The New Gatekeepers

The Good Old, Bad Old Days.

In the bad old days, not so very long ago, the only way you could circulate a book further than your immediate friendship circle was to attract the attention of a publisher. These stalwarts of the artistic establishment would make their decision according to how they rated your work against the very highest of all artistic criteria - will it sell?

Of course, this classic model still survives and still dominates the literary world. Most all and every book festival or literary award demands and requires that you have been ushered into the sacred nemeton of authorhood by one of the recognised guardians of the published world.

But much of what gave this establishment the right and privilege to determine entry into publication no longer stands. The idea of working with a promising author is now rare - most publishers and agents seem to expect us to leap fully formed and perfect from the shadows of obscurity. Many, indeed, even seem to expect a new author to have their own publicity bandwagon rolling.

Somethings Never Change.

But this is not me raging against the machine. Far from it. All I am trying to do is underline the point that although they may still hold the place of prestige, the publishing world is no longer any kind of barrier to making your book available to the whole wide world.

But barriers to publication are not the only barrier to success. I have read some awesome books that were traditionally published but never went near a bestseller list. They were often by authors whose names, I truly regret, I can no longer recall.

The same issue is still true today for indie authors - getting people to even know your book exists and then, when they do, to give your book a chance.

The New Gatekeepers.

It would be easy to say that the new gatekeepers are the marketers - people who have stepped into the role of publicists where once we had publishers - be that someone hired for the job, or the author in the role of self-marketer.

To an extent this is true. But it is missing the much more profound and incredibly hopeful fact that I have begun to observe in my very few steps into the universe of indie publishing - we are each others gatekeepers.

Some of us in ambitious ways such as UK Indie Lit Fest and other indie book festivals. Some of us by creating platforms from where we can reach a larger audience, perhaps through websites or blogs such as Altered Instinct.

But any of us can, and most of us are - and in my opinion should be - doing our bit to open the gates to others. We can tweet and retweet, we can Facebook or Pinterest about the books of other indies. We can review and rate.

Above all we can read.

The power is in our own hands now,