Cultural Commentary: Author Publishing, Distribution VS Trad Publishing
Along with a Minor Note on Video-Games
Okay the past few days have been jam-packed with events, ones that have left their mark on the entertainment industry, so that we will be discussing these points for years to come.
Despite the title there will be commentary made about the problems facing Video-Games at the moment, as that particular industry teeters over the abyss. Infected by a tumour that has infested it since the days of Gamergate, which was an online clash between gamers and those who wished to twist the industry into something it shouldn’t be. Needless to say Gamergate lost, as it failed to extirpate the tumour, but with this second iteration of Gamergate, it seems that things may well end differently.
But this isn’t the most important place where people are fighting back. Movies may have become something of a lost cause (with regards to the Anglosphere), Video-Games are in the midst of being fought over again (even more viciously than before), now all that’s left is to give one’s two cents and look on with longing hearts for a similar clash in the publishing industry/literary one.
Wrong.
Since almost a century ago, the publishing industry has fallen into squalor. I know it’d be far more stylish to say the past forty years, but I’ll go one step further.
Remember that almost a century ago for us genre writers, the industry was a harsh mistress, one that could lay out terms and brutalise us with nary any regard for our works. Look at how Robert E. Howard, one of the most prolific, talented individuals to have ever lived, could not get published traditionally save through Weird Tales. A publisher who paid him dimes on the dollar, when he was worth so much more than that.
Look at how John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, wrote almost as prolifically as his Texan counterpart, and struggled and fought for years to get Hobbit published in 1937. That was a near thing, and when he submitted his magnum opus the Silmarillion, he was laughed out of the room and forced to begin writing what he termed ‘The Second Hobbit Book’ or ‘Hobbit 2’ as one might call it, only to scrap most of the drafts. Brow-beaten, crushed and humiliated at every turn, he was to still struggle despite being a bestseller at the time, to convince them to take on Lord of the Rings.
As far as the publishers’ were concerned they had waited for Hobbit 2: The Bingo Boogaloo, not Lord of the Rings, which was too much of a ‘Romanze’ style tale. They wanted more comedy hoop acts, not Arthuriana. Yet it sold, so that they decided to milk that and claim credit for publishing it, even as they twisted it in their ‘edits’ never once considering that every word, every syllable and every sentence had a purpose. So Tolkien had to go back, make changes, and fix their mistakes (as apparently their editors had injected grammatical and spelling errors where there were none before, go figure).
All this and more was done to writers of genre fiction. We all know that pulp fiction, fantasy fiction, romance, sci-fi fiction is the stuff of the masses. It is what they subsist upon and will read above all else, no matter how much the academics might scream and cry about it.
The reason? They are real art.
The academics can scream all they want that Emma is the perfect novel, or that Bleak House is perfect. But let’s be honest; none of them have ever sold half so well as Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, Trois Mousquetaires, Hour of the Dragon, Star Wars, Pride and Prejudice, or Musashi or Gone with the Wind.
These are real fiction. These are what people love, and the trouble is that they have been drowned out for a century, have been shunned by the industry in favour of pornography such as 50 Shades of Grey, or nonsense such as Twilight, and other such works.
The thing is, when writers have to flee online to publish things on their own and form little cliques/events (such as the marvelous Macabre Monday event, Sci-Friday, Sword & Saturday, Warrior Wednesday and Writer’s Wednesday and Funny Sunny Sunday) just to be noticed there’s something wrong with the industry.
The disease though was accelerated with the Hippy Movement, which really overtook the Publishing Industry, twisted it and perverted it far more. It is as mentioned how we got stuck with what is being published to-day. That said, reason still reigns in some places as there is nuance to everything, and there are still good books being published (my good buddy
recently recommended a fantasy novel called the Poppy War and it sounds enticing), but there previously was good reason for writers to despair.Now as we speak the landscape is beginning to change.
Since Razorfist made his announcement, heraldic his vision for a new creative era, one that might cut across borders and do away with the declining old so that we might see new works of art (or actual works of art), things have picked up and begun to change.
It is interesting how people once excluded from the industry are starting to push their way in. Now at the start, of this ‘Iron Age’ movement there were those sharks who swept on into the waters in order to devour what they can (most of whom can be found on Twitter). These grifters have hardly accomplished the slightest thing themselves beyond just drawing what money they can out of the desperate.
There are however those, such as my friend
who has served to encourage others, posting prompts, encouraging people to become and to refine their art even as he markets them in his Anvil Magazine, and on his channel and also on Drink w/Crazy’s channel.Many are the services offered by Royce (D/Crazy) Richard IA Media & Daniel Riley (their friend, who is an editor and marketing aid to many upcoming writers) but there are some things they cannot do or do not know how to do.
So that despair might previously have been natural as options for many writers are few and none of them could be blamed for feeling cornered. But since that time there have been writers and other fine gents who have been stepping forward to offer up their services, some of them have conditions and others do not.
Top of the list is Eric July, the ‘Young Rippa’ who moving on from his success with his ‘Rippaverse’ series of superhero comics has begun a new site called ‘Rippasend’ (he’s still building up the Publishing/Distribution site so there are some things missing from it, primarily there is a youtube video explaining his intentions and intentions). His business will take care of much of the marketing, distribution and business/publishing side so long as the writer already has a platform, has published some works and so long as they have not attacked/done campaigns against him and his brand online. (I add this last part, and while it sounds funny, there’s some people who seriously hate him for some reason)
Here is the website; https://rippasend.com you can go educate yourself about it.
