November 24th, 2011 / 12:49 am
Snippets
Snippets
Ken Baumann—
if there’s anything you need to know about “contemporary indie lit” it’s that all you need to do to get a book published is write one – Impossible Mike
doesn’t seem true unless you vastly broaden the definition of “published”
do you have a completed full-length manuscript?
I think the language is messed up. I’ve always used this language regarding my books and short stories.
indie lit website POST your poems, short stories and articles.
An indie publisher that PODs or only prints a thousand couples PRINTS an X amount of your books so you can sell some and send out to people, get readings and have fun with literature.
I mean:
If you write a book, find someone that will print 100 copies and make a cover, then you are HAVING FUN and being creative, which is to me is awesome. But I have never and would never walk up to people and be like, “I AM A PUBLISHED AUTHOR,” in a boston brahmin accent.
But this statement does not say what one needs to do to get a book published by a major press either. Which has its own set of nasty implications.
So let me write a new one:
So if there is anything you need to know about contemporary major book publishers is that you can get published 1. If your family is connected and you’ve written a cute novel about nothing. 2. If you network for six years and write a cute novel that doesn’t mention one social issue that might alienate any possible buyers.
One more thing: even though if you write a 130 page book in the indie lit, you will for sure find someone to publish it, some people still rise in the ranks. xTx and Sam Pink are basically no one in terms of social connections, they started off like everybody else, trying to get some websites to published them, and they have risen to the point where people in this world know their name.
So it is possible for a person that works harder on their writing and have more talent to rise above the surrounding people.
lol
lol
mad bitches talking shit about literature like they done written a book but NAH
literature should just end probably, like bow out gracefully, like…george costanza in that episode where he makes a joke at his job and everybody laughs and so he quits because he wants to go out on a high note…just shut this website down and all the publishing companies will stop too, there are already too many books….youtube….
This is true and sad. We probably need to fix our terms to exclude the few big and interesting independent publishers.
the fact that i don’t understand what on earth this post or the responses means just reinforces all my favorite insecurities about myself. ty.
Tweet a hundred such comments and get muumuu house to put it out.
Do you want to be a writer, or a published author? That’s the only question that matters. Cream eventually rises to the top.
what’s your point
I love Mike, but my reaction to this is just “yeah, so?”
It doesn’t even seem like an interesting point to make.
Whoa, that’s a lot to ask, partner.
‘I’m beveling the interior of my opus.’ –Will this turkey fly?
I think what offended me about the comment was that to me the indie lit world is a place where a writer with no social connections, maybe no education, maybe from a shitty state school, can sell some books and participate in literature. another thing is that I’ve made some great friends from the indie lit world, friends I would have never made just by living in my town. I think that the indie lit world that exists on the internet is becoming the new minor leagues of literature, in about ten years when the editors, professors and agents are from my generation have the positions of power in the major pubilshing lit world things will change in the publishing world.
I agree with Noah Cicero on this one. There’s no rules dawg!
That’s the spirit! Stomp on those people with aspirations to make you feel better about yourself!
In better news, Achewood is back.
Let me guess, “Impossibly Mike” sits on the tenure committee of a major American university.
Wait–do you think Impossible is saying something belittling about the democratization of the means of making words public? (–and is that what Noah thinks? . . .)
I take away a celebration of such, in the guise of Impossible’s impatience (?) with the petulance of the many who want to be, what, FSG-listers.
?
lol
Yeah, (in all seriousness), I think people have rather interpreted this quote incorrectly, or perhaps I have. To me, it seems that producing a finished manuscript (for whatever it is that you do) is an incredibly difficult thing, if you are being scrupulous and critical on yourself to the degree by which you believe that the work you are doing is not only important to yourself but possibly meaningful for someone else — and that given the current climate in “indie lit,” it is now incredibly possible for that manuscript to find a home and maybe even a several few devoted readers, which to me is already beyond something that I would call “a dream” — and that today this is slightly more possible than say, five years ago. But I’m not a doctor or nothin! I did eat lots of turkey !! Serotonin !! Pecan pie!
I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case. Impossible Mike is just one of the regular htmlgiant bloggers (click on the link in his name above)
It was just a joke, dear. Happy Thanksgiving.
But are they good? Really known outside of this circle?
Maybe we did misread it, because as someone who’s written two novel-length pieces, doing the actual writing was a hell of a lot easier/less humiliating than trying to get published. So when I read “Write a book and you’re good as published!” I sort of get ticked off.
Writing a query letter takes more work than writing a novel. Rubbing elbows with publishers takes a lot more work than writing a novel. And it’s because writing a novel is being honest, the process of getting published is shmoozing and bullshitting.
are you old
I am, dearie. Gimme a smooch on my hoary jaw.
Rorschach snippet
i have an indie book written. i’d like to unpublish it.
anyone else think impossible mike looks like a midget seth rogen y/n
I think Seth Rogen looks like Jason Segal trying to look like Jonah Hill on a Steven-Seagal day.
In a, uh, uh . . . Bergman movie.
i really wanna know what you meant by this question.
There we go. lol.
Maybe Mike would agree w you. Ken Baumann felt it was worth quoting tho.
seth rogen with woody allen glasses wearing david lynch’s hair
nice
wheres the top
just fyi, seth rogen is only 2 inches taller than me.
in other news: brb gonna go kill myself
I cannot express how much I’m tickled by the term “hoary jaw.” Not because of any possible pun, but for the words and their meaning in and of the context given.