Recently I tried to decide what to make of the difficulty that a Pulitzer Prize-winning author is having getting his latest novel published. Several other celebrated authors who found themselves in the same boat chose to get out of it and make their books available either as downloads or through “author-service” publishers. Their dilemmas and subsequent decisions forced me to think hard about what I should or should not do in regard to my own novel: Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World.  

Traditional publishing has always been about risk-taking. Big-house publishers in earlier days gambled their reputations, status, and finances on titles that might or might not generate worthwhile profits and prestigious literary prizes. Established and aspiring authors alike invested months and years of creative labor into the production of manuscripts not guaranteed to see the light of day as full-fledged books or to win them fame and fortune. The word for self-publishing back then was a stigma-loaded one called “vanity” and the word for acceptance by a traditional publisher was an honorable one described as “successful.” The story in 2007 moving toward 2008 is a very different one.

Technology has evolved the options and consequences involved with publishing beyond previous considerations for the traditional publisher as well as for the modern author. To begin with, publishing is no longer restricted to a paperback or hardback scenario. Internet programs such as Amazon Shorts allow authors to make literary properties available exclusively through virtual channels that maintain such works online, package them in electronic files, or deliver them upon purchase to a consumer’s email box. Any numbers of diverse online literary communities feature similar offerings, though usually with less expertise to qualify them.  

Traditional publishers remain a viable force in the industry because of their clout-thick names, distribution systems, long-term relationships with marketing networks, and connections with related industries––such as film and television. For serious authors, they generally remain the preferred road to publication. However, when the attraction of a proven capable author to a proven capable publisher is not reciprocal, what exactly should such an author do? Literary history contains more than a few examples of writers who followed their literary instincts to notable success and others who followed it to forgotten failure.     

What once was called the stigma of the vanity press is now considered, in certain cases, an intelligent alternative to waiting for an approval one might never receive. Does this mean authors who have some informed sense of their own value should forego waiting for a publisher to recognize the same and simply take advantage of the options available? For those of us weaned on the methods and criteria of traditional publishing, the question comes loaded with angst.

The answer generally depends on whether the author truly believes he or she can do as individuals what publishing companies do as organizations.  Sometimes, however, the decision may boil down to a simple matter of personal need, desire, and regard for self. Then it becomes a matter of doing whatever it takes to keep your literary boat comfortably afloat.

So what does all this mean where my new novel is concerned? Please keep watching this space.