The Pen is a Double-Edged Sword

Sorry it's been a while since the last post; I'm "traveling abroad," as they say, for a family wedding, and have only sporadic Internet access. I guess it's fortunate, in a way, that I couldn't find a full-time job after finishing my Master's Degree a couple of months ago, because I can afford (time-wise) to take a couple of months to travel. One can write from anywhere, which is nice.

Anyway. My story is live and thanks to those of you who have already bought and read it - I know there are at least a few of you out there! I haven't got any solid numbers yet, but I'll let you guys know when I do. Can pretty much guarantee it's not a million, though. Not YET. You can download the entire Found Press Quarterly collection, that includes my story as well as awesome stories by Caroline Adderson, Dave Margoshes, and Maria Meindl, for just $3.75, at FoundPress.com/titles/summer2011.php too, which I heartily recommend. Four stories for the price of only three-and-three-quarters stories! A steal.

Let's get to the interesting, non-sales-pitch bit of the blog, though.

I got a press release a little while ago for a new novel that was "now available for review." I won't mention the book's title or the name of the author because I don't want to embarrass him, but as I was reading through the email the whole thing felt pretty familiar for some reason. It was a fantasy novel - and I like fantasy, don't get me wrong. I'm right in the middle of the third book in the Song Of Ice And Fire series (no spoilers, please). But I like GOOD fantasy. The title of this thing was in the form "Nearly-Unpronounceable Legendary Location Part One: Ominous Compound-Adjective, Spooky Noun." If I were doing a Mad Lib for this title, it could be, for instance, "Xkelsia 1: The Flintshock Wood." So that was the first bad sign. It went on to detail paragraph after paragraph describing the plot of the book, using phrases like "epic journey," "danger of insurmountable calamity," and "thirsty army of vampires." Full of names and places that hurt my tongue to try to say, and just dripping with cliche like blood from the fangs of a thirsty army of vampires. I literally, physically winced no fewer than three times for every sentence of this thing, and it was just the press release!

I looked at the author's name. I looked at the author's picture.

I knew this guy.

He was in a writing class I took a few years back. This was obviously the epic fantasy novel (first part of a trilogy, of course) that he was working on. He was that one guy in the class who was so absolutely convinced that he would be a huge success with his book, but who was such an awful writer that no one in the class could even think of any constructive criticism to offer. You don't want to say "This is terrible and you should format your hard drive and take up long-haul trucking," because that's just mean. But there wasn't even enough good stuff in there to damn with faint praise. It caused us physical pain to listen to him read his excerpts. Look, I wasn't the best writer in that class either, and I certainly wasn't the one I believed was most likely to be successful. But this guy. Yeek.

Yet here he is again. He hasn't quit, which I admire, actually. He apparently did complete his novel, which is not easy. Unfortunately it's also, obviously, not any good. The main point is that this novel is self-published. I don't know whether he had always intended to self-publish or if he just couldn't get it published through the usual channels (and God knows I've had more than my own share of rejections from the usual channels as well), but there's still a stigma attached to self-publishing. It seems unprofessional. People roll their eyes. "This," they say, looking at the ridiculous cover that looks like someone sewed one of the Twilight books to a Harlequin romance, "is what a self-published novel looks like."

But at the same time, the ability to self-publish, print-on-demand upon dead trees or do-it-yourself ebooks to download, to sell on your own website or Amazon or wherever, to anyone and everyone in the world, is having a real effect on not only the publishing industry, but on readers, writers, and pretty much everyone in between. How can you talk shit about self-publishing today when Best-selling authors are turning down six-figure contracts to self-publish their ebook, and a completely unknown 26-year-old signs a four-book, $2 million deal with a major publisher after selling a million copies of her paranormal romance young-adult fiction on Amazon? It's simultaneously inspiring and infuriating.

I think it's not only an issue of technology (though it most definitely is), but also one of sheer volume. There are more people writing now than ever before, more people who are serious about being writers, published writers. And even though it seems as if fewer people are reading, probably proportionately it's the same amount, if not more. Publishing is changing; self-publishing is changing it, and is being changed itself by the change. Change change change. The problem now, I think, at this very moment, is how to tell the difference between the good stuff and the crap without having to read absolutely everything, go to every website, subscribe to every RSS feed and online press newsletter. When there are a handful of a Big Presses and a cluster of smaller local ones, it's easier to keep track and know what to pay attention to - or at least to GUESS. What we need, and what we're now beginning to get, are communities of like-minded readers who can point each other to cool stuff that they find. Otherwise we're just wading out there, up slushpile creek without a paddle.

So in conclusion, please buy my story, because it's pretty good. I'll also stick a little link to the short story collection I edited, "Can'tLit: Fearless Fiction from Broken Pencil Magazine," which you can also buy, if you want, and contains about 40 awesome stories, none of which are by me. Thanks, everybody!

Hello, World!

Hi, my name's Richard. I wrote this story about a punk band called The Oughts. Found Press, this very awesome fiction website, is publishing it online. You can download it for ninety-nine cents. Here's why I think you should:

Well, first of all, it's a pretty okay story, if I do say so myself. You might like it too. Some cool people have said some nice things about it; for example:

Richard Rosenbaum’s “The Oughts” jabs its sticky little fingers right

into your heart and swirls them around in there for a long, long time.

Its characters unfold in pitch-perfect awkwardness and tender apathy,

and readers will be struck by the surreal hinges and twitching imagery

that Rosenbaum flawlessly weaves in. Writers in the audience should

take note: Rosenbaum has created a writhing work of fiction that any

scribe would aspire to be capable of pulling off.

-LIZ WORTH is a Toronto-based writer and the author of Treat Me Like

Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond (Bongo Beat, 2009)

and Eleven: Eleven, which is a shot of surreal punk fiction available

through TRAINWRECK PRESS.

...Which is super flattering!

Also, it only costs ninety-nine cents, which, come on, you've got ninety-nine cents to spend on a story that's probably pretty good, right? But mostly it's because I'm a guy who's been writing stuff for a while now, with some bits of success here and there, but I'd love to make writing fiction my full-time job because it's the only thing I've ever really wanted to do (at least since I learned that “Ghostbuster” is not a real job), and it would be great if you could help me out.

It's a weird moment in publishing. If you're a reader or a writer you've probably noticed. Kind of a “best of times, worst of times” sort of thing. Bookstores and publishing companies are imploding all over the place, and writers are increasingly unable to make a living from writing – lots of them, as a matter of fact, have their day jobs at the aforementioned imploding bookstores and publishing companies, and the rest of them are teaching Creative Writing to university students who will also not be able to make a living from writing. Plenty of people are prophesying the unnatural murder of the written word at the hands of the Internet. It's harder and harder for writers to get published through the traditional channels, and as printing and shipping costs go higher and higher, the writers who are getting published are becoming less and less able to consider writing as a job, and keep themselves in Ramen noodles and gin.

Yet at the same time there's something of a renaissance going on in literature, don't you think? All that stuff that's supposedly killing the written word is really just stripping away much of what used to come between the reader and writer. Publishers, bookstores, all that. Suddenly there's a ton of new applications and websites introducing readers and writers to each other and promoting some of the best and weirdest independent fiction to the world; sites like The Incongruous Quarterly, Joyland, Electric Literature, and of course Found Press.

I discovered Found Press and thought that their whole deal was just really cool. Impressive new fiction that you can read on your computer, your smartphone or eReader or whatever you've got, and that actually compensates the writer for their work. They're trying to create and promote a new publishing model, a new way of distributing short stories. And a new model is exactly what we need today. Who knows which one or ones will win out, but with tastes and technology changing so fast, anyone content to stick to the old ways of doing things is getting left behind. I for one believe that literature is too important to let that happen.

So I thought: let's just set some outrageous goal and see what happens. One million stories. If a million people buy my story, then a million people will have bought my story¹. Not only will we have proved that it can be done, that people care about stories and about supporting independent writers and publishers, it will show that Found Press is on the right track with their new publishing model and give hope to other people looking for their place in the emerging world of literature. And I won't have to go back to working at the bookstore at the mall.

I'll use this blog to keep you guys apprised of any progress toward our ridiculous destination. If you've got a buck to spend, please head Over Here and download my story. If you like it, recommend it to your friends! Or if you hate it, I guess, tell your enemies, who might buy it out of spite, and then you'll have made them waste a dollar! Link to it on your blog, or Facebook page. Follow us on Twitter @1000000stories and retweet us to your followers. Do whatever it is people on Google+ do, I guess? Email me at 1000000stories at gmail.com and let me know what you think!

And thanks in advance for your help, you guys.




¹ The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology club.