Self-Publishing
There is a lot of swirl and snobbery around self-publishing. I am not sure how I feel about it, though I too am participating.
My guess is that what we are seeing with self-publishing is much like what is happening with podcasts, and YouTube streaming. Individual creators overtaking the mainstream and making those standards irrelevant.
The work that I have put up on Amazon KDP is no winning read, but it is mine and it was a small honest effort, and it lives, and I will continue to edit it, and build on the work. I think of it as an anchor, my anchor, my effort, my sweat equity, my project, my fun, my sadness, my small tiny flag planted on this planet.
Is it great writing, or literature? No, no it is not.
There are huge talents that might have been overlooked in the past, never to see the light of day, at least now the playing field is a little more level if not flooded. . .but floods, in general, recede eventually.
When I think of self-publishing, I am reminded of a quote that always strikes me.
“. . . peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice, nor do they write complaints or memoirs.”
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you can get to a computer, or on an iPhone, and get an account on KDP, and have some hustle, and maybe a few worthwhile words, at the very least, a record of your thoughts and observations might survive and might be of value someday, to someone, or only to yourself.
‘One publisher called my book repellent’: the first self-published author up for the Miles Franklin
