The Persistence of Epic Novels

Plato and Aristotle, depicted by Raphael

Aristotle, in the Poetics, records a sentiment probably shared by 3,000 years of classical studies students: the epics of Homer are too damn long. The Iliad and the Odyssey each comprise twenty-four “books,” each book running hundreds of lines. In the ancient Athenian recitation competitions, one speaker would memorize one book, and one or two would speak per day, meaning recitations lasted anywhere from nearly two weeks, to nearly a month.

To Aristotle, this was excessive, and he asked for “epics” which a single performer could recite in one or two nights. But Aristotle, writing half a millennium after Homer, might’ve missed something important. Classicist Barry B. Powell suggests, in the introduction to his translation of the Odyssey, that Homer’s performances probably did last only one night. Today, when Homer is “required reading,” we forget he was pop entertainment in his day.

Powell postulates that Homer was probably illiterate, and didn’t have his massive epics memorized. Instead, Powell suggests that Homer improvised his poetry on well-known themes, and each performance was unique. They probably lasted for one- or two-night engagements, But when somebody finally pledged to transcribe Homer’s poetry, Powell believes, Homer composed in long-form, unpacking details usually elided, to create a sweeping saga intended for the page.

This difference matters. Even three millennia ago, Homer realized that people reading a book committed themselves to something vaster, with a willingness to persevere across the span of days. Works intended for public recitation generally run much shorter—it takes approximately two hours to read the entire Gospel of Mark aloud. But books are a different order of beast, and Homer, transcribing early in the medium’s history, already knew that.

Now, as then, we have conflicting desires for short-form and longer entertainments. There’s nothing new under the sun. We want stories we can devour in one sitting, often already prepared for the next one, and we want stories that take days to consume, which we must pursue doggedly. But the changing media market has split our interests. First television, and more recently the internet, swallowed up the market for short-form, one-evening entertainments.

An undated traditional depiction of Homer

Authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote short stories for commercial purposes. The magazines in which they published, like The Atlantic, the Saturday Evening Post, and The New Yorker, had large audiences and paid handsomely. At his peak, Fitzgerald notoriously tore off short stories for magazine markets to get paid, and wrote the novels for which he’s now more famous to indulge a literary inclination that wouldn’t have paid particularly well.

Since Fitzgerald’s time, the magazine market has become considerably less lucrative. The Atlantic no longer publishes fiction and The New Yorker mostly only publishes well-known names or controversial content that drives engagement. A handful of genre magazines pay moderate rates, and art purists still regularly launch small-circulation “zines,” but the short-form entertainment market has moved mainly onto electronic media.

Conversely, contra Aristotle, the book continues to harbor the epic format he thought Homer overstretched. From Dante and Milton to J.R.R. Tolkien and Tom Clancy, authors preserve Homer’s physical length and dramatic sweep, because people really want that scale and that depth of immersion. People want an “entertainment” that will take them out of themselves and their own lives for literally days, even weeks, at a stretch.

And electronic media largely can’t provide that. Compare the prose and streaming versions of one of our time’s greatest epic authors. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series certainly has its detractors, but Jordan’s audience remained loyal, even when many felt his middle novels lagged. Not only were the books physically and thematically massive, but his story unfolded across multiple books, and readers remained immersed in his milieu for years.

But the streaming media adaptation of Jordan’s books largely fell flat. Not only did it take two years to produce a second season, even with the storyline already written, but when the product finally emerged, it suffered from cost overruns and content bloat. The audience from Jordan’s novels disliked the compromises which the transition between media forced, and the series has struggled to find a non-book audience.

Simply put, Aristotle was wrong. Audiences don’t find the length, density, and complexity of Homer’s epics off-putting. Indeed, as TV and Netflix continue consuming our short-form entertainments, audiences not only still buy books, but they support longer books and convoluted book series. Aristotle thought the hoi polloi weren’t lettered enough to follow stories that took days to develop, but given the choice, that’s apparently what audiences want.

The Making of a “Classic”

Agatha Christie

“Is there a reason a video game can’t be considered a classic?” I remember a student asking in English 102. “Why can’t a video game be ‘literature’?” Our class that semester was dedicated to researching and writing about the meaning of education, especially higher education, and what it means to be an educated person. The student was an English major, but uncomfortable with the canon that the discipline considered “classic.”

I recalled this student this week, when publisher HarperCollins announced that Agatha Christie would be the latest popular dead writer to have their work rewritten to exclude inflammatory language. Christie, whose work hasn’t gone out of print in a century and whose novels have been more widely translated than Shakespeare, used a number of late-Empire attitudes in her writing. Her protagonists often disliked “foreigners” and used vulgar racist language.

My student got a discussion rolling over what works were considered “classics” in high school English classes. Why, for instance, is The Great Gatsby considered classic literary art, but The Maltese Falcon still lumped with “genre” fiction? Why Shakespeare, but not Neil Simon? We never reached a satisfactory conclusion in class, but I repeated the question to other sections, and eventually, I think we reached a provisional definition of literature.

A work becomes a “classic,” we tentatively decided, when it says something about the time when it was written, and also about the time we read it. In other words, classic literature isn’t transcendentally timeless; it belongs to the time when it was written. This sometimes means outdated attitudes, such as Atticus Finch’s White Savior mentality. But even outdated content says something about us, now, reading and interpreting the text.

(Incidentally, by this definition, a video game narrative could potentially become a classic. The game itself couldn’t, however, because the technology necessary to read it becomes outmoded and illegible to future generations. Thus popular video game adaptations, like the current TV series The Last of Us, might potentially outlive the games that spawned them.)

Roald Dahl

That returns us to the current mania to rewrite classic literature. Sure, sometimes that’s necessary. The widespread outrage over rewriting began with Roald Dahl’s novels, which often contained jarring racism. In Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas were explicitly described as African pygmies working without pay. First-generation readers considered this so offensive that Dahl himself rewrote that aspect for the 1973 rerelease.

But there’s a difference between an author acknowledging public taste (and his own egregious cock-up) and correcting it, and uncredited outsiders imposing another era’s views on that author. One author being heavily rewritten is Ian Fleming, who created James Bond. In Fleming’s telling, Bond was racist, frequently anti-American, and had little patience with anybody not British. Far from the cinematic hero depicted by MGM, Bond was a lousy human being.

