Of Art and Money

When I first read this article on HuffPost books I confess my initial knee jerk reaction was to write a sort of counter piece, about how publishing is a business and self publishing is ultimately also a business, and that if we’re ever going to pull the name of self publishing out of the muck we need more people who want to work at it to make it good, not just every Tom, Dick, and Harry who just wants to say they wrote a book.

Upon further introspection however it was plain to see that this was a far more complicated issue than it might first appear. On the one hand, publishing is a business. There’s no getting around that, but on the other hand, writing is art. It’s supposed to be about telling a story, entertaining readers, and expressing ideas and opinions. While wanting to make money from a book is great, it can’t and shouldn’t be your sole reason for writing.

Who am I… who is anyone to tell someone not to self publish because they’re not ready? For some people seeing your book in print and being able to hold it in your hands is amazingly special, it’s something everybody should experience in their life quite frankly. Maybe we need to take a step back from being so polarized about which is better, self publishing or traditional publishing and instead consider the opportunity we’re giving both readers and writers. Art wasn’t always about money, many would argue that turning art into a commercial enterprise is exactly the problem. But there will always be artists who know that art is ultimately about more than money. Sure, you want to write a bestseller, and perhaps one could argue that your adult self might regret those books you self published when you were twelve, but thanks to the internet, people’s attention span lasts about as long as a news cycle wills it too.