Archives for April 2013

Self-Publishing is For Closers

April 19, 2013 By Mark 4 Comments

Until recently it was easy for the traditional publishing industry to puff its condescending chest out and hide behind pretense and bluster, but the staunch gatekeeping the industry practiced was always a shell game. Works and authors deemed unprofitable were labeled not good enough, while works and authors that could be packaged, edited or ghostwritten for profit were granted admission into the literary sphere.

As I’ve noted numerous times, the claim that the publishing industry provides cultural stewardship has always been a lie. The very fact that screams are now emanating from corporate publishing offices tells you that self-publishing is not inflicting cultural carnage, but merely decreasing revenue and decentralizing power in the industry. Many of the people who make their living in those offices continue to toe the party line despite the obvious shifting landscape, but at best that has been a delaying tactic and at worse complete delusion.

There will never be any shortage of celebrity-driven bilge in the literary world, but as many celebrities have discovered to their horror, having a bankable name doesn’t guarantee you’ll get what you want in any business. If you’re a movie star the studios will jump at the chance to produce your next genre blockbuster, but if you’re trying to fund a small-budget art film you’re going to have as much trouble raising studio money as an unknown actor with dream. The only difference is that the studio can slam the door in the unknown’s face, while they have to go out of their way to shower you with sincere and deeply felt sweet nothings. Likewise, if you’re a literary fixture or a rising star the publishing world will be happy to take another volume of whatever you’re famous for, but if you want to wander into the short-fiction weeds or publish an experimental work you’ll probably find few takers. Unless of course you’re willing to give them more of the good stuff in the bargain, in which case they’ll begrudgingly kick your pet project out the door and support it with marketing that meets the bare minimum of their impossible-to-enforce legal commitment. [ Read more ]

The New Typo Etiquette

April 10, 2013 By Mark 1 Comment

Back in the day, when publishing a book was an enormous labor requiring dozens of people focused on a tight production window, stamping out typos was an incredibly important goal. Beyond the obvious embarrassment of allowing a typographical gaffe into print (something that still holds today), the production process itself made typo-hunting imperative because publication involved print runs of a specific number of books at a time, and most books only received a single printing. Meaning any typo would appear in every copy of a work, with no opportunity to fix the problem after it was discovered.

Print-on-demand (POD) publishing, including self-publishing, has changed that dynamic completely. While typos are still embarrassing, and you should do everything humanly possible to omit them from your work, text can now be fixed in anticipation of future orders as soon as a mistake is discovered. Unfortunately this welcome aspect of POD technology has not caught up with long-standing reader reaction to typos that formed in the print-run era.

Recently I was told, almost by chance, that a typo had been found by a third party in my grandmother’s posthumously published POD memoir. (The word “liker” should have been “liked”.) After cussing myself out for not catching the mistake, what struck me was that there was no imperative behind this information when it was told to me. Instead of treating it as useful or helpful it was seen simply as an amusing anecdote, and one that had been all but forgotten until I triggered that specific memory by pure chance.

In the print-run era of publishing this reaction obviously made sense because readers and writers were powerless to make changes unless another run was ordered. But in the POD era that’s not the case. Fixing that typo required only that I update one file, upload the updated file, then wait for the file to be approved by the POD provider. This took about sixteen hours, the vast majority of which was waiting time, not work.

Call it crowdproofing, call it being a good literary citizen, call it whatever you want. If you find a typo in something you’re reading and you like the work or the person who wrote it, please take a moment to point the author to that mistake — preferably via email rather than in the comments of a blog or other public space. All you need do is put “Typo” in the subject line and point them to the page and line in question, and I guarantee that 99.99% of the people you do this for will be truly thankful. As for the ungrateful 0.01%, you’ll profit by learning that they don’t deserve you.

— Mark Barrett

Bing Fails Again

April 9, 2013 By Mark 3 Comments

After weeks spent goading and cajoling the Bing search engine to see a web page that has been published for over two years, I thought I had finally achieved my goal.

Now, a month later, I see that Bing has once again become blind to that same page, even though Google can find it with ease, and anyone can link to it directly.

I’m not sure how a search site and it’s tech support minions can find and then lose a site after it has finally been indexed, but Bing has managed to perform that neat feat. Which means there’s really nothing left to hope for except that Microsoft will pull the plug on Bing and let it die because it’s utterly worthless for search.

— Mark Barrett