Indie Support Day

I'm designating Wednesday, June 22, two weeks from now, as Indie Support Day.

I'm calling for everyone to show their support on this day for any and all independent writers, musicians, and filmmakers, and any and all other indie artists.

You can show your support in several ways.

Refuse on that day to buy any books from the corrupt, heartless, and monalithic commercial publishing industry.

Buy a self-published print or eBook. Some are as cheap as 99 cents or less. Who can't afford that?

Attend a showing of an indie film.

Buy a song or album by an indie musician.

If you know of an indie artist who needs money, make a donation to help him or her survive.

If you know of a fundraiser for an indie project, make a contribution to help that project reach completion.

If you personally know an indie artist, take him or her to lunch, or do his/her laundry, or buy him/her some household necessities like toilet paper. Do something--anything--to show your support!

Communicate with at least one indie artist--via email, Twitter, or Facebook, or in person--and say:

"I support you as an indie artist! I think what you're doing is great!"

Let's do it!

Let's Work Together: Part Three

This is a very long blog entry, in five parts, about how indie writers, musicians, and film people need to work together and support each other. (Scroll down to see Parts One and Two.)

Part Three: Escaping

EBooks represent an E-Scape.

They make it possible for writers—and readers—to circumvent what the 1960s hippies called “the Establishment,” to publish with virtually no financial outlay, and to reach out directly to readers via personal Web sites and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

And it’s win-win!

The eBooks are affordable for the readers. And the writers reap high royalty percentages.

EBooks are helping us all abandon the sinking ship of publishing.

And it is sinking. The book industry is in trouble.

An example in publishing is Dorchester, which, according to former Dorchester author Brian Keene, “saw a 60% decrease in book orders in mid-2009” (Brian Keene, “Boycott Dorchester,” Brian Keene: Official Website, March 24, 2011, (http://www.briankeene.com/?p=6140).

An example in retail is Borders. On February 16, 2011, the chain book retailer announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and closing nearly half of its bookstores (“Ann Arbor Bookstore Chain Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy,” http://annarbor.com/business-review/borders-bankruptcy-ann-arbor-books/  and “Chapter 11 Store Close List,” http://media.bordersstores.com/pdf/Borders_Reorg_Closure_Listupdated3-17.pdf).

These facts and figures suggest a downward trend in reading.

But the opposite is true.

According to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts, “Reading has risen among adult Americans.”

The NEA says reading is on the rise among Whites, African Americans, and  Hispanics, and among both men and women. The study continues, “These higher reading rates have expanded . . . readership by 16.6 million—creating the largest reading audience in the history of the [NEA] survey” (NEA, “Reading on the Rise,” http://www.nea.gov/research/Readingonrise.pdf, 1).

So with reading is on the rise, we all have the good fortune to have eBooks to help us escape this rotten, sinking ship of a book industry.

Coming soon: Part Four: We’re All in the Same Lifeboat

Let's Work Together, Part One

This is a very long blog entry, in six parts, about how indie writers, musicians, and film people need to work together and support each other.

Part One: Going to Daddy

Poets and novelists. Rappers and hiphop artists. Indie filmmakers and screenwriters.

We’re each in our own separate box.

We might not think we have much in common, but really we do.

Because of the way the Internet has facilitated communication and made it easy to promote directly to an audience, we all have a chance to succeed. A better chance than ever before.

Let's talk about the book industry.

As I see it, under the old publishing system, unless you were wealthy, you couldn’t afford to publish a book yourself. And if you did publish it, you would probably never earn back your publishing costs. The people who would make money on the book were the printers and the distributors, while you would go into the red and probably have a roomful of unsold books to use as kindling after you’d spent thousands on self-publishing and couldn’t afford to pay your heating bill.

If you didn’t self-publish, you were trapped in a system that was offensively paternalistic.

You had to grovel and beg “Daddy,” an agent, to represent you. You had to grovel and beg another Daddy, the publisher, to publish you. You had to grovel and beg yet another Daddy, a bookseller, to stock you.

Becoming a successful author was all about grovelling to and begging from a number of Daddies—who were often rude and dismissive and self-absorbed—and heaven help you if you got out of line.

If you misbehaved, your career—assuming you even got to have one—would quickly be over.

Coming tomorrow: “Part Two: Disrespect and Downright Theft” about the corruption of the book industry.