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This from the Sobaka website:
July 22: Congratulations are in order to Sobaka columnist Sean Rorison, whose article for us, Into Somaliland was included in this year’s Zine Yearbook, published by the folks from Clamour Magazine. You can read more about it here. Congratulations, Sean!
You can read one of Sean’s PBs stories here.
That ‘warm fuzzy feeling’ you’re supposed to get for seeing your art/music/writing exposed to a larger audience is the central reason why most culture-creators live on such shoestring budgets to begin with. Ask someone cutting down trees if he’ll give you a log for free as a gesture of good will, well maybe he will, but only for promotional purposes. There’s a difference between offering up free stuff as promotions and offering up everything for free because the market has been undercut by the interjection of emotional investment in these skills by people with no business sense, i.e. artists, writers, musicians, et cetera.
Anyways to conclude my rant I should say that no, they didn’t ask, however the assumption is that they asked the editor of Sobaka, vis a vis a proxy endorsement from yours truly. This furthers the assumption that automatic re-printing is good as a point of self-promotion though, as I said, the economics of the whole culture creation affair is dubious to begin with precisely because there is too much free ‘self-promotion’ going on.
Which is not to say that content creation for free ain’t bad, but the entire business model is designed to fail to begin with. uh oh, I’m starting to drift into my thesis topic. I better stop now….
Wa-s. Yes, in the past. Thankfully. Dat edumacation id hard wen u got da tick hedd lyke me.
Yes, my senior semester major essay was on the economics of buying and selling art and how art economics functioned to the benefits of the upper class and anyone else needing to hedge their money against the fluctuations of the currency markets. See, there I go again with big words and long sentences. Are you sure you want to hear more?
Then I changed the subject completely halfway through and started discussing time displacement and quantum physics which probably totally confused my teacher. Anyways that was the only A+ I ever received in post-secumonderary edumacation so I guess talking out of your ass with big words pays off sometimes. :P
“Getting something for nothing” is not what the art market is about. Au Contraire. It is about making something that is nothing something for the sole purpose of having it exist outside the realms of normal market fluctuations. See, there I go again.
Self publishing? You mean, like, a website?
What do you call a Paki who has been everywhere and seen everything?
Who? Moi?
A “paying hobby” is when you have to pay for it… right?
Just curious about your thoughts on self publishing. I have a firend who has been both published by a company and has self published. He said the self publishing option was far more lucrative, but gave far less cred. Also sounds more like an exercise for a marketer than a writer.
I touched on this briefly on the BFC about two months ago, and my opinion hasn’t changed.
Essentially self publishing can be a much better option depending on how confident you are in the market for your book and your skills at marketing the book. I was surprised to find out RYP self published the very first printing of DP since the publishers wouldn’t touch it…. which is where I’m at with a lot of my stuff. Generally the business model is falling in line with music in that an artist/writer is expected to prove themself in a DIY fashion first and create their own market, then the big fellas will pick them up once their proof of return on investment seems somewhat reliable. Certainly there are still ‘new’ writers being published by established houses BUT they all fit into a certain mold…. and for my book I was not at all interested in perpetuating that mold. Really, if I wanted money out of travelling, I’d be smuggling gold out of Congo, not writing a few freaking articles on the place. If I can’t make writing interesting for myself then there’s no point in writing, really.
That said, there is a uniquely Canadian conundrum to this obstacle and that is Grant funding. Which is what I’m aiming for sooner or later. Self-published books fall under the category of ‘vanity’ publications and therefore are ineligible for counting for the total amount of ‘published’ works that an applicant is required to have in order to qualify for the option of applying for a grant. My Sobaka stuff does, in fact, qualify me so it’s not a big deal. But the next jump is from ‘Emerging Writer’ to ‘Established Writer’ which requires two published books published by other people, i.e. people willing to invest in your own writing.
But self publishing may still be an option as a category of my aftorementioned ‘self-promotion’ cost incurrance. I may self publish anyways since I dread having to sign autographs for any period of time at a local bookstore which I see as a dead end for promotion anyways.
I was in the Dallas Airport in january and there was some old guy sitting behind a cheap table with a stack of his latest book, something on WWII. I had a few hours to kill and walked past him several times. He looked bored out of his skull and kind of ridiculous sitting there. It dawned on me that there had to be a better way to promote a book than what the traditional publishers subject their writers to. Self publishing can allow a writer to do that, but then you’re back into the realm of being a salesman. And it was phrased best in one article I read, that the introspective art of writing and the extroverted art of selling are total opposites but you’re expected to have both to make a profit as a writer.
I do know a guy who used to sell vacuums so maybe I’ll employ him to pound the pavement for me. :wink:
You got paid by me for that one, and I’m sure you enjoyed the three Snickers bars with the pleasure that comes from having worked for the equivalent of Burmese sweatshop wages.
In regards to self publishing, if you’re trying to get away from hustle that’s probably not a really good move. It’s true that print on demand lowers the investment considerably, but you’re essentially trying to make up the work of seven million employees of Multinational Publishers, Inc on your own. I know a few people who have done it. Their results weren’t that encouraging, but then again, they had little time to devote to promotion and didn’t really expect much out of it.
There’s always exceptions, I’m sure. And self-publishing is no longer for egotists, aspiring lawyer/novelists and kooks anymore. For instance, in communique three (FORTHCOMING, dammit), we reveal that former Haitian dictator Prosper Avril has been burning up the charts at upublish.com with several books about how he really didn’t kill all those people, or that the other people killed by other people were much more tragic, or something.
So there’s a precedent, is what I’m saying. He also charges thirty fucking bucks for his books, which sort of explains why Baby Doc picked him to watch over his piggy bank back in the day.
http://www.upublish.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=158112533X
http://www.upublish.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581128363
@SRR wrote:
If I can’t make writing interesting for myself then there’s no point in writing, really.
And the same goes for reading…?? I guess it’d require going somewhere far away (in business obviously!!) to discuss extensively…
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