Tayari's Blog: Bookstore For Self-Published Authors

Posted by TayariJones on February 11, 2007 08:54 AM
Filed under The Writing Life

There is a bookstore opening in New York called New Voices which will sell only books by self-published authors. For a modest stocking fee of about three hundred dollars, this store will carry your self-published titles.

As you all know here, I go back and forth about self-publishing. On the one hand, I love the democracy of it. I love cutting out the corporate middle man. But on the other hand, it seems like there should be some sort of filter between the author and the reading public. (And we all remember what Mat thinks about it.) From what I see from the New Voices website, they do not discriminate against any books. If it is bound, they will sell it.

A telling thing about the website is that it says that the new store is "devoted to self-published authors." I have to wonder where is the devotion to the readers. I think it is a lot to ask of a reader to do the same work that editor's assistants do-- read through the slush pile. I am sure that there are great works amond the self-published titles sent into the store and I am sure that there are some real duds. As a reader, I want to have some sort of vetting system in place before I spend my time and money on a book.

This, I think, is the problem with the only criteria is that the book is self-published. A lot of people have strong feelings about self-published books, but the truth is that it is impossible to have an opinion about such a large category of work. All it means to say that a work is self-published is that the author wrote it. Some people have to interest in traditional publishing. Many have tried and failed. And, we must say that some books don't get published because they are too political, too experimental, too weird, too sexy.. etc. And a lot of books don't get picked up by traditional publishers because they are just too awful. The tricky thing about the concept behind New Voices is that there is no way to tell which is which.

I wish them well, as I support mostly all effort to connect books with readers, but I can't imagine myself browsing thier aisles.

(Thx T.R.O.Y. for telling me about this.)

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