As a political reporter, nothing is
more tiring than watching a politician say something he or she truly believes,
then issue a forced apology when the backdraft becomes too unpleasant.
But it is even worse to watch a
bestselling novelist engage in that kind of behavior.
By now, many of you have already
heard about mystery novelist Sue Grafton’s
interview
two weeks ago with the LouisvilleKy.com, in which she advised writers to
avoid self-publishing at all costs and then proceeded to denounce any who have
gone that route.
“Don’t self-publish,” she says.
“That’s as good as admitting you’re too lazy to do the hard work.”
And that was just the beginning of
Grafton’s obnoxious tirade. After interviewer
Leslea Tash
challenged Grafton, she opined further:
“The self-published books I’ve read are often
amateurish… To me, it seems disrespectful…that a ‘wannabe’ assumes it’s all so
easy s/he can put out a ‘published novel’ without bothering to read, study, or
do the research. Learning to construct a narrative and create character,
learning to balance pace, description, exposition, and dialogue takes a long
time. This is not a quick do-it-yourself home project. Self-publishing is a
short cut and I don’t believe in short cuts when it comes to the arts. I
compare self-publishing to a student managing to conquer Five Easy Pieces on
the piano and then wondering if s/he’s ready to be booked into Carnegie Hall.
Don’t get me started. Oops, you already did.”
Grafton’s comments sparked outrage
from the indie author community who, quite understandably, didn’t like being
called “lazy wannabes.”
But Grafton was just the latest in
a long string of prominent traditionally-published authors to criticize the
burgeoning indie movement. John Grisham, who once sold his books out of the
back of his car in an effort to get noticed, essentially
said indies are
the scum of the Earth. Jodi Picoult, meanwhile,
provided
this piece of “advice” to writers (emphasis hers): “DO NOT SELF PUBLISH.”
As a result of the pushback,
Grafton waited a week and
then
issued an apology: “I’d appreciate
a chance to clarify the remark I made in the recent interview you
posted. I meant absolutely no disrespect for e-publishing and indie
authors.”
She goes on at some length trying to justify her remarks by saying, a)
she didn’t really know what she was talking about and b) she had incorrectly
assumed indie publishing was the same as vanity publishing.
While it’s good that she felt the need to respond, it’s worth noting that
this apology is actually missing a, you know, apology. She calls her remarks a
“gaffe” and—much like every politician I’ve ever seen after they made a
mistake—says she wants to “clarify” her remarks. But she does not actually say
she was sorry or, more tellingly, that she was wrong.
Indeed, it seems likely that the
non-apology apology was just a way to recover from the public relations problem
her statements had created.
Her initial comments, meanwhile,
say a great deal about Grafton’s attitude toward indie writers. In short, we
are hacks. We don’t know how to write books, spend no time trying to learn, but
take our crap stories to the market without regard to the basic rules of
narrative, dialogue, characters or plot. We are, to use her metaphor, children
who want our crayon scribbles on paper to be regarded as the same kind of high
art she produces.
If we can actually write a good
book, she says, the traditional publishers will find and promote us: “If you
have a good story to tell and if you write it well, the Universe will come to
your aid.”
The arrogance reflected in
Grafton’s comments is truly awe-inspiring. It’s clear that she believes that:
a) all good writers will get traditional book contracts and b) anyone who doesn’t
isn’t a good writer.
Nothing in her apology in any way
backtracks from those views. But they are clearly incorrect. Yes, there are
plenty of bad self-published books. But there are awful books among the
traditionally published as well. The idea that indie authors do not know how to
“construct a narrative and create character” is demonstrably untrue.
Those books feature great
characters, interesting plots, and well-constructed narratives—and the
“Universe” did not come to their aid. In all cases, they decided to STOP
waiting for the Universe to come to them and seize their own destiny. Some of
those writers have made it big, but others are still waiting to break through.
The idea that indie authors are
“lazy” is also insane. If anything, we work harder than traditionally published
novelists. When she’s done with a book—no matter how long she works on it—she has
a team of people ready to edit, design a cover and plan a marketing campaign.
Indie authors do all that themselves.
Candidly, I’ve seldom worked so
hard as in the past year. I have a full-time job as a journalist that I must
keep to support my family and—in my free time—I have tirelessly marketed my
first book while simultaneously writing my second. During that time, I’ve
mastered the art of the Facebook ad and spent thousands of my own money
promoting the book. I’ve done blog tours, entered contests, been on radio
programs, and found my way into the local newspaper. Trust me, that took work.
As for the writing itself, I slave
over it. I’m not tossing off dreck and throwing it on to Amazon’s KDP. I’m not
even writing a short novella and selling it, which I would do if I had any
sense. No, I plot, write, edit and edit again. And while my wife (who also
writes and edits professionally) is my editor, I guarantee you she is harder on
me than Grafton’s editor is on her. There is not a scene or line of dialogue
that we have not discussed how to improve. So I get pretty upset when Grafton
essentially tells me that I don’t “read, study or do research.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not
complaining. I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity Amazon and other
ebook publishers have given me. My novel has been downloaded tens of thousands
of times—a thought that makes me giddy just thinking about it. But don’t for a
moment assume it was easy.
And I’m just one many. There are
thousands of indie authors out there working as hard as I am, if not harder, to
find their readership. I see them all the time—on Twitter, Facebook, blog
posts. The vast majority of writers I come across are pouring their heart and
soul into it, trying to find a way to rise above the noise and get noticed.
Yet Sue Grafton dismissed all of us
out of hand. We are, to her mind, beneath her.
In her apology, she says, “I am not arrogant or indifferent to the
challenges we all face.”
Yet that is exactly what she seems to be. As noted in
this
Forbes piece and in the comments on this stellar
Indie Reader take on the same subject, you don’t normally see other industries
attacking each other in this way. Does James Cameron take time out of
his day to slam indie directors? Does Green Day stop to criticize any band that
made a demo in their basement? Of course not.
Yet Grafton and her ilk seem to
think it’s okay to spit all over us.
What she doesn’t realize—but
perhaps understands now—is that indie authors really are the wave of the
future. The ebook revolution is the cosmos’ way of evening the score, of
letting readers decide what is worth reading rather than a handful of large
publishers.
We’ve got good stories to tell and
finally the Universe—in the form of Amazon, Smashwords and others—has come to
our aid.
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As an added benefit, it also made
naming the sequel much easier. Although I played around with a couple of
alternatives, in the end Band of Demons
was the natural choice. Like the first book, it is drawn from “The Devil Went
Down to 
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