"Independence began here..."

This post is a reprint from Parlez-Moi Blog, January 25, 2006.

That’s the second half of the slogan of the Independent Publishers of New England - “New England Publishers Unite – Independence began here!” It is a good reminder for those of us in the arts that the last 80 years or so of corporation-dominated access to art is dying and it is time for artists to take back their power. Technology – that two-headed monster – gives us the power if we choose to take it.

I’m not sure where it began. Back in the Sixties when home movie cameras became affordable, a new breed of independent filmmakers sprang up. When I was at Penn State in the early Seventies aspiring filmmakers, screenwriters and actors banded together in student union study rooms to plan, write, rehearse, and talk. They scrounged dumpsters behind the VAB (Visual Arts Building) for discarded film and washed it in dormitory sinks. Everything was a problem – but only a problem to be overcome. And it worked. Fed-up with the power of the big and controlling studios like Paramount and MGM, these filmmakers bought their own equipment, wrote their own scripts, shot their own films and showed them in neighborhood rec halls and small arts cinemas. Today we have the Sundance Festival. It worked.

Musicians, sick of the controlling power of corporate rock, did the same thing. The creation of cassette recorders and eventually CD burners gave them the power to record and duplicate. They created their own distribution networks and the world of indie music grew and grew and grew. Today businesses like PureVolume.com attract tens of thousands of listeners from all over the world and sell indie CDs like crazy. We can learn a lot from the kids.

Podcasting and streaming video is growing in popularity as the next generation of what we once knew as television. The internet has placed the power of magazines and newspapers in the hands of anyone who wants to have their say.

And then there is publishing. I’ve talked before about the controlling power of the BNYPs (Big New York Publishers). Throughout literary history writers of distinction have published their own books. Thoreau and Walt Whitman would not be known today if they had relied on traditional printers of their era. But for the last five decades or so there has been a stigma attached to self-publishing because of the vanity presses that advertised in the backs of magazines “Become a Published Author Today!” For a set fee they would take your manuscript, whether it was your version of the next Great American Novel or Aunt Myrtle’s favorite pickle recipes, and typeset, print, bind, and deliver crates of books to your doorstep. Now it was up to you.

The problem was, of course, that vanity presses had no standards. Books were typeset exactly as they were written. For a fee you could have yours edited so that the “theirs” and the “theres” and the “they’res” were corrected but as for the quality of content - caveat emptor.

So independent publishing houses began. Small groups of people, with something to say and a desire to say it well with high standards and literary merit, began their own presses using computer technology to design and layout books and improved printing processes to produce them. As with all indie efforts marketing, promotion and distribution is the challenge.

Last night we had the second meeting of our local Cape Ann independent publishers group. We still haven’t settled on a name but when we get together the excitement builds. Ideas fly, possibilities emerge, what one person doesn’t know the other does. All of us left the meeting fired up with plans for the future.

Independence is a wonderful thing but sharing resources is helpful, too. Local groups like ours and regional groups like IPNE can give members a lot of power. This is the era of Art Against the Machine. If you love good books, stay tuned – we’re independent and we’re here.

Thanks for reading.

©2006 Parlez-Moi Press originally published on Parlez-Moi Blog.