Yet I’d contend that’s the point. Like John le Carré or Frederick Forsythe, Fleming wrote about the kind of bottom-feeder who generally worked in international intelligence. Anybody who reads the history of international affairs knows that the Cold Warriors working for spy agencies like MI6 or the CIA were often little better than the miscreants they hunted. These novels usually featured what one critic called “the pretty bad standing against the truly awful.”

When ghostwriters shave Bond’s chauvinism, nationalism, and bigotry away, they lose something of the Cold War milieu that produced him. James Bond emerged from an atmosphere of realpolitik that found his skills useful. But Britain also sent him overseas because it wanted to put men like him as far from the homeland as possible. James Bond is, simultaneously, a British national asset, and a liability to a global superpower’s self-image.

Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie, and Roald Dahl wrote during the British Empire’s final crumbling years. Britain’s economy, culture, and self-image were in a state of flux, one that arguably paid off in the ignominy of Thatcherism. Their racist ideas reflected at least a portion of Britain at the time, watching burnished imperial splendor wither, exposing the moral rot that had always laid underneath. Arguably, they handled the change badly.

Except I believe that’s the discussion readers need to have when reading these works. Poirot and Miss Marple upheld the law, which included parroting top-level White supremacy and late colonialism. James Bond defended a homeland that was embarrassed by him. Charlie Bucket inherited an economy based on enslaved labor. These works are “classics,” not in spite of, but because of these traits, and the questions they ask us, the readers.

In Defense of Books On Amazon

The Raven Bookstore, Lawrence, Kansas

This past weekend, I visited Lawrence, Kansas, and as I do whenever I’m in down, I swung by The Raven Bookstore. I picked up a book and a low-gloss literary magazine. Lawrence is fortunate enough to have three good-quality, locally owned bookstores within highly trafficked one block. While chatting with the clerk, she thanked me for purchasing there, rather than online. I smiled, returned her thanks, and said: “Shopping here is so much more of a sensory pleasure than Amazon or wherever.”

The words had hardly passed my lips before I realized the import. I permeate my blog with buying links to Amazon, who directly provides over half the books I review. I purchase from Amazon semi-regularly, more so since my town’s biggest bookstore basically retooled itself as a tchotchke outlet. Without Amazon’s recommendation features, I probably never would’ve discovered several books that have proven formative in my understanding of modern life.

But I also realize many good critics with unimpeachable reasoning have condemned Amazon for coarsening America’s publishing industry. Novelist/poet Ursula K. le Guin has characterized Amazon as “the BS Machine.” They’re regularly chastened for undercutting individual entrepreneurs, with good reason—though Wal-Mart has arguably done more in that direction, for far longer. Simply put, Amazon has narrowed the publisher-to-purchaser pipeline, at great social cost.

Still, I can’t bring myself to buy it.

Lawrence, Kansas, is wealthy, educated, and progressive-minded enough to have supported its historic downtown while neighboring communities rushed to build malls. This continuity proved foresighted, as malls and big-box retailers collapsed en masse during the Great Recession. Because malls involve massive buy-in costs, they’re prohibitively expensive for indie stores. Entrepreneurs and local owners absolutely require old buildings in classic communities, which don’t exist everywhere, to remain economically viable.

Amazon's first, highly controversial, brick-and-mortar store in Seattle, Washington

Before Amazon, high-minded critics blamed book superstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble for the then-current publishing environment. Before that, it was book racks at airports and drugstores. Or they blamed mall stores. This invariably overlooks one important point: such “downmarket” book-buying opportunities make reading, and literacy, available to people who are too geographically isolated, socially marginal, or poor to visit high-end indie retailers.

Such criticisms bespeak unquestioned economic privilege. As Naomi Klein put it over fifteen years ago, “media types tend to care more passionately about where they buy their books than where they buy their socks.” Some might immediately claim that Amazon sells socks and other staples; books have long-since receded from their retailing spotlight. But that’s consistent with Klein’s overall point, that retail consolidation has overwhelmed most Americans’ buying options.

Big-box discount stores amalgamated purchasing of life’s most important commodities several generations ago. I can enter any Wal-Mart SuperCenter at 2 a.m. and purchase food, electronics, clothing, car parts, and ammunition. Anything I can’t purchase at these stores could, charitably, be characterized as “luxury goods.” Poor Americans in particular, including those who work for Wal-Mart, can hardly afford to shop anywhere else. Amazon is an afterthought for such customers.

Nor is big-box buying exclusive to America’s poor. Levittown-style suburbanism, which made home ownership available to working-class citizens with GI Bill benefits after World War II, are deeply immune to localism, and lack downtowns like Lawrence. Despite empirical evidence that nobody wants new suburban developments anymore, developers keep building them, mainly because they’re cheap. But risky, independent-minded ventures, like the Raven, are priced out of suburbanism just like malls.

Interior of the Raven Bookstore, Lawrence, Kansas

Besides this, we must remember where the purchasing happens, not just by whom. The last indie bookstore in my area folded, priced out by a chain store, when Amazon was still a money-losing experimental venture. Once the chain store had absolute dominion over the local media goods market, it repurposed itself, making books marginal. My nearest large bookstore is an hour’s drive away; my nearest good bookstore, much further.

(In fairness, a new indie opened here later. However, it mainly sells remainders, salted with tables of bestsellers and local authors. It’s interesting, but unprepared to compete more widely.)

No, Amazon isn’t perfect: it uses monopsony power to squeeze publishers, and floods markets with cheap books. And it excludes those who can’t buy on plastic. Dedicated complainers have many populist grievances against Amazon’s business model.

But Amazon makes books available in rural, suburban, and poor areas in ways physical stores just can’t. Complaints about Amazon’s market domination, like complaints about mall stores a generation ago, reek of unexamined economic privilege. In an economy where books have become hard to find, it makes sure literacy is available. That’s something worth defending.

The Best of 2013, Part One

Year’s end is upon us, and with it, the need to evaluate twelve months’ accomplishments. After sorting one year’s literature, dividing worthy from unworthy to help you make informed decisions, some books linger in my mind longer than others. If you’ve read my reviews, but delayed purchasing anything, here’s your chance. Month by month, I sort which books weren’t just good, but actually stayed with me long enough to matter.

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January: The Age of Anti-Anti-Americanism

Recent events in India, including protests outside the American embassy and burnings of the American flag, have awakened old accusations of global anti-Americanism. But what’s really happening in India? While nationalist politicians agitate the crowd, realistic complaints against American diplomatic heavy-handedness keep the protests alive. Cable news bromides only confuse an already dark debate.