I’m not clear on every detail but have immense respect and appreciation for what July wishes to do. To be quite honest, marketing, distribution, business these are all things I’m not skilled at (I’m hoping down the road to take on some marketing & programming classes alongside Japanese in the months to come to remedy these flaws). The idea being that artists and writers can focus on their own works, and entrust the storefront (which will be an alternative to Amazon), the marketing and all other things you might not be good at to him.
In response to this,
has begun refining his own plans, and taking what he’s learnt from these events, and from others and from the industry has begun re-working his ideas for Authors Alliance Press. The hope being to recruit Sword & Sorcery writers or dark-fantasy writers, along with Sci-Fi & Western writers, to find an artist or two and to if need be crowdfund a 20 page anthology comic or three.The basic idea will be to put these together via crowdfunding, then to have Authors Alliance help with the marketing, podcasting and the like so that writers help support each other and to then leave the distribution to July. Every writer would have their own page on his site, and on a separate one. The writers’ would participate in regular podcasts some if they wish in streams, and they’ll all hopefully go on John Douglas, Royce, Daniel, and Richard’s shows if they are fortunate.
Currently things are still in the planning, business-plan and financial calculation phase. But already Tom has been networking with some heavy weight writers, coordinating with them and talking to them, and also working on some side-projects that will help to promote Authors Alliance before she launches.
The idea being that AAP would be work like your platform, even as it pushes everyone to aim to have one of your prose stories adapted into an ongoing with the title alternating who gets published. (Ex; Issue 1 focuses let’s say on Waag’s Skarde character or adapts parts of ch 1 of Skarde’s novel. Then Issue 2 will focus on let’s say Douglas’s novel’s 1st chapter, then issue 3 will focus let’s say on another story and so on, until it returns after 6-7 issues to Skarde. Meanwhile the Sci-Fi magazine will put out Sci-Fi stories, just as the Western one will do so for Western writers all in rotation). The whole idea also hinges on writers keeping their copyright and controlling the rights to their own characters and settings.
Naturally some things can work well in graphic novel format and others don’t. Stories such as Darkspire might not work well in my view, but darker, pulpier stories such as Bear & Cub or Skarde, would work well in comic anthology format.
So as said, Authors’ Alliance will start more as an online podcast/livestream event wherein artists & authors will meet up, discuss their works and see about building up a platform until the magazines are ready. Then it will be time to market it, to secure the artist and to secure the deal with July and to from there see about launching a regular trio of comic magazines. When that succeeds, the idea will then be to publish full-length prose novels and novellas and short-story anthologies, have them distributed via Rippasend.
Others are launching their own services, with the right honourable
having launched something he called ‘Mongatu Publishing’ which you can find on his page. The idea being to distribute old books, and bring attention and awareness back to them, with him having talked about such authors as Jane Austen, Dostoevsky and others from that era.He has also been kicking around the idea of offering a marketing and other sort of services such as one might find over on Amazon, to newer authors such as those found hereon
. So that genre fiction writers can finally have a place to go to with their stories, to have the news spread about them. It’s a very kindly offer and one that few writers I can think of would turn down so do check his page out, subscribe and try talking to him about Montagu Publishing.For the link to Montagu Publishing House, here it is;
Now the next bit of news might strike some as strange, but it seems that
has met with some success on the publishing front with Wordwooze Publishing so that I felt encouraged and after checking them out, think I ought to recommend them to any writers’ interested in trying to submit a piece to them. The limit is 70k words, so do bear that in mind so it might be best to stick with an anthology or a novella, and not some mega-epic like Lord of the Rings or Hour of the Dragon.https://wordwooze.com/submissions.html
These are all the services I can find for fellow writers, it isn’t much (I truly wish I could do more). But hopefully they will work to transform events such as Warrior Wednesday, Sword & Saturday, Sci-Friday and Macabre Monday into events with real life consequences and results. This way writers can build something long lasting for themselves, build up valuable connections and cross the distance from online publication to real life publication and distribution.
My hope is still to down the road have a podcast set up for WW & S&S, with that being a separate thing from Authors Alliance. Yet hopefully one would help to promote the other, and help be the set-up for Authors Alliance.
Hopefully authors will be able to build up a platform on Substack then go to July, or Wordwooze or others to publish their works and make money off of it.
This all sounds cool. Hope all these budding alternatives take off
Thank you for the post and for trying to highlight budding alternatives. My day job is marketing—not in the books industry, mind you, but I have some head for business. The biggest thing I can’t seem to get around is the need for any alternative to be reader-centric. If the primary “customer” of these alternative publishing platforms is the authors who want to get published, then readership will remain small and the profit will too (to say nothing of the possibility of grift). But if someone can find a way to draw in lots of readers and connect them with truly excellent stories, then the sky is the limit.
In more practical terms, not even the Big 5 trad publishers have enough resources to reach the readers they need without Amazon. What’s a little guy to do? Optimizing for author acquisition (and author profit) in turn reduces the ability for a publisher/distributor to acquire readers; money is the fuel that makes the marketing machine go and the publishers need money to make anyone buy any book.
There’s a million ways that trad publishing is broken, but there are so many variables that disrupting the industry seems nearly impossible without infinite money. It’s no coincidence that Amazon has been the only one to change the game in the last 25 years—and then they obviously only changed it to form their own monopoly.