The History of British and American
Author-Publishers:
($20, 368pp, 6X9”: Softcover: ISBN: 978-1-68114-373-6; $35:
Hardcover: ISBN-13: 978-1-68114-374-3; $2.99:
EBook: ISBN-13:
978-1-68114-375-0; LCCN: 2017950922;
Edited by: Mallory Cormack; Includes
bibliography and index; 11 illustrations; Biography &
Autobiography—Editors, Journalists, Publishers;Release: January 5, 2018):
The
mainstream publishing industry has popularized the stereotype that
“self-published” books are inferior to “traditional” ones because the author
does not receive an advance and the services provided are less professional.
The reality is that the Big Four publishers attained their enormous market
share by at least initially relying on author subsidies.
About
This book describes the road some of the world’s top
authors took to self-publication. Charles Dickens self-published A Tale of Two
Cities in his periodical,All the Year Round. Sir Walter Scott published most of
his fiction and poetry with Constantine and Ballantyne, who publishers in which
he was heavily invested. Scott’s self-publications included his best-selling
Waverley series, which established the historical novel genre with Ballantyne.
The Liberal only survived for a few issues, and yet its founders, Lord Byron
and Percy Shelley, published outstanding radical works in its pages: “The
Vision of Judgment” and “Lines to a Critic.” Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s
Hogarth Press published nearly all of Virginia’s writings; these works are
still used by feminists and birthed the stream of consciousness movement (a
style that was too unique for “mainstream” publishers). Edgar Allan Poe spent a
lifetime working to create his own independent journal, only succeeding in a
brief ownership of the Broadway Journal, a power he used to speak out against
plagiarism with pieces such as, “Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow
War.” Herman Melville paid Harper $29,571 for 350 copies of Clarel. Mark Twain
spent $1.3 million (in today’s money) to print Old Times on the Mississippi
with J. R. Osgood. Henry Luce and Briton Hadden started Time Inc. and Time
because they were frustrated reporters seeking more power and independence.
Dudley Randall founded the Broadside Press in part to publish his own books
like Cities Burning. Alice Walker published an introduction to The Spirit
Journey after founding a press with her lover, Wild Trees Press, and might have
kept it going longer if major publishers did not start snatching up all of her
own innovative full-length works.
Without author-publishers: the sun would still
revolve around the earth (Galileo) and book printing would lack exquisite
artistic details (Rembrandt). And Americans would still be living in the
colonies of the United Kingdom (Benjamin Franklin). It is harder to find an
innovative scientist, politician or creative writer who did not self-publish
than those who did.
About
Author
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