Max Paul Friedman’s Rethinking Anti-Americanism examines a durable accusation, recasting populist (and anti-populist) rhetoric in a multinational context. America’s unique geographical situation—no enemy can really attack us—and extreme wealth keep citizens unaware of fraught global situations. We often mistake opportunities for threats, to our own detriment. Simply broadening our outlook may improve our own, and international, peace.

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February: Gillian Philip's Bleak and Godless Fantasy

JRR Tolkien's unquestioned status in fantasy fiction hasn’t immunized him from criticism. Many authors denounce his explicitly Roman Catholic ethics in Lord of the Rings. And authors like Philip Pullman and George RR Martin have written counter-fantasy based on secular ethics. Scottish author Gillian Philip’s debut, Firebrand, eschews Pullman’s didacticism, and Martin’s wordiness, creating a taut, muscular fantasy that challenges Christian triumphalism while telling a cracking good story.

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March: What Happens In Fantasyland, Part 2

When American news sources recently lost their noggins over krokodil, a Russian hybrid drug that peels and necrotizes users’ skin, I remember thinking: “They should read more paperback fantasy.” Vicki Pettersson's The Lost warned of this drug’s possible encroachment months before it hit American shores. Pettersson predicted both the suffering this drug causes, and the despair that makes users embrace a suicidal high.

Book Two in Pettersson’s “Celestial Blues” features protagonists living outside their time, and thus open to influences to which contemporary hipsters are already jaded. By pitting her heroes’ Eisenhower-era innocence against Las Vegas’ seamy primordial sin merchantry, she makes readers question why we take modernity’s truly awful side effects for granted. Vicki Pettersson is raising urban fantasy to high art, whether it wants to evolve or not.

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April: Daniel Palmer's Cathartic Torture Epic

After a frankly inauspicious career start, Daniel Palmer has found his feet. Palmer’s third novel, Stolen, has a familiar thriller premise: an ordinary person stumbles into a vast, brutal conflict, and must adapt or die. But Palmer salts his story with contemporary twists, including health care abuse, Internet celebrity, and postmodern poverty. His comfy thriller tropes let Palmer thrust a mirror in our faces, saying, “This crime is about you.”

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May: First Contact and Nightfall

SG Redling’s Damocles seems to reverse familiar science fiction boilerplates. You’ll recognize Asimov, LeGuin, and Silverberg among Redling’s influences. But by making humans land on a distant world, she upends decades-old conventions. Regular human xenophobia looks very different when we’re on the receiving end. Fans of paperback space opera (like me) will find their cozy prejudices challenged.

But that’s just the surface. Redling does something few SF authors have done before: she makes interstellar exploration into a job. Her humans maintain technology, look for food, and struggle to parse native languages. Her earthbound aliens point guns at the discoverers because this is their home, dammit. Redling strips space opera of its high romantic overtones, making starships into blue-collar enterprises occupied by ordinary people like, well, us.

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June: Gay and Christian in a Changing America

The only Christian book on this list, Jeff Chu’s Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America, distills several important voices in one of today’s most important religious debates. The Phil Robertson controversy has spotlighted one of modern Christianity’s most pervasive problems, its loyalty, both within and without, to sexual ethics which it has forgotten why it first adopted.

Blind, and selective, obedience to Levitical law has earned Christianity a reputation for benighted intolerance. But a significant minority of Christians have come to believe that, if Jesus died for our sins, he died for all sins, not just the ones majority moralists find acceptable. Chu doesn’t purpose to resolve this debate. But he agrees that we must take steps to find homes for all Christians, regardless of their particular sin.

Part Two: July Through December

Proving Personal Writing Still Matters

Cheryl Strayed, editor, The Best American Essays 2013

In reading this year’s edition of the Best American Essays, the format struck me before the content. Most years’ editions sequence the essays alphabetically by authors’ last names. Not so this year, where editor Cheryl Strayed organizes twenty-six essays in a manner somehow differently. The thematic structure doesn’t present itself obviously until readers penetrate well into her sequence. Even afterward, her subtleties aren’t necessarily obvious.

The word “essay” has been cheapened by generations of schoolteachers who, lacking any other term for the five-paragraph monotonies students write to prove they’ve done the reading, yclept them “essays.” But this does the idea no justice. This series returns essays to the meaning they had when Montaigne pioneered the form, calling them the French for “attempts.” As in, let’s try this shit and see what happens.

And boy, oh boy, does something happen. Strayed compiles some well-known authors, including Charles Baxter, Zadie Smith, and Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro, but she mostly shares less famous writers who, by turning hard, unblinking eyes on their own lives, manage to recount stories that exceed their authors. These writers prove George Bernard Shaw’s adage that only the intimately personal ever becomes truly universal.

Some essays address larger topics. Walter Kirn’s “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon” answers media stereotypes about Mitt Romney’s religion by recounting Kirn’s brief flirtation with Mormonism, and how it continues to save his life. Angela Morales’ “The Girls in My Town” gently laments how economic realities create two classes in America’s wealthiest state. Jon Kerstetter’s “Triage” reveals what happens in the moment combat surgeons choose to let a GI die.

Others remain more insular, unpacking something specific to the author. Tod Goldberg’s “When They Let Them Bleed” correlates “Boom Boom” Mancini’s most famous fight with his own obese, self-mortifying youth. Richard Schmitt’s “Sometimes a Romantic Notion” debunks the melodrama behind joining the circus. Steven Harvey’s “The Book of Knowledge” reveals what he discovered when he reread his late mother’s letters, discovering a disquieting stranger in his house.

Cheryl Strayed

Strayed also includes the most chilling essays I’ve ever seen in this series, Vanessa Veselka’s “Highway of Lost Girls” and Matthew Vollmer’s “Keeper of the Flame.” These two invade readers’ consciousness with such incisive power that I dare say nothing more about them. However, Strayed places them very early in the collection, leaving readers’ nerves frayed and jangling, prepared for the profound nuances of everything that comes after.

Early essays start big, addressing the authors’ personal weight in major issues. There’s a great deal of objective fact: the 1987 Black Monday stock collapse, Mitt Romney, a schoolboy’s death in a Dallas trash dumpster. These stories have a place not only in the authors’ worlds, but in ours, and their stories impinge upon us readers as concretely as the nightly news. We respond because we recognize ourselves.

