On Board at Indies Unlimited

Uh oh, what have I done? Today, the website Indies Unlimited officially announced that they're finally at the barrel-scraping point and have clearly run out of decent indie authors to ensnare in their evil global-domination schemes. Against all commonsense advice, they went and "recruited" me—if by "recruited" you mean "drove up beside me in a van with blacked-out windows, threw a burlap sack over my head and dragged me to an undisclosed location that smells of cordite and sourmash whiskey".

But on a serious note, one glance at the range of talent and sheer Hollywood charisma of that staff team makes me feel honoured to be accepted among their ranks. I could call them out one by one, but I don't want to embarrass them. Suffice to say they are indeed a great bunch of writers... but more importantly, they give every indication of being great human beings, too. Well, everyone other than that Mader character. You gotta watch that one, he's crafty.

On a day on which the Guardian features an article predicting a correction in the market for e-publishing, it's even more essential to believe that independent writers can make their mark and achieve success on their own merits, so I thank Stephen Hise and the Indies Unlimited crew (motley and worrisomely shady as they are) for this opportunity to prove that quality and community can and will attract enough readers to make this whole experiment viable. Except "experiment" is too cold a word. These are passionate people behind their casual, urbane façades, and as funny and warm as they are once you break the ice (bribes and flattery usually help), they take writing seriously. Seriously enough to abduct people on the street. And threaten them with something that had a lot of little wires attached. Yes, that serious.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

A Titanic Struggle

This will be a short rant, and if you think that's a contradiction in terms, or you're not in the mood for another soapbox oration, then fair play to you, but Imma do it anyway (and if you dislike the word "Imma", please know I feel your pain).

Briefly, and to state the fairly obvious to anyone paying attention to this topic, the sleek luxury liner world of writing and publishing has been impacted and upended by the hidden iceberg of new media and the digital revolution. The Titanic-like so-called Big Six publishing houses broke apart and are still slowly sinking as we speak. After some early and notable successes with epublishing, a gathering tide of new independent authors grabbed onto the flotsam and jetsam and headed for shore. It was and continues to be a dangerous but exhilarating journey.

Now, before its apparent demise, the Titanic was able to blast its horn on a global scale and nobody minded. It had impeccable staff and gatekeepers, directing authors and readers to their appropriate areas and even providing grooming (editing) and advocacy (marketing) services for the former. But now, without them, the individual authors doggie-paddling desperately in the icy waters must resort instead to scrawled messages on pieces of debris: "help me!" "don't let me drown!" "please read this!"

So, here we are. Many of those independent writers desperately trying to reach the shore, some having made it and dried off and been fed hot soup, but most still in the pitiless ocean, continue to need help if they are to survive. And yet, there are those who would deny them their right to call attention to themselves for reasons of what has come to be known as "shameless self-promotion".

Flawed analogies aside, what prompted this little outburst on my part is this idea that when a great number of small people promote their work, much of which is born of pain and sweat and long, dark nights of the soul—you know, work, right?—it is referred to as "spam" or even "gaming the system", yet when the sleek ocean liners of the world do it on a grand, monstrous scale, it's referred to as "advertising". Once again, why does the bulk of the moral opprobrium descend like freezing rain on the tiny, far more desperate swimmers and rarely on the monolithic giants? Because it's easier to pick on them? Safer? Have we really become such cowards?

Anyway, with more and more writers in sight of shore, clutching their makeshift signs and shivering in the dark, I worry about what we will do next—welcome them home or push them back out in the frigid waters?

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.