Let's Get Dirty

   
     Clay Shirky's piece was a well written and well thought out analysis about the shifting marketplace and the ever changing state of the publishing industry. While it was all fascinating to read, I have to be honest, one question kept running through my mind as I digested the article--something that has been running through my mind since the beginning of this semester's e-pub class: Who cares?

     No, I am not being snide and no, it's not that I don't enjoy thinking about the "why's" and the "how's" and the "what the hell does it all mean's" that pertain to the industry. It's just that, the dominating thought that pulses through my brain has less to do with analyzing the state of things and more to do with figuring out how to best work my way, as a writer, into what publishing has become. 

     I've become resigned to a few things this semester. The industry is what it is. The state of flux will continue until a new stable model is found. There will be good and bad things relative to the torrent of self published writing out there. There will be more shit and more experiment. There will be greater pushing of boundaries. There will be more, more, more. We will burst at the seams and then burst again.

      Do I have opinions about it all? Sure. Are there things that I like and things that I don't like? Of course, but what I have realized is that the movement of the industry is not impacted by my opinion or yours for that matter. It is a thing that is moving on its own, shaped by the market and demand and many things that you and I have little to no control over. 

     In the new model, there will always be a means for us to put our voice into the world, but whether anyone will care or listen is another matter. This is the matter that most concerns me, because as a writer, I want my voice to be heard; I want to be part of the conversation; I want to be read and to make people think and maybe even, to change minds. I am most concerned with the best way for me to do this in the market that currently exists and then in the one that will exist five years from now. If I am going to succeed, I'm going to have to dive in to the mud pit, regardless of whether I am particularly fond of mud or not. So here's to getting dirty. 

   

     Holy Macaroni, Sean Bishop's blog post about the state of the publishing industry gave me so much to think about that I don't even know where to begin.
     Sometimes, I lament my (poor?) timing in coming into the writing/publishing world (i.e. now) because it seems that things were so much simpler before the Internet--you either made it or you didn't. You got an agent, got an advance, got your book published, went on a book tour and that was it. Or at least that's my understanding of it. The writers who managed to do all of that could actually spend their days writing instead of working at some other job and simply writing in their spare time. They could answer the question, "What do you do?" by saying that they were a writer rather than saying that they were a, oh I don't know, cabinetmaker.
     But alas, it's much more complicated now, which as Bishop points out is mostly a good thing, but whether you think of it as good or bad is largely irrelevant because the world has moved and if you don't move with it you're just going to get left behind.
     The whole thing reminded me of this guy I used to work for. He owned his own cabinet shop and I was one of three loyal employees. The man had been building cabinets for twenty plus years and he could design and build almost anything, but he was a terrible businessman. Our paychecks would regularly bounce when we deposited them and he would inevitably make up some ridiculous excuse about how it was the bank's fault, but we all knew that he was responsible.
     The point is, you can't successfully run your own business if you are terrible at the business part, even if you are really good at making whatever you are selling. And in this day and age, being a writer or publisher is pretty much like running your own business. It doesn't matter how good of a writer you are, if you can't run the business end of things.
     Like my old boss, I've probably bounced a few metaphorical checks thus far in my writing career, but Bishop's piece really made me think about all of this in a new way. Running a "business" might be the death of me, but I guess I'd rather die trying than not.