The Uranium Tipped Pen

After being rejected by almost every living publisher, and even some of the dead ones, I’ve finally taken the decision to publish my book “Cold Turkey and the Case of the Missing Crime” with Melrose Books, a Commissioned Publisher.

Naturally, I was dubious at first. There is one warning that you receive as a new writer, one warning they repeat, again and again and again.

never go with a publisher who expects you to pay your own printing costs. The reasons they give are many, explaining in great detail how all these people want is your money…

It’s almost convincing, almost makes you think that the big publishers are after something other than a share of the cash from your work, that in fact the nice folks in the big publishing houses (which you soon realise are all owned by the same very few companies) really care nothing but for high quality literature.

almost convincing.

The argument-between-the-lines that they present against the various forms of independent publishing is: You need us to tell you whether your work is good or not. That is our right. We are the institution which gets to decide what is and is not good writing. Those “other” companies will let you publish anything, just because you wrote it and want to publish it!

How dare we even think that we could be allowed to see our work in print, without having a market-driven advertising executive deem that it is “real” writing.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’ve become less convinced of the Big Publishing industry’s position.

They cry that you might lose your money… which is ultimately an indicator of the flaw in their argument. They think writing and publishing is all about money, they are salesmen, not literate.

Don’t believe me?

Then check out:

Exhibit A

and

Exhibit B

If we were going to use financial success as the critical standard we would need to discount a thousand works of art and literature as “worthless”.

But that isn’t why we write.

Sure, no one is going to top the bible on the best-seller lists with an independently published book, but that was never the point. Only publishers see books as a “get rich quick scheme”.

I think it’s time more writers took the first bold steps into this area, and put down the prohibitive warnings, laid out by those who wish to hold an artistic industry in the iron grasp of crass consumerism.

The writing industry doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to us. We are the labourers.

It is us that reaps the field of words, and sifts the verbiage to produce the crop of pages.

They are the greasy salesmen and the spotty check-out clerks, who scan and package our material.

We need to remember that, I think