As the collection progresses, however, essays become increasingly personal. Authors start omitting details like dates, geographical addresses, and sometimes even names. The language becomes transient, narratives grow non-linear, and the essays come to resemble poetry for our aggressively non-poetic age. By inviting us into their lives, rather than visiting ours, the authors make themselves vulnerable, and we find ourselves wanting to trust them.

I’ve used prior editions of this series as Freshman Comp texts, and would cheerfully use this edition too. Strayed’s selections don’t merely showcase diverse, challenging topics—from cancer and postpartum depression and grief, to love and family and music. She also chooses authors who convey their topics well, with professional attention to well-chosen words and phrases that convey beyond their literal meaning. I can pay no higher compliment than to say this collection makes me want to try something new as a writer.

Unfortunately, as more states move to adopt Common Core educational standards, many parents don’t realize the standards explicitly discourage personal writing. Though Common Core explicitly encourages nonfiction reading, that doesn’t include essays like those in this collection. David Coleman, who co-wrote Common Core, has said: “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”

Yet this series’ continued success, and the caliber of writing in this collection, prove the lie in that statement. Personal writing matters because humans are empathetic beings; by sharing others’ thoughts and feelings, we think and feel more deeply ourselves. As the dwindling magazine industry dries up venues for innovative, risk-taking essays, philistines like David Coleman threaten to overtake our discourse. Editors like Cheryl Strayed stand fast against them.

Self-Publishing Delirium

Maxwell Perkins

Two friends with literary aspirations recently voiced desire to escape the publishing grind, dominated by media conglomerates who demand higher profit than drug lords, and print their own books through subsidy publishers. As a reviewer, I receive (sometimes after specifically refusing them) numerous such books. To my friends, and anyone else reading, I request: in the name of all you hold sacred, don’t do it!

People who subsidy publish are nuts. Not everyone, of course; some are sweet people with noble intentions who want more creative autonomy. Some buy into hype without sufficient research. Some think they’ll be the next breakout sensation, like Christopher Paolini. But subsidy-published authors have a disproportionate likelihood to be jibbering, delirious, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs unhinged. Avoid their company.

Authors who pay to “publish” through Outskirts, CreateSpace, and AuthorHouse choose not to submit to informed scrutiny before turning their words loose on the audience. These companies don’t publish works so much as print them. They provide no assistance on manuscript preparation, physical design, or efficient publicity. Most important, they provide no editing services, which such authors consistently need.

Some people see the word “editor,” think “copy checker,” and respond that their best friend, spouse, or roommate did the proofreading. But editors don’t just untangle grammar; they serve as surrogate audience, carefully anticipating paying readers’ response to a piece of writing. Without such intervention, subsidy-published authors show no sign of awareness that human readers exist at the other end of the continuum.

Legends recall young F. Scott Fitzgerald pushing a manuscript variously titled The High-Bouncing Lover and Under the Red, White, and Blue on several uninterested publishers. Because the book relied on concept more than execution, staff readers bounced it out the door. It took a visionary, Maxwell Perkins, to see Fitzgerald’s embryonic genius through his unfocused prose, and coax The Great Gatsby to maturity over three strenuous years.

Walt Whitman

Many subsidy-published authors refuse such difficult nurturance. I receive inchoate, sprawling books that clearly haven’t seen correction since the outline dribbled off the authors’ fingers. These manuscripts, often formatted with tiny type and little margin to cut costs, look like the first drafts they probably are. Such authors demonstrate overt disinterest in their audience, expecting praise for their every brain dropping.

Several subsidy publishers advertise that classic authors like Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf published their own books. That’s true, they did. Their work stood so far outside the mainstream that they had to take publishing into their own hands. That’s a legitimate reason to publish your own book.. But Whitman and Woolf didn’t just have their books printed; they undertook the full publishing process, which isn’t easy.

Authors like Dara Beevas and Joel Friedlander write on this topic. If you would publish your own book, you must assume full business responsibility, including not just hiring a third-party editor, but also a designer, marketer, and publicist. You must stop thinking like an artist, and become a legitimate entrepreneur. This isn’t Field of Dreams; they’ll only come if you build something worth seeing.

Subsidy publishers discourage such frank humility. Because technology cuts printing time to weeks, even days, the lag between scribbling your first draft and seeing your book on Amazon.com can run remarkably short. But this doesn’t mean you’ve published a book, only that you’ve printed a manuscript. And in pushing an unfinished book onto the market, you’ve stolen time and resources from paying customers.

I’ve read authors who base entire books on half-remembered lectures heard two decades ago. I’ve read authors who recite bigoted stereotypes as contributions to interracial dialog. I’ve read authors who think plagiarizing 1970s pop songs and Victorian quatrains makes them poets. These authors have two traits in common: they paid to publish their own books. And they thought that having a byline entitled them to unstinting public praise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Again, self-publishing is both possible and noble. My friend Jerry published his first novel with a mainstream conglomerate, who dropped the ball on publicity, letting his book languish. He’s published multiple books since then, going guerilla on contemporary digital platforms. But he has taken the full entrepreneurial approach. He doesn’t just print his books, he publishes them. He pays the costs, and reaps the rewards.

Online retailers are choked with books published without scrutiny, often looking scarcely better than mimeographed liberal newsletters from the disco era. Even if your book shines like silver, it will not emerge from the morass of such books. Save your money for the real grind. Because it may be difficult and dispiriting, but it continues to exist for a reason.

Writing Like an Entrepreneur

Dara M. Beevas, The Indie Author Revolution: An Insider's Guide to Self-Publishing

Every day I receive two or three requests to review books which the authors have published (or rather printed) at personal expense. Most look like fly-by-night operations, typeset on an antique Smith-Corona and mimeographed in the author’s basement. They may have good content for all I know, but they don’t look like their own authors took them seriously. I wish these aspiring writers would read Dara Beevas’ new guide.

Beevas, a professional publishing mentor, makes her living guiding would-be independent writers through the difficulties of getting a professional-quality book on the market. Because the publishing business has so many aspects, many of which are not visible when you browse bookstore shelves, many guerilla writers miss important steps. Beevas’ solution is to stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a legitimate entrepreneur.

Though the author gets the byline and the glamor of writing, dozens of professionals have a hand shepherding a book from raw idea to marketable commodity. You can do some of this yourself: Beevas gives detailed instructions on how, for instance, to devise your marketing plan. But I especially appreciate Beevas’ explicit advice on knowing when to bring other professionals into your “self-publishing” fold.

