Self-Publishing: an Honourable History, a New Dynamism and a Bright Future
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LOGOS Self-publishing: An honourable history, a new dynamism and a bright future Ann Kritzinger "There is no money in having someone else publish your book," according to Dan Poynter, the US guru of modem self-publishing. He has proved his thesis by building a multi-million-dollar direct mail busi ness. But most self-publishers - authors who publish and sell their own books - are one- or two-title enterprises. Self-publishing is not vanity publishing. It Following an international career is a viable alternative for authors who have failed to in journalism, public relations persuade publishers to offer them contracts and has and trade journal publishing, historical origins long predating the growth of pub lishing as an industry separate from authorship and Ann Kritzinger started her own bookselling. book production business in London. Its print and editorial services, Booksprint (1987) and Scriptmate (1985), are specifical' Yesterday What we today call self-publishing had its roots in ly designed for self'publishers. social protest and fieedom of speech. Socrates, for She has a keen interest in print example, was a self-publisher. In the Middle Ages, technology which has led her to it was called unlicensed printing. Church, state and adapt high'tech developments in centres of learning were the arbiters of what should and should not see the light of day (much as pub demand publishing for the small lishing companies are now). But in those days, unli user. Kritzinger's (self'published) censed printing risked severe punishment, even the "Brief Guide to Self-Publishing" penalty of death. For this reason, many European was published in 1991. printers fled to the less censorious England. The sub-title of Milton's Areopagitica (1644) was "A Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing". Self- publishers today carry on the tradition of writers who through the ages refused to be silenced. This message is one which the phrase "self-publishing" - posed by the structure of the publishing industry which divides itself into state, free enterprise and non-profit - fails to convey. Many previous guises - commission, pri vate or subscription publishing - were profession ally acceptable. Chaucer's patron was John of Gaunt; Shakespeare's, the Earl of Southampton. Walter Scott and James Ballantyne published 21 UIGOS 4/1 © WHURR PUBUSHERS 1993 Kritzinger themselves anonymously. Daniel Defoe's Robinson carrying on the age-old tradition of self-publishing. Crusoe was published by a printer after blanket Underground publishing in the recently dissolved rejection by publishing houses. Self-publishing, USSR was a continuation of a glorious history. as it is seen today, sadly lacks the aura of these Those who tirelessly copy or silently hand-duplicate noble adventures. papers to pass from hand to hand are self-publishers. The printer was the key figure for writers In Russia, whole books were compiled in this way, before publishing became a separate industry. But their authors risking their freedom and often their first, printers had to become respectable. During the lives. In the mid-1800s, subversive writers' circles Reformation, a battle had to be fought against cam flourished in St Petersburg, where censored books paigns claiming that printing was an unwelcome were read aloud. In her self-published Whittaker evil by which heresy spread. By the time of the Chambers - The Secret Confession, E J Worth Renaissance, printers were acclaimed for their dis describes how a Russian landowner suggested that semination of ideas, some of it being their own "if authors sent in any manuscripts unlikely to be work. Many of the eighty books Caxton ptinted accepted by the censor, he would get them printed were his own translations. Later, many printers fled abroad and smuggled into the country." Anothet Queen Anne's 1709 Copyright Act to relocate in membet of the circle urged "that they secretly America, where the lower incidence of restrictive reproduce their manu-scripts by lithography. This learned bodies encouraged a climate of entrepre was a daring proposal...an undertaking...as serious as neurial publishing which continues to this day. planting a bomb," which probably "began the The eatliest printer-booksellers were unhappy chain of events which led to Dostoevsky's arguably Egyptian scribes who sold copies of orators' near execution by firing squad, and subsequent exile texts to their audiences on demand. Latet, Euro to Siberia." pean movable-type printers were their own editors, Epics passed orally to succeeding genera with booksellers as reps. Booksellers turned publish tions by story-tellers are also a form of self-publish ers only in the 18th and 19th centuiies - Longman, ing. In Southern Africa, silent majorities still chant founded in 1724, carry the name of both professions while they labour for their oppressors. The stories of to this day. Booksellers were hired by authors or Africa - Aesop's Fables were some of them - wete their sponsors until the 19th century, when the transmitted by story-tellers. Then came the mission emergence of publishing as we know it made the printing presses in the 1800s. Written works were first real break between author and printer-book largely limited to religious themes until protests seller. Most of the majof poets and authots of the against discriminatory Land Acts created a wave of classics continued to subsidize their published work angry pamphleteering at the turn of the century. In in some way. Milton was an autonomous pamphle the 1930s, Sol T Plaatje, later an acclaimed South teer - understandable when he received only £5 for African novelist and translator, sold 18,000 copies Paradise Lost (even in his currency, nowhere near of his self-published Disquisition on a Delicate Social the mega-advances of today). Blake published his Problem to collect his fare to the United States. In personal mysticism when it went unrecognized. Ghana, Thomas A Codjoe, a doctor of science and Conrad published his own first novel and Charlotte law with an honours degree from London Univer Bronte a poetry collection. Beatrix Potter and J M sity, wrote, typeset, printed and sold political pam Barrie did some self-publishing. Virginia and phlets eailier this century. Gradually, short stories Leonard Woolf started the Hogarth Press to publish became a protest ot escapist vehicle for emergent their own short stories. Tolstoy laid out $12,700 to black writers, but oral expression is still the more publish War and Peace. Tarzan was self-published by accessible medium in Africa. "The Law can't stop Edgar Rice Burroughs. Marcel Proust, unable to find Todd Matshkiza's King Kong; it can't tell those a publisher for Remembrance of Things Past, paid for young men and women what wedding songs to the publication of the first 1,500 pages in France. sing," says Ezekiel Mphahlele in The African Image Today's bestselling poet Rod McKuen self-published (Faber 1962). his fiist book in the US. Unsung wiiters who defy censorship are ****:(! 22 LOGOS 4/1 © WHURR PUBUSHERS 1993 .