Self-Publishing In The Modern Age
“Self publicists”? We don’t get that thrown at us at [sic]. I think we’re rather the opposite. We write quality. We’re music fans ourselves, all of us, we have no affiliations, we know what we like and we aren’t afraid to say it. And of course, we’re unpaid. No puppetmaster(s) to dance to. We’re free, which of course means….
… we’re poor.
We can’t do this full time because it doesn’t make a living and because it doesn’t make a living we can’t do more of it. And we never really shout about ourselves.
Some brave, hardworking souls make the leap. I came across this guy a week or so ago, name of Howard Male . He’s written his first novel but publishers and literary agents won’t even read it. They’re all insisting on a ‘summary’. Why is the modern world so dumbed down? A summary? A synopsis? Imagine that for House Of Leaves , or Weaveworld .
If Tolkien unveiled Lord Of The Rings today no publisher would touch it. I’m serious. They’d dismiss it for structural reasons and that’s if they bothered reading it at all. Anyone else find this annoying? I do but then I have an attention span greater than your average tsetse fly. I know I’m not the only one. So spare a thought for the hundreds/thousands of novelists and writers who are forced down the path of self-publication. They lack the publicity and distribution that major publishing houses can offer. They rely on word-of mouth. That’s us dear reader.
Howard Male’s book is called Etc Etc Amen
Here’s the back cover blurb:
Imagine if a charismatic star such as John Lennon had left behind a blueprint for an alternative religion which pointed out the anachronisms and dangers of the existing faiths. How long would this religion take to spread across the globe and even be perceived as a threat to Christianity, Judaism and Islam? In the age of the Internet, certainly less than 2000 years.
Set in 1970s London and present-day Marrakech, Etc Etc Amen is a conspiracy thriller and a murder mystery in which people make gods out of men and gods out of thin air, and the destructive power of both religious faith and obsessive love has fatal consequences.
Here’s the thing. Etc Etc Amen has been garnering great reader feedback. That’s great feedback, but also great readers. Check out his website. There are many positive testimonies. Tony Visconti , producer of Bowie , U2 and Morrissey said it was one of the best he’d read in a decade. He wrote:
“It’s a wonderful book! I am even more awestruck the second time around.. Very few novelists get it right when they use Rock as the context for a novel. Howard Male got it right.”
Tony Visconti
Despite this, Etc Etc Amen is not selling well. So check it out for yourself. Male’s website has a lot of reviews, an interview and can be found via the link below.
Word of mouth guys. Our mouths, our words. C’mon.