Bud Wiser

There you are judging by emotional reaction to content and thus obliquely saying I "deserved" whatever "bad experience" I received, which is not what creative freedom is about, is it?

Of course I know I'm not the "only one" who sees the editing-publishing-agency racket for what it is. But I did not post this to beg any personal consideration from anyone. That's why I expressed my firmly-held belief, based on extensive practical experience, in general terms. And after all, what writing is not based on personal experiences vicariously expressed?

Nor do I expect to be "honored" for anything posted here. But it's the truth, and I put it up regardless of whose little bubble it may pop.

Notice also that many folks on this thread are confusing lack of freedom for the general writer with repression and murder. That is not the essence of lack of freedom, and having been involved with Amnesty International I know what such people have endured just as well as any of you. What is most important in regard to this issue is the constriction of opportunity. And for most in the monopoly world of corporate publishing those without the "correct" connection are shut out.

Examples from the UK are fine; I've never personally submitted anything to a UK agency or publisher. Perhaps there is more freedom indeed for the independent writer in GB, though I suspect Britain doesn't lag far behind in mega-corporatized publishing. Notice also how some want to wave the flag in my face. I guarantee those will be the very same ones who will support the more overt and violent forms of censorship should they arise.

lin

I hate to interupt your dumbass tantrum, but what's keeping you from getting published is that you're a moron who can't write.

BUT you can go to lulu.com and publish a book of whatever idiot drivel, foot-stamping, me-vs-real world shit you want and it will be on amazon and you can go see if anybody will buy it.

That doesn't exactly add up to political repression, does it. It adds up to not being able to cut the mustard with the market and being too arrogant to try to improve and too lazy and/or stupid to take the time to search for little presses that welcom anarchist/commie/ranter/dipshit screeds like this. They exist.

The solution here is easy: instead of seeing not getting your itty-bitty wittle way as a conspiracy of evil governments and corporations (who actually don't much give a shit about you and would publish your used toilet paper if they thought it would sell) get your head out of your ass and either stop trying to get published and join a punk band or ashram or something or spend a little of this pubescent energy in cranking out a book that somebody would pay for.

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Bud Wiser

Ad hominem attacks and nebulous "advice" like the above is of course the reaction I expected, all of which merely indicates intellectual conceit (if not dishonesty) and only reinforces my contention.

Ah, yes, "the market." And who decides what is published in this market, lin? You? A hearty hardee-har-har to that one, eh? Oh, and I should follow Gutenberg's example, and make my own press. . . . which is just a backhanded way of saying the press is always free for whomever owns one. Gutenberg was of course the son of a patrician merchant; so much for following that particular footstep.

The complete lack of insight, combined with the emotional backlash above, reminds me of mentioning Deir Yassin at an AIPAC convention. The reaction betokens something to hide, and leads me to critique my critics as follows:

1.) Most of them are not published authors either, and cling desperately to the fantasy of a "free marketplace of ideas" because it's all they've really got;

2.) Those that are published owe it to back-door entry at a publishing house, rather than talent per se (although having some ability is always helpful, if not absolutely necessary.)

I would gladly listen to replies, no matter how pointed, from someone who does not fill the above criteria, but unfortunately that seems to excise most of the respondents. 3000+ posts on a board like this shows me where most of my critics' writing is really done.

Bullshit arrogance and jerkoff cliches are not an argument. And it ain't a conspiracy when it's right in your face in broad daylight.

iSalud!

lin

No, you little dumbass. Who decides what sells in the market are the people who buys stuff. What a dumbshit.

But it's all you offer.

Let me just take a wild guess. There is also a conspiracy against getting laid right? You're a great guy but when you hit on chicks you get turned down because they are bought in to some big machine that represses your sexuality?

You need to just give this up. You're a bit of a dumshit and this is absurd.

If you want to be published, you can be...if you have anything to say or are willing to invest yourself in it. End of story. Teenaged girls get their idiot poetry published on lulu. Why can't you?

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Mike C

I've been involved in publishing lng enough to know you don't have a clue. So you got rejected because you were too controversial. Boo fucking hoo. You're confusing freedom with marketability; you wrote something that publishers believed wouldn't sell; that don't mean your freedom is being infringed, bud, it means you've written something nobody wants. Just because you think it's worthy don't make it so.

And you think that the only people who get published are those with access through the back door? You're a joke. That's a hell of a lot of people with a hell of a lot of inside contacts. I've worked with enough first-time authors and seen how hard they've worked (without access to any mythical 'old boys' network) to know you're talking shit.

Going back to your freedom, or lack thereof, stop talking shit. Like Lin said, Lulu. Or print bloody pamphlets and hand them out on street corners, be as controversial you like, nobody will arrest you or throw rocks at you. Try doing that in China right now.

Time to shut up, dude, there's nothing quite as sad as a failed writer gone sour.

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lin

Frankly I think the "Good writing but too controversial" is a flatout lie.

MAYBE he heard it from some agent trying to spare his feelings (or avoid a mailbox packed with rants for the rest of his life) but my guess is it's just not true. Does this guy sound like a good writer? Does what he's saying sound "controversial" or just lame?

By the way, I can think of several presses that THRIVE on controversy. (He wrote that idea off as .

The world is crammed with zine that want controversy, slobber over it. He apparently can't find them or isn't up to their standards.

For all the posing here, what's the guy after? MONEY. Otherwise he'd just publish his work of controversial genius on lulu and go around trying to sell it. Like he wants publishers to do for him.

And lulu is international, too. So he could reach beyond the evil US publishing cartel.

He should try publishing in Latin America. Or Asia. Or Canada (no depictions of lactation allowed, etc.)

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lin

Tell you what, kiddo. Why don't you post a snippet here for us? Then we will SEE that you are a genius held back only by conspirators.

Or maybe somebody will suggest a publisher for it.

Having read "Call It Night" and "Hollywood Babylon" (or "Last Exit To Brooklyn" published in the FIFTIES for crissakes) and having a friend who publishes stuff like "Apocalypse Culture" and another at Palladin, where they publish books like "How To Murder Your Wife and Get Away With It" written by actual wife-murderer, not to mention dozens of titles on how to do illegal shit.......I find it hard to beleive that the product of your rather simplistic mind is too controversial to see print in the U.S.

But if so, go to lulu and publish it yourself.

But then if nobody bought it, you'd have no hierarchy of Nazi satanists to blame, would you.

So put up, is the idea, or shut the fuck up.

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Bud Wiser

Well, you can think what you want about "flat-out lies." This only shows how clueless said mudslinger is on the facts of life himself. (Notice how quickly this all went down to the groin, with "insights" on the poster's sexuality. Again this only demonstrates the lack of credibility so far displayed by critics in this post.)

I have been at this game, as I've said, longer than some of you have been alive. I do not need "advice" on sending queries, synopses, etc. Jesus, I can give you writing tips on that! I will, however, give two examples from my own rich career that help demonstrate the assertion.

1.) Some years ago I attended a "writer's conference" in Jacksonville, