The Reader: Publishing's Final Frontier

Article: (Special to Publishing Industry News.) Copyright @ 2011 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

Or Are Readers the First and Only Frontier? When I was a boy of about ten, and already dreaming of becoming a writer, I remember Mickey Spillane appearing on one of the early 1960s talk/entertainment variety shows. The show might have been Steve Allen or Tonight, for all I remember; it was grayscale (modern tekno-speak for black & white), that much I remember for sure. There is one other thing I remember for sure, and that is what the master of the short, punchy noir detective novel told his audience.…

The Ringing of the Cash Register Actually, I remember two things. He sat on a stool and told us his method for constructing a novel—always a matter of great interest to those who do this (or want to do this) for a living. He said, and I quote as best as I can remember, "I always write the endings first. That goes quickly. Then I spend the rest of my time figuring out how to get to the ending, starting with Chapter One." He told us one other thing that I recall. The host asked: "What do you love best about writing?" Spillane, almost playing the tough guy role to echo his steel-fisted detectives, was: "The ringing of the cash register." I felt a sinking feeling, and I think there was a painful silence. Nobody clapped, or laughed. If there was a collective gasp, I wouldn't be surprised. He said, with a gentle smile: "That's how you know people like what you write." I think he may have added: "It isn't about the money. I've got plenty of that. The best sign of approval is that they keep buying your books."

Time Out: Who Was This Guy? Frank Morrison Spillane (1918-2006) has sold over a quarter billion books thus far. Aside from when he was born and died, that's the way to lead into his obituary. As he would say, start with the ending and work your way up to that from the start. According to Wikipedia, in 1980 he had seven out of the top fifteen all-time best-selling novels in the U.S. market. According to his New York Times obituary, "Scorned by many critics for his artless plots, his reliance on unlikely coincidence and a simplistic understanding of the law, Mr. Spillane nevertheless achieved instant success with his first novel, I, the Jury, published in 1947. He was a Scottish-Irish boy, born in Brooklyn at the end of World War I. His father was a bartender, his mother a housewife. Spillane did a brief college stint, worked in a circus and as a life guard, and through the Great Depression took his hard knocks and whatever work he could find, like anyone else not born with a silver thermometer up his caboose. In World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a pilot and instructor. In 1947, at the age of 18/19, he published his first novel and never again wanted for money or success. His life's work is best remembered for his creation of tough guy Mike Hammer, played in the movies by Lee Marvin, and sure to be reprised time and again as a timeless archetype. Spillane died at 88 of cancer. Wouldn't you know it, but his executor is still releasing unpublished novels, including the Mike Hammer tome The Goliath Bone (2008). As we'd expect from such a prolific and unstoppable writer, he seems to still be typing away in his grave. That's meant as a compliment, Mickey. And the great man still has at least one important lesson to teach us.

Writers as Farmers When the Internet came along, I was the first person (1996) to publish his own proprietary novels online (in weekly serial chapters). That was before e-commerce and the real growth of digital publishing, and little did I know of the learning curve ahead of me. To be a successful author, you really have to understand a lot of things. It's like a fellow once told me in that great mixing bowl of all salads known to man, the U.S. Army (I was a kid from the city, and he was a kid from a Pennsylvania farm village, who grew up on a farm, and his parents were farmers; this was really a proud paean to his father, muttered over beers in a faraway army barracks near the rump hole of nowhere): You'd be surprised at all the stuff a farmer needs to know—a little about everything, from soil chemistry to climate patterns, from animal genetics to veterinary medicine, from tractor mechanics to—we could go on and on. It's like that being a writer. You're well served to understand the underlying logistics of the traditional print industry, even as the future is entirely digital. To really be a professional, you have to (a) own a dictionary and (b) use the dictionary. Aside from that, you need to have a thorough understanding of grammar and usage. You need to own, understand, and use at least a dozen authoritative style books (MLA, New York Times, Chicago, AP, etc.) and know the differences among them. You need to read voraciously, preferably since childhood—under the sheets on school nights with a flashlight—and you may be influenced by this or that author, but never try to be that author (doesn't work; there will never be another Ernest Hemingway, or Ray Bradbury, or Cordwainer Smith, or Dan Brown, however you feel about their merits). You need to understand a lot of things, including what they teach in English departments, Journalism schools, and a whole lot of other places. Most importantly, to be an educated person, you need to think critically. That means you need to know all the facts, not just the ones fed to you by hate radio or the ones that support your conjecture ("never let the facts stand in the way of a good opinion"). You need to consider all those facts fairly and evenly, and have the moral and intellectual breadth to understand what is fresh tomatoes and what went directly to rotting garbage on the vine. And when you are done with all these things, you stand at the final frontier: will readers buy your creations?

Readers: The Only Frontier Whether you are Random House or I.M. Nemo Press, you share the same essential problem: will readers ring your cash register? Put aside all the beatification absurdities of the dead poets' societies, be they at a literature department, or a film critics school, or a stuffed escargot puffing about how they "only read Literachoor." Take a look at any high school or university literature syllabus. Chances are that half the authors were despised and rejected by the gatekeepers of their day, and ended up publishing their own work in small editions they could afford while washing dishes, mowing lawns, raking leaves, or shoveling snow as a career. As the ossified, fossilized, monolithic cartel of six New York City publishers disintegrates like cardboard in a refreshing rain storm, a vast market correction is taking place across the writing industry. That's right, before it's a publishing industry, it is a writing industry. In the new paradigm, hopefully every writer will be able to reach some readers and undergo the only test that is worth anything. It is the only test that will stand the test of time. That test consists of the old-fashioned ring of a cash register. The business of writing and publishing does not grow on trees, is not free, does not come on golden tablets to English majors, does not require the successful poet to first suffer and die in a dank garret for the sophomoric approval of those who can't write…ah yes, there is that old British aphorism from when people still studied Latin and conversed in learned guffaws: "Qui nocent, docent." Those who can't, teach. Those who can't, become critics. It's a Swiss Army Knife of aphorisms, with an attachment suitable to every occasion.

A Vast Marketing Correction, Including Vision In this new age of digital and unrestricted publishing and self-promotion, I speak of a vast market correction on many fronts—economic, financial, aesthetic, you name it. The democratization of media has been a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it has empowered the non-critical thinkers and enraged sponges of political misinformation to become, once again in the worst historical traditions, the mob that sacked the Forum after Caesar's murder, or the mob that smashed priceless stained glass in Notre Dame de Paris after the king had his head cut off. On the other hand, like the people rioting across the Arab world to rid themselves of dictators, freedom seems to be in the air. That includes your right and your ability to sidestep the nocent and docent gatekeepers and get a shot at reaching an audience. Now here is the sober truth…

The Most Basic of Ideas Ringgg! goes Mickey Spillane's cash register, again and again. There is a relatively small (Pubishers Weekly at one time suggested 7% of the population after years of polling) but hungry readership of people who aren't satisfied with movie theaters or television. The written word, whether printed in mollusk-ink on dead and dry tree pulp, or glowing in pixels on a digital reader platform, retains its own powerful magic. Primitive but beautiful pagan (Pre-Jewish, Pre-Christian) myths from Neolithic Mesopotamia continue to demand the absolute, blind faith of billions of 21st Century people—myths like Creation, Paradise, Flood, Giants, etc. Dating to long before the first Hebrew ever walked the earth, or took stylus to papyrus, or chisel to stone (11th Century Kingdom of Israel, and later) these "scriptures" (writings) continue to influence world affairs. The fact that Gutenberg figured out how to mass-produce "writings" using movable type and an adapted wine press at first aroused the fear, ire, and ignorance of violent book burners. Somehow, for 'reasons' unclear probably even to the wild-eyed fanatics of Savonarola's Venice or Hitler's Germany, the printed word exerted a power that must be stopped before it toppled dictators and demagogues. Going digital will not change that power one iota. Will the book burners of tomorrow be book jammers? We'll let the people of tomorrow deal with such problems. Meanwhile, we must forget all the rubrics and false incantations of the gatekeepers, critics, and tea leaf augurs, and become Ka-ching readers. Long after the publishers, critics, and gate keepers are forgotten, the writings that really rise to the surface are those that were elevated and sought after by the popular reading public of their day. Charles Dickens was loathed by the gate keepers of his time, and had to write his first stories in serial chapters for publication in weekly journals. When the harrumphers of his day (publisher-printers, academics, critics) saw the public demand, and the money, Dickens never again lacked for a publisher. The readers were there first. All of which is to say, if you are a writer, keep your eye on the cash register. Find out what readers want, and deliver it to them. In the digital age, nobody can stop you. Nobody can filter you out, delete you, dismiss you, demean you, or ignore you. Fact is, the editors at the biggest print houses develop a good sense of what readers might want—but ultimately, it's as much a crapshoot for them as it is for a one-person I.M. Nemo Press (assuming you have mastered all the basics of writing, acquisition, design, cover art, production, wholesale, retail, and marketing). If you bring a perfectly professional and attractive package to the market place, you have just as much a chance of selling it as the Bigs do. It's a crapshoot, more than ever. The public has its whims and vagaries. They are busy; they are saturated. We live in an age when most of us are drowning in information. I'm waiting for the day when our pillows will broadcast advertising to our brains while we sleep.