quality vs. quantity

The quality vs. quantity debate haunts every artist of every discipline. It's safe to say that any work of art that achieves any lasting quality was built up on a pyramid of failure, so that the debate itself is a bit of a red herring. The artist who is remembered for one great song, or one great book, or one great movie, had a world of defeat before ever reaching the pinnacle. The debate should really be framed solely in terms of output to the public, otherwise there is no debate.

I'm hung up on this because I see myself as an artist who has chosen to believe in quality over quantity, since I just don't have that big an output. Sure, you could read these blogs for a couple of days and say I've written plenty, but these are all sketches, with only the best making it to a level of publishability.

Bet on the Beaten is an exercise that hopefully has some interest, but even so it wouldn't contribute that much to my output. It would almost be like a minor work from an artist renowned for something else. Architecturally, it would be like examining a room in a house, and ignoring the foundation, even though the room couldn't really exist without it.

I've been told on social media sites that the key to being a successful self-publisher, and a legitimately published author, is to pump out a new book every six months or so, so that you are a brand to be understood and digested by the reading public. They can see that you have some real publishable quality, and once they get hooked on one of your books, most assuredly they'll buy the rest for a paltry $0.99, and I guess this is true. Readers want to read and the whole argument of quality vs. quantity almost has more to do with a historical view of art, rather than for its sheer enjoyment.

My goal in publishing "If So Carried by the Wind" was for literary historical redemption, but less loftily it was to give a reader a good day, and hopefully I've achieved this. I do think it takes an awful lot of work to give a reader a good day, and what I used to call "a good flick," or what I think they call a "good read." :) I was never really a book fan in the traditional sense not that I didn't love the classics, but reading took so much time that I usually put a mediocre book down pretty quickly, and turned on the tube.

The debate may have more to do with the authors who publish year after year, so that they have a big audience who likes their style, but not necessarily a great book, or even a particularly good one. Framed this way, the whole debate sort of shrinks into one of entertainment vs. art, and the two have very little to do with each other, even if they feed each other.

Art can be inaccessible, but entertainment can never be this, while entertainment can have a healthy dose of art, while art can have no entertainment. The best art has some entertainment, and the best entertainment has some art, but the goals of the two aren't the same.

Entertainment is meant to be forgotten pretty quickly if only because it's not intended to excite the mind too much, unless it's the best kind of entertainment like a thoughtful sitcom. Likewise, the goal of art is not necessarily to entertain anyone right off the bat, since most good art doesn't do this, and why it's so hard for an Indie book to find an audience. Gertrude Stein self published too.

The truth may be something someone wrote me on Kboards in the last couple of months, a community forum I go to less and less as I immerse further in self publishing and/or trying to figure out how to get people to read my book. He told me I needed at least three or four published books before I could even imagine making a sales/audience breakthrough.

The artist in me finds this ridiculous and wants to scream bloody murder since one good book should be enough, but from a marketing perspective it makes complete sense, nor does it infringe on the quality vs. quality debate. I don't believe that a plethora of mediocre works diminish the good except in the public imagination while you are still alive, but it's your name that gets diminished not the work that stands the test of time, or doesn't.

I'm not sure what I think of producing just to produce. An artist has to work, but that's different than publishing every trite bit of trash that flows out of you, and I think this attitude has made a general mockery of the self published author. I can't complain since the whole process has given me a whole new angle on my career, but most self published work available for quick kindle reads is from the fantasy or romance genre, ostensible entertainments.

I do plan to publish "Toy Children" later this year, or at the beginning of next year, or so go the best laid plans of mice and men. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than "If So Carried" but it's not up to the author to make these decisions, and so I shouldn't worry about it. Some readers will probably like it more and some less, but there may not be many readers.

In the old days, it wasn't up to the author what to publish, but all of that has changed
in the kindle/amazon world, so now the author is the publisher, and basically a player/coach. I can't see pumping out sheer quantity to fatten the Christmas stocking, but it's equally insane to publish only to break new ground and change the course of literature.