[Infowarrior] - You ¹ re an Author? Me Too!

[Richard Forno]

April 27, 2008
Essay
You¹re an Author? Me Too!
By RACHEL DONADIO

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Donadio-t.html?_r=1&oref=slog
in&pagewanted=print

It¹s well established that Americans are reading fewer books than they used
to. A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53
percent of Americans surveyed hadn¹t read a book in the previous year ‹ a
state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an
affection for (or business interest in) turning pages. But even as more
people choose the phantasmagoria of the screen over the contemplative
pleasures of the page, there¹s a parallel phenomenon sweeping the country:
collective graphomania.

In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the
United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker
Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand
books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are
thriving, while writers¹ conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a
chance to network and ³workshop² their work. The blog tracker Technorati
estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day (with a
lucky few bloggers getting book deals). And the same N.E.A. study found that
7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did creative writing,
mostly ³for personal fulfillment.²

In short, everyone has a story ‹ and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people
may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their
barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, as good old Walt Whitman,
himself a self-published author, once put it.

³As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has
become the opportunity to publish my own self,² said Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican
critic and the author of ³So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of
Abundance,² a meditation on literary life in an over-booked world. Today, he
added, ³Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert.²

At the Book Review, dozens of self-published books arrive each week ‹ poetry
collections, children¹s books, memoirs, self-help manuals, sci-fi novels,
religious titles. ³The Chronicles of a Hip Hop Legend: Paths of Grand
Wizardry² recently crossed the transom, as did a technical monograph on the
death of Napoleon, complete with charts on possible arsenic poisoning; an
illustrated religious guide, ³Hell: For Those Dying to Get There²; and
³Disney Your Way,² with suggested itineraries for navigating Walt Disney
World. There are memoirs by Holocaust survivors and people fighting eating
disorders, and novels like ³September Sun,² in which, ³enticed by the
powerful aphrodisiac of sex, Michael learns to his chagrin that Murphy¹s Law
is always in play.²

And the numbers suggest the books will keep on coming. IUniverse, a
self-publishing company founded in 1999, has grown 30 percent a year in
recent years; it now produces 500 titles a month and has 36,000 titles in
print, said Susan Driscoll, a vice president of its parent company, Author
Solutions. While some are ³calling card² books that specialists sell at
conferences and workshops, most are by ordinary people who want to get their
work in print. The writers tend to be on both ends of the age spectrum. ³As
people get older, they have more time and more money and something to say,²
Driscoll said, while their grandchildren are often driven by ³that need for
fame,² she said. ³They may not be avid readers, but they certainly are
writers.² Not that anyone is necessarily paying attention. Driscoll said
that most writers using iUniverse sell fewer than 200 books.

Other self-publishing outfits report similar growth. Xlibris, a
print-on-demand operation, has 20,000 titles in print, by more than 18,000
authors, said Noel Flowers, a company spokesman. It is ³nonselective² in
choosing manuscripts, he said, though it does screen ³for any offensive or
inappropriate content.² Xlibris¹s top sellers include ³Demonstrating to
Win!,² a computer manual (15,600 sold, not including copies bought by the
author), and ³The Morning Comes and Also the Night,² which the company lists
in the ³religion/Bible/prophecies² category (10,500 sold).

For the most part, big booksellers shy away from carrying self-published
books. But they¹re still looking to jump into the game. IUniverse has a
³strategic alliance² with Barnes & Noble, which sometimes considers stocking
self-published titles for some local branches, Driscoll said. Amazon.com
owns BookSurge, a print-on-demand operation that produces and distributes
books for as little as $3.50 per copy. Borders recently started a
self-publishing program with the print-on-demand company Lulu. Would-be
authors can pay $299 for formatting, printing and an ISBN code, or for the
$499 ³premium package,² an editor will address structure, plot and
documentation, along with basics like grammar, punctuation and spelling.

The Borders site says self-published authors can even arrange readings in
local Borders stores, but the kinks still need to be worked out. ³It is not
possible to purchase a place on shelves or an author event today,² a
spokeswoman for Borders said.

Borders lists its self-publishing program under the rubric ³Borders
Lifestyles,² as if writing were a hobby, like golf, rather than a calling or
a craft. But for those seeking formal training, there are hundreds of
creative writing programs offering M.F.A.¹s and other credentialing. The
Association of Writers and Writing Programs represented 13 programs when it
was founded in 1967. Now it includes 465 full-fledged courses of study, and
creative writing classes are offered at most of the 2,400 college English
departments in North America.

Since the ¹60s, creative writing programs have helped ³democratize² the
talent pool, providing ³the encouragement to women and a lot of different
people of different classes and ethnicities to tell their stories and write
their poems,² said David Fenza, the organization¹s executive director. He
disagrees with those who think an oversupply of books is pushing readers
away. ³Some have argued that all this new literary activity is displacing
the Great Works and therefore estranging the great audience for literature,²
Fenza said. ³Writing programs have their faults, but they still work as
advocates for the mind that reads.²

Mark McGurl, an associate professor of English at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and the author of a forthcoming book on the impact
of creative writing programs on postwar American literature, agrees that
writing programs have helped expand the literary universe. ³American
literature has never been deeper and stronger and more various than it is
now,² McGurl said in an e-mail message. Still, he added, ³one could put that
more pessimistically: given the manifold distractions of modern life, we now
have more great writers working in the United States than anyone has the
time or inclination to read.²

Self-publishing companies may produce books for less than $5, but how much
does all this production cost readers? In ³So Many Books,² Zaid playfully
writes that ³if a mass-market paperback costs $10 and takes two hours to
read, for a minimum-wage earner the time spent is worth as much as the
book.² But for someone earning around $50 to $500 an hour, ³the cost of
buying and reading the book is $100 to $1,000² ‹ not including the time it
takes to find out about the book and track it down.

On the whole, Zaid is unworried about the proliferation of books, though he
doesn¹t think everyone should set pen to paper. ³About would-be writers,
André Gide used to say: ŒDécouragez! Découragez!¹²(discourage!), Zaid said
in an e-mail message. ³The implication was that real writers would not be
discouraged, and the rest would save a lot of time. Of course, some
mediocrities are never discouraged, and some potential real writers would be
lost. But there is so much talent around that we can afford it.²

Indeed. There¹s a lot of noise out there, and some of it is music.

Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review.