Friday, March 15, 2013

In Which I Froth With Authorial Rage

Well, that pissed me off.

I read a blog article just now in which self-publishing a book was compared to forming a start-up company. There's some shreds of truth to that, honestly. Self-publishing a book is taking a huge gamble. It requires you (or very close and very tolerant friends) to wear many hats: author, first and foremost, but also editor, proof-reader, first reader, cover artist, marketer, and accountant. You might be capable of wearing all of these caps at once, you might not and have a number of aforementioned very close and very tolerant friends. Or the money to pay professionals. It, like so many things, depends on your circumstances.

But then I got into the rest of the article and I have to say, there were so many points on which I disagreed with the author, the corporate folk described, and all of the quotations within that I have to wonder which of us is doing something wrong. Given that I am not alone in my frothing rage, I'm going to go out on an egotistical limb and say it's those fuckers.

This is your first and only warning for copious and melodious swearing.

The first thing that pissed me off was the corporate executive who referred to the authors as "content containers." Excuse me? Where the fuck do you get off reducing authors to a corporate phrase describing nothing specific to our fucking field of work and shoving us in the same box as every other goddamn person who has an idea and makes a thing? You call us content containers, okay, fine. You know what else is a content container? Boxes that have contents in them. And you know what that leads to, right? If your job title is fucking content container, I cannot say that with enough vile contempt, you are reducing the people who work for you, reducing huge swaths of the population to cardboard fucking boxes. So, straight off right there, you're robbing the authors who you claim to be doing all of this for of their respect and humanity. Gee, thanks a fucking lot. You think we wouldn't notice? This is our goddamn craft, putting ideas into words in a way that conveys emotions, pictures, sensations. You think we wouldn't notice when you use words to reduce us to goddamn boxes? Thanks. So much. For that little bit of contempt. Either that or you actually have no idea that words mean things, which means you more than likely don't understand what the fuck it is we do in the first place, and get the fuck out of my playground until you can come back with some humility instead of this shit you call a proposed business relationship and can ask us to explain what it is we do.

We're human beings. With feelings. Are you human? Do you have opposable thumbs? Show me your fucking thumbs.

Second, oh, second, let's deal with second. Writers overestimate their abilites, okay, fair enough. Everyone overestimates their abilities at some point. I spent several years overestimating my ability until it became my ability, so, there you see one thing overestimating can get you. But what I suspect they're trying to mean is what I said above, that you have to wear many hats, and in order to improve your chances of success you have to wear those hats damn well. And not everyone does. And you might not know that this isn't a good hat for you until after you've tried it. That's the kind of overestimating everyone does sooner or later. That job that you thought was a good fit turns out, not quite so much. That thing you did and felt good about it and triumphant and on top of the world? Now do that fifty times over again and see if you still like it. That other thing tangentially related to what you do and do well, that looks small and insignificant and you should be able to crank that out in an hour? Turns out, not so much. That happens to everyone.

So where the fuck do you get off, Mr. Corporate Person, singling out writers for being the incompetents who can't figure out that they need to do things other than write? It's because we're so-called creatives, isn't it? You think that because we're writers we're all full of daydreams and puppies, and we can't come down to the real world and plan and execute a business action. That house I spent half a year fighting with banks and insurance companies and more banks and filing paperwork and doing everything really damn methodically and ruthlessly would beg to disagree with you. And it's bigger than you are.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm an aberration for being good at math and programming, and comprehending logical things as well as creative things. Or maybe, you know? Just maybe I'm a human goddamn being who is capable of operating in a couple different modes as needed. Maybe I'm an actual person, with fucking learning abilities, and I can look at a task and size it up and try it and decide that I need someone more specialized at that task, and maybe, ooooh. Here's a revolutionary idea for you. Maybe I'm capable of interviewing and finding someone who can do it for me. Fucking seriously? Authors are fuzzy-headed boxes for appealing daydreams and you goddamn corporate bastards are the functional folks who do everything else? Yeah, that was funny when Warren Ellis wrote it, and in that case the author in question was a drug-addled half-functional journalist who damn well knew he needed filthy assistants, so, wait a second. That doesn't actually apply at all. Because human beings are, on occasion, people who are capable of realizing they need fucking help and then going out and getting that help. And it's incredibly asinine to suggest otherwise for anything less than a specific person with evidence to back it up.

The third thing that pisses me off is, the underlying concept isn't bad. Go go content container corporate person, or whoever came up with it, because having a place where people can go "I have a need!" and other people can go "I have a skill!" and they can all slot up with each other till they find the perfect fit, that's a good idea. You know where I have a problem? This is not a new or revolutionary idea. All major writing associations or guilds have market directories where they list editing services, publishing services traditional or otherwise, and they make these available to authors, some for pay and some for free and some if you pay your membership dues. Several authors have forums where people can advertise their services or communicate with other authors about who's good and who isn't, and who's trustworthy and who's a condescending jackass like that fucker over there. These things exist. If you really want to aggregate them and sell it as a product, you're going to have to do a damn lot better to sell me and mine on it than "Oh, hey, you're just a box who doesn't know how to do anything but exude flowers and rainbows."

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the blogger, the corporate heads, the people writing and quoted in the article didn't mean to come off as condescending arrogant douchenozzles. Maybe they're doing this with the best of intentions! Pat them on the head and give them a cookie. But fucking hell, be very careful when dealing with someone who thinks of you as a product-puking spout on a machine, because this is not a person with whom you will be able to communicate the way you need to. The people who call you content containers are the people who look at their work force and see drones to push buttons on, stack together to build a Wonka machine, and if they push the writing buttons out will pop an Everlasting Harry Potter. Call me a crazy air-headed daydreamer incapable of planning my way out of a paper sack, but that doesn't sound like a winning proposition, being a cog in a Wonka machine. That sounds like an excellent way to get myself exploited. Thanks, but no thanks.

The article in question.

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