For instance, you absolutely need an editor, to act as a sort of surrogate audience. Your best friend who spells really well is not an editor. Beevas describes not only what an editor does, and what you can expect to pay for an editor’s services, but what you need to do to get a manuscript in shape to present to an editor. Remember, you’re a professional; don’t give collaborators product below your ability, or below their dignity.

Likewise, resist the temptation to think that, just because you set your Word document in PDF format, you know how to design your product. Book designers make books look clean and polished for today’s media-saturated market. We say not to judge books by their cover, but we do so just to winnow today’s overcrowded shelves. (Beevas gives many good pointers, but Joel Friedlander goes into even more detail, if you need it. And you do.)

Dara M. Beevas

And marketing means more than buying ads or listing your book on Amazon. Beevas discusses topics like knowing if your book meets a real marketplace need, and how to distinguish your book from similar, but not identical, titles. Will you sell more print or e-books? Do you know how to sell your book on social media and other new platforms? Nobody knows with scientific accuracy, but Beevas knows which questions to ask in finding the answers.

Beevas repeatedly claims throughout this book that we have entered the age of the independent author, when writers armed with a little ingenuity have the market power once exclusive to media conglomerates. I’m willing to say that’s possible. However, I have a cabinet full of books, mostly from vanity presses, that indicate such an age faces an important counter-influence. Indie authors still need to pay their dues if they want the prestige.

Many vanity presses like to point out that William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf self-published the books that made them famous. This is true, and it does not jeopardize their prestige with literary history. But all three were more than just authors. They were skilled entrepreneurs who managed their careers the same way they would manage their own store or factory. Too few self-starter writers have learned such business acumen. Yet.

Unfortunately for contemporary aspiring authors, going it alone means the dues you must pay have become more intense. In Hemingway’s day, he had to be the best writer he could be. Today’s guerilla authors need to be business-savvy, technologically forward-thinking, and engaged in all aspects of publication. That’s where Beevas steps in, providing us the questions we need to ask our inevitable partners, and the facts we need to evaluate their answers.

Though Beevas includes a chapter on writing for publication (as opposed to writing for enjoyment or a class), this is not a book on writing. This book empowers writers to manage their careers without the sometimes myopic interference of multinational conglomerates. This book guides entrepreneurs who have the potential, but not the know-how, to get in the ring with publishing’s major contenders, and play to win.

Going indie is not for everyone. Some writers are better off following the old rules, which do survive for a reason. But for writers ready to plow a new path, Beevas is the mentor you’ve waited for. Follow her guidance, and go get ‘em.

Truth™—It’s What’s For Dinner

Jonah Lehrer

The saga of Jonah Lehrer's Hindenburg-like collapse continues to yield new revelations: he faked interviews, fabricated quotes, and failed to acknowledge sources. The best bits of Lehrer’s Bob Dylan chapter, the heart of the controversy, were lifted almost verbatim from Greil Marcus’ Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. But the revelations have also encouraged some stupid armchair speculations of why Lehrer did what he did.

The worst I have seen so far: Lehrer isn't a trained journalist. Though an Ivy League graduate with a substantial publication record, Lehrer didn’t go to school to study the Five W’s and the Inverted Pyramid. Leaving aside the obvious absurdity of this claim—journalism school graduates fudge too, and many good journalists don’t have degrees in the field—it still smacks of elitism, and an effort on the part of professionals to guard their privileged enclave.

Saying Lehrer licked the bottom of the barrel for want of journalistic training is like saying Enron imploded because Ken Lay lacked an MBA. The problem is not what training the guilty party had or needed; the problem is the lack of a moral core to push back against frankly banal pressures. Keeping going, or increasing the pace, provided more rewards, both to Lehrer and to Lay. Without a ringing conscience to stop them, both succumbed to ordinary temptations.

Jonah Lehrer received success worthy of somebody with twice his experience. Not only did he achieve the sought-after sinecure of a New Yorker staff writer position at the improbably young age of thirty, he made more money for one or two speaking engagements than many newspaper reporters net in a year. He owned a historic Los Angeles house at an age and in a time when many of his peers struggle to make rent on one-bedroom apartments.

Ambrose Bierce

But these rewards depended on his ability to produce bestsellers at an almost monotonous pace. To do that, he couldn’t simply state the same bullet points over and over; he had to package old knowledge and new discoveries in appealing anecdotes and comprehensible language. So he held forth on topics he knew little about, like Bob Dylan, Marcel Proust, Broadway theatre, Pixar’s building design, and more.

This pressure does not excuse his behavior. Rather, his rush to the top without stopping to earn his chops reflects worse on his actions, not better. Newspapers have provided journalists with the best training grounds. But Lehrer made his name as a blogger, and blogs don’t reward long attention spans. My own 750-word target, a lingering remnant of my newspaper days, pushes the limits of web audiences’ likely perseverance.

Throughout history, the best reporters were not trained journalists. Many had degrees in other fields, including Tom Wolfe (American studies), Bob Woodward (History), and Anderson Cooper (Political science). Barbara Walters, Brit Hume, Helen Thomas, and William Shirer studied English. Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein, and William Randolph Hearst never completed degrees. HL Mencken, Margaret Fuller, and Mark Twain never went to college. Ambrose Bierce never finished high school.

But today, most reporters go to journalism school. Just as business school graduates make lousy entrepreneurs, and film schools produced tediously self-conscious “cinema” of the 1970s, journalism graduates have a spotty record. As we saw in the Scooter Libby or Anthony Weiner scandals, trained journalists tend to robotically parrot press releases. Real breakthroughs come from engaged outsiders. And conventional newspapers keep boarding up their windows.

Meandering through the journalism department at the university where I formerly taught, and for whose newspaper I wrote in grad school, I was shocked one day to notice the emphasis in publicity. The honorary society for journalists had one dinky poster, but the advertising program had a whole wall of awards, flyers, and bulletin boards. The message to journalism students was clear: you exist to hold the space between ads.

Woodward and Bernstein

In that regard, Lehrer, who generated bestsellers with the regularity of the Nancy Drew factory, was a perfect professional journalist. While most publishers take a gamble on new books and regularly bleed money, they could take Lehrer’s name to the bank. But they could only keep doing so, just as he could only keep blowing his nose on Benjamins, if he produced a steady stream of easily digestible gruel.

As I said before, this stew of forces creates an environment in which scandal becomes nearly inevitable. We will almost certainly see more spectacular flame-outs in the near future, as we struggle to balance the demand for constant content with the ease of instant verification.

The Dark Side of "Publish Or Perish"

I’m of two minds about neuroscience popularizer Jonah Lehrer’s spectacular flame-out this week. The claim that he plagiarized himself seems laughable on its face. John Fogerty demonstrated in court, back in 1987, that writers have distinctive styles, and even a very strong resemblance between two works is inevitable. Besides, in today’s media-saturated society, writers must recycle to get paid; even college courses emphasize this.

But that accusation, for which the New Yorker grudgingly forgave him, pales beside the accusation that he fabricated a prominent Bob Dylan quote in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Reminiscent of James Frey, Janet Cooke, and Stephen Glass, Lehrer’s intrusion of fiction into his journalism makes it impossible to separate reality from imagination. Lehrer went overnight from top journalist to a case study in his own discipline.

One of the bromides of creative bullshittery holds that a lie works best sandwiched between two truths. Thus Lehrer’s decision to place his fake quote in the opening pages defies reason, as does his decision to take many Dylan quotes out of context, changing their meaning. Because this is the opening section of the first chapter, it looks like Lehrer wanted to get caught. Moreover, it looks like he wanted to cast doubt on everything that came after.

Which is exactly what happened. The book sold over 200,000 copies in four months, including one to me, but it vanished on Monday. The publisher recalled all unsold copies, and its Amazon page disappeared at midday. The response was so quick and complete that the New York Times bestseller list will still contain the title at #5 this Sunday. In other words, one of America’s top-selling titles is a book you can’t get anywhere now, for love or money.

Many critics have homed in on today’s widespread Dylanology: it was only a matter of time before some informed amateur caught the fabrication. But I don’t understand why Lehrer even felt the blatant fictioneering necessary. Dylan, formerly the music industry’s greatest recluse, has lately become a veritable quote factory. Between copious interviews, multiple volumes of memoir, and idiosyncratic speeches, Dylan has been remarkably forthcoming.

Despite Lehrer’s naked chicanery, I actually understand his decision, at least somewhat. He had a point to prove, a point backed up with abundant evidence and a corpus of research. Bob Dylan made a good illustration, and the writing of “Like a Rolling Stone,” Lehrer’s chosen example, has been well documented. But he lacked a single, unambiguous quote linking the evidence to the conclusion. This doesn’t excuse lying, but it at least makes sense.

Writers today, as I said above, have to publish—a lot—if they want to get paid. Our society has become so saturated with stuff to read, watch, and listen to, that only constant production staves off obsolescence. Books that don’t become instant bestsellers have a life expectancy of about six weeks before they get pulled and pulped. Gone are the days of sleeper hits like Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, which took several years to find its audience.

Nor do books have exclusive claim on this limitation. Actors who once made $300,000 per film now do free webcasts so their résumés don’t stagnate. Musicians release rough masters to YouTube just to keep their names in consideration. Publicists require artists to update their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds as often as every fifteen minutes. That’s saying nothing about producers trying to fill 500 satellite TV channels daily.

Sooner or later, somebody was going to plagiarize, fabricate, or misrepresent something. Lehrer’s bestseller status nabbed him a prestigious New Yorker staff writer job, the holy grail of writers, when he was only thirty-one. That means he made money coming up with ideas and writing them down. He would have continued doing so if he hadn’t warped such a stupidly transparent source. Watch for other writers getting on the gravy train.

Our society, unfortunately, will feed, clothe, and house lunatics and murderers for the rest of their lives, but which tells geniuses to go pound sand. People like Lehrer (and me) want to make money doing what we’re good at. But look around. Financial executives can crash the economy trying to spin straw into gold, and make multi-million dollar bonuses for it. Most writers are two steps removed from food stamps.

Jonah Lehrer’s fabrications are humiliating for those of us who write. But they sadly make perfect sense in today’s context. I fear we haven’t seen the last controversy of this kind, not by a long shot.

Amazon.com, a Blues Mystery, and the Tiger That Whimpered

Eyre Price, Blues Highway Blues

Amazon.com sells more media than anyone, and has cornered the e-book market. But apparently that isn’t enough for the Bezos Bunch, who for the last two or three years have tried to make their mark in dead tree publishing, too. Their latest attempt is Thomas & Mercer, an imprint specializing in mysteries and thrillers. I’m sad to say they’re off to an inauspicious start.

Deep in hock to the mob, washed-up music mogul Daniel Erickson raids his safe in his Malibu home. Only, his safe is bare. Instead, he finds a one-track CD warning that, to reclaim his money and his soul, Daniel must begin his search at Robert Johnson’s famous crossroads. With two enforcers on his trail, Daniel begins an odyssey along Highway 61, the road at the nexus of America’s blues heritage.

Perhaps debut novelist Eyre Price feared he might never get to publish another book. That would explain why he overstuffs this volume with material that, separated out and treated with the care each part deserves, could have made three or four very fine novels. As it stands, Price has so many irons in the fire that none achieves maturity. Perhaps if he respected his material more, I might finish reading with something beyond a shrug.

Price starts well, with a darkly comic premise that combines his love of music with a noir thriller. His gallows humor and fine ear for dialogue make for interesting characters in absurd but plausible situations. And early on, when he swings from bleak comedy to shocking scenes of casual cruelty, Price seems almost Shakespearean. Price sets himself a high standard in the early pages.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t maintain that standard. Over a hundred pages in, our protagonist Daniel picks up a mysterious hitchhiker who does a terrible job concealing his secret identity. For a guy who claims to know his blues, Daniel really, really misses the obvious. Moreover, this stranger introduces an element of the supernatural—a quarter of the way through the book—that upsets the balance and changes the tone of the story.

Nor is this the only clue Daniel fails to notice. Daniel isn’t a dummy. More than once, he stops the narrative to lecture other characters, and by implication us, on why Howlin’ Wolf beats Elvis, how Stax Records had more integrity than Sun, and why Mardi Gras ain’t New Orleans’ beating heart. Yet repeatedly, strangers dump clues in his lap, and he sleeps through them. I wanted to grab Daniel’s lapels and shout at him to just pay attention already.

Price keeps introducing subplots, many of which I recognize from elsewhere. When a local homicide detective and an FBI agent clash over jurisdiction, for instance, and begin a dragnet for Daniel, I notice two problems. One, there’s no jurisdictional problem. Since Daniel is wanted for no crimes in the detective’s city, the detective has no claim. Also, the agent sounds just like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

Price also shows no understanding of criminal business: loan sharks seldom kill defaulters. The dead don’t pay interest. No criminal enterprise would pursue a target from Vegas to Malibu to Memphis and beyond; it’s too expensive and risky. Any enforcers that left as many bodies, and thus as many liabilities, as these Moron Twins, would quickly find themselves wearing cement overshoes. Price creates a Mafia seemingly run by posing teenage shoplifters.

These increasingly complicated thriller boilerplates never quite coalesce into a narrative. I don’t see the story so much as the sources Price quarries. Is this a cops-and-robbers chase? A mob comedy? An introspective mystic musical? Yes, all this and more. Like a sleeper couch, these various components combine in absolute discomfort. And Price’s attempts to integrate everything leave visible authorial fingerprints all over the story.

Price simply tries to do too much, and in the process, does little justice to any of his story components. Every time I turn the page, I see the zygote of another good story. Yet none of Price’s many, many ideas comes into its own. I hope he gets the chance to publish another book, because he deserves the opportunity to achieve his potential.

And I hope Amazon, if it wants to play in the big publishers’ sandbox, gets a little more discerning in its selection process. Maxwell Perkins might have midwifed this book into a critical and commercial stunner. With its money and its market might, Amazon could fill that role for new writers. Here’s hoping they start doing so. Soon.

e-Apprenticeship

A recent NPR story about the increasing shift to digital publishing—paper book sales are on the decline, while digital books increase exponentially—gives away its silly lack of critical thought by using a source’s buzzword in the headline. Mark Coker, founder of e-publisher Smashwords, claims that “the printing press is completely democratized” by his business model. But I have to ask, is that a good thing?

Modern American culture lionizes the idea of “democracy,” and digital technology, with its instantaneous information delivery, epitomizes that goal. No longer do we have to wait on news networks, record labels, or publishing houses to deliver knowledge and art in our laps. We like this idea because it takes aesthetic decisions out of the hands of editors, who we know are often conservative and unadventurous.

But that does not make the converse true. If concentrating aesthetic authority in the hands of recognized editors and other experts encourages timidity, dispersing authority to the creators will not mean higher quality and groundbreaking innovation. Just as increasing the number of major league baseball teams did not create a surge in Babe Ruths and Ty Cobbs, author-controlled digital publishing has not made new Faulkners and Shakespeares.

I've complained before about authors who try to short-circuit the system and publish without paying their dues. Though this sounds like a cliché, writers, like other professionals, need to work their way up through the ranks. But unlike other professionals, writers don’t have arrangements to earn their chops. Young carpenters work under a supervisor. Young writers have no hierarchy.

(I say that, of course, knowing that some writers, including myself, spend time as graduate assistants. Most writers, however, are either self-taught, or study part-time. In essence, they apprentice to themselves.)

Malcolm Gladwell, in his eminently readable Outliers: The Story of Success, describes what consistent patterns identify who succeeds at a given field. Despite our fascination with child prodigies, like Christopher Paolini and Mattie Stepanek, most people who achieve mastery of any field, whether professional or artistic, share a love of practice. Gladwell says that mastery comes after only 10,000 hours of practice.

That’s ten thousand hours spent scratching your head, weeping into your beer, and beating your fists on your desk. Ten thousand hours questioning whether you’ll ever really make it, or if you’ll be a journeyman forever. Ten thousand hours which, for writers, go largely unrecognized because, unlike bar bands or mural painters, the writer’s journeyman work remains largely unseen by the general public.

Because we, the readers, see a piece of writing only after it is complete, we see it as though it sprung into the world whole and complete, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. All too often, I have received review copies from authors who believe the myth they have seen, and want to short-circuit the acceptable system. Very young apprentices want to share their finger exercises, because it’s inexpensive.

In principle, I agree with Mark Coker’s desire to put publishing in creative people’s hands. Writers like William Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf have revolutionized their worlds by stepping outside the hidebound system and taking responsibility for their own work. My fear is not that writers will disturb the system, which can be stifling, but that apprentice writers will clog the world with work unready for consumption.

My friend Jerry digitally published his masterly short story collection, God, Time, Perception & Sexy Androids, digitally. He took responsibility for his own business future. But Jerry also paid his dues, spending decades perfecting his writing and working with a range of other writers and editors. He didn’t just jump to the front of the queue, he actually learned to write, and to write well.

A carpenter does not build an inlaid Mazarin armoire with scrollwork detail the first time he turns on a circular saw. A guitarist does not play arpeggios like Eric Clapton the first time she picks up a used Alvarez. An actor does not play Hamlet on the first day of acting class. Yet apprentice writers want to publish bestsellers before they’ve learned to reach their audiences.

Because Smashwords, the Amazon Kindle platform, and other digital venues, allow writers to publish at little or no cost, it potentially encourages distribution of works at too early a draft stage. As a writer, I encourage others who love the field to give themselves a try. But I also want writers to learn their skill before clogging the publishing field with hundreds of thousands of works in progress.

Why Forbes, Capitalism, and Journalism Still Matter

At times, Stewart Pinkerton’s The Fall of the House of Forbes reads like a modern parable. As the third generation inherits a mighty dynasty, founding principles become dilute, and some sons love the family principles while others love the family money. At other times, Pinkerton’s tell-all resembles the “kiss of death” journalism that draws the very lurid audiences the author decries. It’s up to the committed reader to separate one from the other.

Scottish expat Bertie Charles “BC” Forbes founded his eponymous magazine in 1917 as a mix of stock tip sheet and fawning profile rag. BC’s son Malcolm made it a showcase for America’s glittering postwar aspirations, and Forbes set the tone of economic debate for a decade after Malcolm’s death. But in the new century, Forbes has foundered, becoming an in-joke and pale shadow of itself. It exists now as yet another tawdry blog platform and “content farm.”

Pinkerton, who clawed his way to managing editor, produced his book mere months after Forbes unceremoniously “retired” him in 2009. This explains the bitter edge to Pinkerton’s voice. But that edge gives his narrative a punch that rises above mass-manufactured crisis memoirs to make this book really work, when it does. Though he applies journalistic acumen, he also tells the story he lived.

BC Forbes left his media empire to his sons, but only Malcolm had balls enough to leverage his influence and seize control. The Forbes name rose alongside its flamboyant owner-editor. But none of Malcolm’s four sons captains the ship, though Steve inherited a controlling share. Pinkerton compares the resulting split vision among relatives to “having to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner every day.”

