The End of Adventure

Let’s have a brief, wintertime Margin article.  A little warm up
on a cold day here at Great Society.  Let’s take a quick look at
author Ray Robertson.  He’s one of my personal favorites, a close
family friend, and a good writer who can’t break into the US market for
a variety of reasons, including US publisher’s doing a little bit of
racial profiling — white guy writing about troubled white guys?
Not this year.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Ray’s a living writer, traveling in the arty
jet-set of Toronto. Those filthy Canucks are enjoying the Robertson
ride while the out of touch, ill-advised whims of US publishers focus
on stuffing The Da Vinci Code down your throat.  We all
know how the big publishers work:  Daddy wants a circular
driveway!  And Daddy wants a Mercedes for that driveway!

Publishing is business.  So is writing.  It’s all about cash,
success, royalty checks, fees collected, mouths to feed, distributors
paid, resellers fighting each other in the streets and writers trying
to get out of their awful cubicles to land themselves in the river of
creation.  It’s a terrible, goddamned, muckraking business with
drug-like rewards, heavenly choirs and soul-shattering failures.

But let’s leave cynicism aside for once.  In the shadow of the
dark angels of publishing and commerce stand a large group of people –
readers, writers and arts advocates – who believe in good writing, and
in getting good books to the masses.  Sometimes the unexpected
lightning flash of success lands something truly different on the
bestseller lists, sometimes the unknown and hardly known simply
circulate through a group of friends and the literate elite, trudging
along with mid-range sales and building a cult, a thin fanbase that,
given time and circumstance, may grow…or fade.

Getting this work to the reader is the constant sticking point.
I’ve talked in past articles about self-marketing, getting your name
into the dull-witted minds of the common Jane and Joe.  More often
than not, it’s very much the author’s responsibility to do this.
An agent sets up the meet and greets, a publisher may wave a flag if
they’re desperate or trying to make a point, but everything boils down
to what the writer does once he or she hits the ground.

That’s all fine and good, but what happens when the publisher doesn’t
even give it a try?  What happens when the gamblers and the
adventurers become conservative or are relegated to unknown small
presses, limited by finances, clutching a catalog full of friends and
family?  With the economy flagging and literacy on the
decline,  the small press finds itself alone in a cut-throat
world, underpaid, overworked, hyperstressed and with an uncertain
future.  Getting the money to cover the author and everything else
remains a tall order even in the world of print on demand.  Once
the money is discussed, it takes a brave hearted and adventurous author
to ride a roller-coaster that may not see immediate success.

It’s the myth of big money that blinds writers.  Truth is, a new,
ground-floor author may see less money from a big publisher than they
would from an author-friendly small press.  A first timer will
probably enjoy more cooperation and support from a small press than
they would from one of the big boys. Some of these struggling presses
represent what publishing used to be — people who work along with the
author to help promote the book and push it just a few more inches
forward.  A publisher who loves good books.  Period.

Combined with that support, the self marketing I’ve advocated in past
articles has the potential to bring authors to the forefront for the
first time in…a long time.

But author friendly, tolerant presses aren’t the norm.  The norm
is just what folks like Ray Robertson deal with – unusual demands,
strange brush offs, and the wildly misguided ideas of illiterate, 25
year old development editors.  In the 80’s, Alphaville taught us
that you were big when you were big in Japan.  In 2005, the
sniveling editor at a major, medium and even minor publisher can’t find
Japan on a map and, seriously, fuck you, anyway.  Back to the
circular driveway.

This is becoming a serious issue in the US as, from the bookshelves to
the publishers, support for writing and the overall craft of literature
declines.  You accuse me of being cynical?  You’ve never
dealt with a publisher, then; the standard line of burnouts, excited
for what the author represents financially but not really interested in
the writing itself.  Not in that way.  The way you should be thinking.  The remaining champions of the craft are a noble few standing against a horde of barbarians.

The cost?  Authors like Ray don’t make it to your
bookshelves.  You even have to struggle to find them on
Amazon.  Special fees, discounts drying up, ships in 2 to 3 days
or longer and, for a couple of his titles, simply not available.
Jumping ship to Amazon.ca gets to be a pain in the ass, though his
titles are on there and briskly selling.  Land in Toronto and duck
into a bookstore and you’ll find him.

Of his books, I consider the top of the class to be Moody Food,
his fictionalized account of singer Gram Parsons and Toronto’s
Yorkville District – the Haight-Ashbury you’ve never heard of.
One of the early reviews summed up Moody Food, and Ray in general, with
one terrific quote:  Moody Food is a very rare and unusual
beast–a good novel about a rock band, and a good novel about the
’60s…Robertson’s storytelling is lively, his language is rich, and his
story is far more than mere bubble gum.

Ray’s one of the legion of authors ignored or shortchanged by US
publishers.  As even the small presses begin to pull their punches
and avoid taking wild chances, American literature – with few
exceptions – has begun a sort of homogenization.  There are still
the heavy hitters out there, the strange and off center, the diamonds
in the rough…  Generally speaking, though, you know what’s
coming next.  You know what’s climbing those bestseller
lists.  You know what’s going to be said.  You probably even
know what’s popping up in those artsy coffee table circles.  It
may be good writing, but it’s rarely new writing.

Ray Robertson’s got several books under his belt.  From human
fiction to essays on writing.  You haven’t heard of this gifted
author, but you should run out and grab what you can.

Next time:  Your $50,000 advance.  One writer’s formula on how much you really get.