyway. A healthy number of independent publicists now do the work that presses used to do to sell titles, and authors pay these publicists out of pocket. Most recently, some agents and editors have asked prospective authors to explain, in their proposal, precisely how much money they are willing to front for marketing.
Right now, trying to get published by any press, independent or not, is hard. Publishers are scared. But self-publishing is shifting from the province of wackos and vanity presses to a feasible option for even the best of us. What would happen if a group of authors declared themselves independent?
0 comments:
Post a Comment