Pinkerton identifies only two specific missteps: Steve Forbes’ two tragicomic Presidential bids, and the failure to integrate Forbes.com with the print Forbes. Rather than one Sophoclean downfall, Pinkerton describes a pattern of mismanagement. Good writers and editors got squeezed, the heyday vigor fell prey to timidity, and the Forbes brothers’ compromises proved worse than the problems they solved.

Malcolm Forbes

My problem arises not with Pinkerton’s facts, which are robust, but with his storytelling. Pinkerton narrates the decline from 1990 to 2010 with no sense of the rise. BC and Malcolm Forbes are mere ciphers. BC alienated his wife through high-handed dicta that exiled most of his sons. Malcolm was personally, politically, and sexually ambiguous.

Both drove their company with their larger-than life personalities. And that’s all she wrote. Pinkerton spins transgressive anecdotes about Malcolm, whom he admits he never met, but never explains how that personality translated into media success. Rather than savvy, Malcolm appears merely squicky. Forbes, for Pinkerton, simply exists to decline.

Pinkerton introduces a cast of thousands with little regard for clarity. Keep notes on the endpaper. He has trouble keeping all the names in play. Lewis D’Vorkin, the villain of Pinkerton’s final chapters, disappears from the narrative for 140 pages, then again for another thirty. With such long gaps, Pinkerton has to introduce characters multiple times. Eventually, he should ask if every personality really advances the story.

Considering that Pinkerton blames Forbes’ decline partly on diminished editing and fact checking, he could use some of both. For instance, if the magazine hit its revenue peak in 2001, after Steve’s costly campaigns, after the worst of the print/digital feud, and over a decade after Malcolm’s 1990 death, I need an explanation of the gap into decline. An editor like Jim Michaels, whom Pinkerton lionizes, would catch that.

Likewise, his grammar, usually solid, occasionally turns haphazard. A few hours with a copy checker could save Pinkerton from some embarrassing moments. For instance, Pinkerton admits cribbing one-liners from David Letterman, billed in the bibliography as “David Le Herman.” Such a crude mistake suggests Pinkerton’s iPad can’t read his handwriting.

Reading what I’ve written, it sounds like I dislike this book. Not so. Pinkerton spins an interesting, if rocky, yarn about the pitfalls of capitalistic journalism. He shows why media enterprises need a solid defining vision unifying diverse parts. In an era of digital decentralization, he persuades me that journalism remains important: “Most people need an expert to filter, prioritize, and context [sic] information. A firehose of information without that is useless.”

But Pinkerton doesn’t connect the dots. He does what he accuses Forbes of descending into, if on a more professional scale. He cries out for someone to ask the question behind the question. Because if nobody does, Forbes will not be the last journalistic titan to crumble under its own weight.

A Writer's Guide to Taking Your Own Control

When I began reviewing, I accepted any and all books that came my way, because I wanted to give up-and-comers a chance. But after several writers who had paid to publish their own books lashed out at me for calling unpolished books unready for the marketplace, I began flatly rejecting all self-published and subsidy published books. It speaks volumes for Joel Friedlander that his book, A Self-Publisher's Companion, has convinced me to change my mind on that policy.

Friedlander zeroes in on the reasons I react adversely to self-published books. Too many are done hastily, with little interest paid to design, legibility, or whether the audience will enjoy the finished product. Subsidy publishers in particular care little for whether the book sells, because they make their money from the author, not the reader. Many people who call themselves “self published” have merely printed their books, not published them.

But instead of calling a halt there, Friedlander looks at the difference between printing a book and truly publishing one. This means a sequential approach, starting with making sure the book is actually ready for distribution. Too many authors print cringe-inducing books because they rush past the editing stage, presenting us, the reading public, with prose that might make sense to the author. Without taking all the steps, such writers advertise their own amateurish tendencies.

This dovetails with Friedlander’s second point, that self-publishers must wear many hats. At some point they must stop being writers and become entrepreneurs. They must be serious enough about publishing to ask themselves what they need to add, what they need to cut, and then act on the answers. They must ask themselves what they cannot do for themselves. And they must admit when they need to seek help from outside.

Just because you have written a book does not mean you know how to arrange the pages for easy, pleasant reading. In the same way, many authors get caught up in the words they’ve written, and forget that the cover is an advertisement for the book. They either think the cover needs to represent their literary vision, or they care little for the cover and tear off a computer generated art project. Outside and in, the book ballyhoos its lack of insight.

Or authors never investigate their niche. Novelists and poets craft art that is a pale shadow of work already available. Nonfiction writers fail to gauge their audiences’ needs and produce work that is lackluster, uninformative, or just vague. Writers of any stripe enter the self-publishing game with poorly defined goals and little understanding of the business. But, Friedlander insists, their common mistakes are entirely avoidable—and he suggests how.

Joel Friedlander

Consider all the church cookbooks or school histories you’ve bought from fundraisers. Consider the cockeyed prose, misplaced photos, and flimsy binding. That’s because the producers didn’t think of themselves as publishers. But Friedlander believes that every church circle or PTA committee could make themselves into the hometown Rachael Ray or David McCullough if they just took themselves seriously enough.

Friedlander made his publishing chops in the letterpress printing heyday, when typesetters actually set type in a frame. This made for a meticulous design approach, since each page was an artwork in its own right. When he discovered an untapped market, and no publisher with an interest in testing uncharted waters, he used his hard-won experience to publish his own book. Even in those pre-Internet days, he sold 10,000 copies over five printings.

Since then, he has guided other aspiring publishers through the design process, helping even complete novices produce professional books. And he has steered them through the post-printing arc, which is just as much of the publishing process. Through it all, he has stayed abreast of new developments, helping publishers utilize advancing technology, innovative publicity techniques, and emerging media.

This is not a how-to book. Friedlander will help you prioritize what goes into your publishing budget, but he will not quote figures to you. He will help you weigh options in e-publishing, but he will not coach you on using specific platforms. If you need a more nuts-and-bolts guide, I recommend Tom and Marilyn Ross’ The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing. Friedlander cares more about developing a productive publishing mindset.

Yet he should care about his area. He helps aspiring publishers identify the industry’s most neglected corners. And he has successfully persuaded me that self-publishing is a legitimate approach for those writers—and those reviewers—who treat it with the respect it deserves.