Going (too far) Indie?

Dan Green has a lengthy post on self-publishing that raises a number of good points. Rather that reiterate everything Dan gets right (you can just read it yourself), I'm going to discuss one thing we may disagree on.

Discussing the editorial side of things, Dan writes

Not only has the technology of publishing been under the control of a "guild," but I would argue that the same thing is true of the editorial side of publishing. Who can honestly say that the decisions made by most mainstream publishers are being made according to some deep-seated love of good writing rather than the financial bottom line? That those in control of the publishing process have this control because they are uniquely qualified to make judgments about the literary merit of what they publish? That their judgments are so obviously sound that we can be confident the books they choose are the best they could find and the books they decline are not worthy of publication?

Now I'm not going to say that mainstream publishers are the wellspring of a coming literary Renaissance, but I do believe that the editors at mainstream presses do get there out of a love for books. A love that's dampened by the demands of Wall Street and probably deadened the longer they stay immersed in the mainstream publishing culture, yes, but a love nonetheless.

Also, for the sake of argument let's just say that all publishing was self-publishing. If publishers did not act as gatekeepers, determining the quality from the chaff, then who would? Consumers? Self-appointed critics? I honestly believe that if all the publishers were put out of work and we all went to straight self-publishing, you would see aggregations form. Some self-publishers would sell more than others, and they would group together and develop their own firms, or guilds, or whatever you want to call them. We'd be right back where we started, with gatekeepers that held the keys to respectability.

Even if it wasn't inevitable that publishers would confer credibility, I still think I would want it that way. Certainly there are some writers out there who are good enough to practice their art for years, learn how to self-edit their work, purchase the services of line editors, proofreaders, and indexers, and put together a first-class manuscript. But I can hardly believe that is the rule. I still think that most writers, including most of the best working today, need a good editor to help bring their work along, especially in their early years as a writer.

I think that self-publishing, for all its benefits (and there are many), will do readers much harm if it subtracts a good editor from the process. The role that editors play in bringing a manuscript along is one of the most under-acknowledged roles in all of publishing, but I also think it is essential. The fact that many of the editors at today's large publishing houses are too besieged and distracted to do a good job tells me that we should find ways to restore the position of editor to its lost status. But we shouldn't hope to get rid of it all together.

Comments

[Robert Nagle]

I gave a visceral reaction to this article already on my weblog. But I wanted to follow up a little.

RE Filtering: Clay Shirky wrote about that how now we're doing bottom up filtering instead of top down filtering. Slashdot.org and other forums have shown that moderation/filtering processes can bring some pretty excellent content to the top.

Literature is a totally separate beast, and there are good reasons why filtering/moderation/rating wouldn't work in this context. Also, stuff that's not "bloggable" is sometimes overlooked. Poetry, to use an obvious example. This could change with a site or moderation system better attuned to artistic content.

Funny, your point that self-publishing removes editorial feedback from the process is similar to a point I had made in an email a few weeks ago to a novelist. Self-publishers suffer from an appalling lack of feedback (both positive and negative). Aside from giving literary opinions, another pair of eyes can catch a lot of typographical errors that the original writer has become blind to.

Self-publishing for me (and I don't include my sloppy blogging) means I need to spend a lot more time double checking and triple checking for basic style and grammar problems. Editors and publishers may no longer serve as gatekeepers, but they could easily stay in business just by polishing people's purple prose. I suspect experienced content creators would be more than happy to offload marketing and editing duties onto a third party.

[Outer Life]

There will always be gatekeepers. But some are less compromised than others. Even if traditional publishers have a strong interest in literature qua literature, these publishers also have strong and understandable interests in supporting themselves and their expensive distribution networks, interests that inevitably lead to painful compromises, such as filling out the fiction list with, and devoting scarce editorial time to, celebrity-penned mystery novels.

By contrast, consider the gatekeepers in blogland. Operating in an environment with insignificant costs, no real potential for profits, no prestige and a complete absence of editing, these gatekeepers have nevertheless managed to confer credibility on themselves and others merely by linking to blogs they like, their links (largely) free of compromise. The "self-appointed critics" at the LBC promise to take this sort of uncompromised gatekeeping to the next level. I can even imagine a day when numerous uncompromised gatekeepers will identify great writing wherever it happens to appear, without any concern for whether there's anything in it for them, but maybe I'm just being naive.

[Scott]

OL,

As one of those self-appointed critics at the LBC, I think that we are taking uncompromised gatekeeping to the next level. I certainly hope none of us will ever worry more about personal renumeration than pointing out good books.

But I think the fact that we have joined together and identified ourselves as deserving of some authority indicates that credibility still matters, even in blogland where everyone is self-published. I think too that in reading each others work and in critiquing and praising each other, we are functioning partly as quasi-editors.

[Outer Life]

So with the help of gatekeepers of uncompromised credibility and the capacity for robust self- and group-editing, I see no reason why writing cannot flourish on self-published platforms much like this one.

I applaud the LBC and expect it will help establish a new gatekeeping model that vastly improves on the old.

[Scott]

We're in agreement, OL. I think self-publishing can work, but so long as oversight eventually comes from somewhere.