Re: ‘Self-publishing’ — What does it mean to self-publish in the 21st century? An alternative perspective
Storytelling is changing. A little while ago I had a conversation with my father over coconut rice and fish and I asked him what he’d do if he were to publish a book. “Go to the publishers, they have a wider audience, the market is wider.” And it set thoughts brewing because advice such as this is commonplace among the people I discuss this with. Most friends would also suggest the same. Yet, we see different opinions online, with many praising the green pastures of self-publishing. If we relocate the topic to at least a 100 years ago, the traditional form of publishing would sound more dominating, and you might think people would gawk at you if you said, “self-publishing is the new thing.” This has its own truth, as traditional publishing houses developed soon after the Gutenberg press was invented in 1440.
However, self-publishing has been around for a long time, becoming more popular recently in the 1970s when desktop publishing was invented. It can even be speculated that self-publishing began even earlier before when Pliny the Elder completed his Naturalis Historia in 77 C.E.
What is self-publishing? What does it even mean to publish yourself?
The internet has become a web of multiplying platforms growing every minute as we speak.
But even among these platforms there are variances in audience, target, formality, register, and thus the protracted success of your publishing that differs with the choices you make.
Despite there being greater freedom on this plethora of possibilities for online self-publishing, it is not completely rule-free. Though, definitely less constraints than traditional publishing.
Rewinding back to the days of traditional publishing, there were also, already, forms of self-publishing.
And that would include oral stories.
In our world of literacy, we have forgotten that there is an important aspect of self-publishing: telling stories. Not through words but through our immediate, verbal expression.
Think about the last time you met a friend and shared a memory or personal event. If you recorded those conversations, you’ll find you can hear an unfolding story on its own, though on strict terms, there would need to be a start, a climax, a resolution — but are these rules truly innate in a story or simply features of what we think and know to be stories? Stories involve narrative, and narrative is possible everywhere, even in the breaths between tea at the coffeeshop downstairs, for we are Homo narrans.
Of course, it is important to consider how this may be exclusive to certain groups as the written word is to a good proportion; there are people who find greater freedoms through alternatives to the verbal word. Take sign language as an example. However, the verbal word is one of the more immediate modes of expression of our species, primordially the first before the written style.
Is it still so now? The spread of literacy has resulted in one clear thing: more and more people are using the brainchild of Johannes Gutenberg as their immediate expressive tongue. Taking advantage of the accessibility to keyboards, we type with immediacy the strings of words that come to our mind. And we save these into copies and edit them later on. However different this is from the spontaneous, evanescent and non-editable form of oral style, its democratic use in certain manners have begun to rise its similarities to the primordial form of storytelling.
Tweets as short as a momentary utterance, verbose essays written impromptu on Medium, lightning-speed updates on Facebook. Though editable, these word strings sound and feel like chatter and recitation. There is greater democracy in the way we use the written word, a democracy that has risen to the extent where our autonomy allows for fluidity almost as spontaneous and immediate as verbal expression. Autonomy and fluidity, however, are not correlated. Rather, quite delineate. You may experience great fluidity in writing on Facebook, but you may not experience as much autonomy in deciding when the next post may be banned if it has NSFW content. You may experience autonomy self-publishing on Medium, but the prospect of more formal readership psychologically dictates greater editing before hitting that button. Further, with greater autonomy and democracy means greater reflections of undesirable aspects of being human; some jargon needs to be refrained.
There are constraints and negotiations still to be made in our new forms of self-publishing, but it can also be argued that in the processes of these is the involvement of our own agency and so makes it highly autonomous regardless as well. But with autonomy, comes the prevalent structure wherever we go, and this may contrast still with the looser structure of organic storytelling on the streets, wherever you go.
Why is it then that our verbal storytelling in conversations is not recognized? Why don’t we categorize such as “self-publishing”? Would the question be one of register, or one of power?
Power comes with people. It does not merely come with a position.
With type, the poet’s word may be recorded, shared, redistributed, copied, and mass circulated. Audiences can increase in a matter of nights, during which followings may also reach new heights. With the duplicity of text comes the prospect of power. Because text is what the masses are using now. It has become one of our fundamental technologies. And not technologies for merely anything, but technologies for thought. Better than human thought, it does not forget. In my personal preference, the second in line is the visual arts.
Then there is the binary code. Programming. Languages are created and developed for the computer-human interface. They aid in expressive storytelling online, facilitating the infrastructure, providing tools for the magic that can be made from gifs to website designs and virtual exhibitions.
Alas, self-publishing can be anything, but it is not everything. It is defined by social conceptions of what counts as writing, what deserves to be self-published, what content and format is worthy.
Given these we can deduce the dawning truth: there is no true absence of boundaries in the greener pastures that we see emerging; self-publishing has its rules too. Where socialization persists, rules would be formulated to persist. Explicitly or implicitly; it can go both ways.
Back to the question why many of the people I approach would hark to traditional publishing as a surer road to success. In truth, none of both routes may guarantee clearer pathways to success; there are chances for failure relative to each set of associated risks. It also depends on what we mean by success. Is success merely to be heard or to receive monetary compensation? What does it mean to obtain success? What kind of content can help us reach there and which networks would propel us to ignite more nodes?
Perhaps the surety of the traditional path is a fluke. Or it is a reflection of the mentality of Homo narrans: to want order and structure even if there may be an expanding space of land to populate. That is, now, in the headspace of the internet.
When it comes to virtual self-publishing, it is also not true that shareable texts carve sites in everlasting stones. Less like stones, these mediums may be slow-dissipating sparks. Like the prolonged luminescence of activated neurons. In time to come, new information may replace existing ones, nodes dim as groups shift to the next new trends, website links become dysfunctional, and the internet itself may also forget. It can thus be said, that the promise of everlasting stones in our electrically sustained web offers little beyond an illusion; a mirage of permanence that we hope to have.
Perhaps then, it is safer to self-publish through the ‘oralate’: where your story runs deep in memory and heart with the people you meet.
Sincerely,
A coffeeshop auntie
More of what I write can be found at Wordpress
