Diving for pearls
Essay by Bob Sanchez
How often have you read a book published through Lulu? BookSurge? PublishAmerica?
Never? That’s what I figured. Sure, maybe you made a pity-purchase directly from a desperate-looking author. Maybe that author was your neighbor or your sister-in-law. But did you actually read the thing? Come on, admit it: You didn’t get past the first page. You swear that some folks shouldn’t be allowed near a word processor.
Welcome to the untidy world of self-publishing, where anyone with a computer and a little spare cash can put a story between two covers. The ease of entry is great, the filters are few, and the respect is minimal because professional editing costs money that some people don’t want to pay. Almost all of these books sink like stones to the bottom of the publishing pond, never having made a ripple at the surface.
Deep inside, many of us have a storyteller’s soul. Our names aren’t Koontz or King or Grisham, and we may even suspect that our literary talents will not finance a Mercedes or even a used Chevy pickup truck. The door to publication is closed at Random House. Penguin says no. Dutton, Putnam, and every agent in Manhattan—they all say no. Not fair, we writers protest.
Sometimes these gatekeepers are wrong, we writers commonly think, but then we are terribly protective and biased toward our own creations. That’s why so often we publish at our own expense, to put our work “out there” and let you, the reader, decide. We think you will see the brilliance of our work and the error of the mainstream publishers’ ways. We think you will ignore our foolish vanity and gladly pay a few dollars more for a book by an unknown author.
Yes, we pay to be published, and we throw ourselves at the mercy of the marketplace—and you, coveted reader, may never even know we’re in the marketplace. (In a few cases, the publisher charges us no fee, but jacks up the cover price and asks us to sell copies to our cousins.)
Of course the industry’s judgment is fair most of the time. The sludge at the bottom of the self-pub pond is piling up, but the pond is still deep enough to drown in.
Well, that’s rather negative. Let’s switch metaphors, shall we? Author Jack Shakely has noted the need for a nozzle to control the torrent of books coming out of the self-pub hose. Good self-published books don’t exactly abound, but they certainly do exist. With exceptions, you will not find them reviewed in newspapers, sold in bookstores, or loaned in libraries. Chances are that you’ll only find them at an independent bookstore, online at Amazon, or at a public signing by the author. I found The Last of the Numbered Men (Vantage Press, 1984) purely through a chance meeting on an airplane with the nephew of a holocaust survivor. This fine memoir by Harry Posmantier is long out of print, although a few copies are still available on the Internet. The prose is straightforward and powerful. Of his 1942 stay at a camp called Zwangarbeits Lager Sagan, he writes:
On Christmas Day, we awoke early, full of happiness at having a crow and a large sack of [stolen] potatoes to cook. Everyone was sworn to secrecy and promised a share of the loot.
A correspondent emailed me recently about Dismantling Discontent: Buddha’s Way Through Darwin’s World. His conclusion: it’s a thoughtful book that’s poorly written. An Amazon review by Felix Holmgren supports this view:
Through Darwin’s World, [author Charles Fisher] takes it upon himself to map the territory where evolutionary theory and meditation—Darwin and Buddha—overlap and meet.
...Fisher has not put nearly as much effort into the writing process as he has put into his research. The text’s flaws range from grammatical to factual and stylistic ones; unfortunately, the editors have done little to rid it of even its most basic errors.
Despite all this, Dismantling Discontent is a book of great energy...
Now here’s a self-serving story: My own novel, When Pigs Fly, is self-published through iUniverse, and sales often depend on chance. At one book signing, a woman told me that my novel sounded like fun, but she never, ever paid full price for a book. Still, she kept flipping through my book while I chatted with someone else.
Finally she interrupted, saying she would buy it after all, because she’d read this passage:
Hornacre smiled through clenched teeth. “Woman, you’re fightin’ dirty. Now lookit the worm turn.” Triumph lit his eyes as he slowly lifted the pepper spray to her face.
“Oh, thank God. The police!”
“Whut?” Hornacre looked away for a second, maybe two. Then he turned back just in time for Cal to stab him in the eye with a tampon.
Any book that has a woman stabbing somebody with a tampon has got to be good, she told me.
This hit-or-mostly-miss way of finding books is a shame, and The Internet Review of Books wants to help. Until now, we have reviewed only books from traditional publishers. Beginning with this issue, we will include occasional self-published books we think you would like. Some will be gems; others will strike us as worthy of your time despite their flaws.
This month, our reviewers look at Torpedo, The Confederate War Bonnet, and Cooling the South. Torpedo is a bestseller at iUniverse, and our editor Carter Jefferson is handling that one himself. I’ve already read and enjoyed War Bonnet, but I’ll let Dorothy Webb give you her perspective. Finally, Julie McGuire (who runs our Virginia office) chills with Cooling the South.
Meanwhile, we suggest that readers not neglect this class of books. If you find a good one, tell us about it. If you happen to be the author, that’s okay too. Here’s how:
- Do query us first, please. Do not send us anything we haven’t asked for.
- Do email your queries in plain text only to irbself-pub@mail.com.
- Do include the title, brief description (100 words or so), any pertinent author info, page count, publisher, and publication year.
- Don’t write to the individual editors, or we’ll get cranky and unreceptive.
- Don’t attach any files to your email. None whatsoever.
We don’t guarantee to review every book even if we like it, because we simply can’t. But we will keep diving into that pond, fishing for the pearls.
Bob Sanchez is an associate editor and the webmaster of The Internet Review of Books. His novel, When Pigs Fly, has received rave reviews.
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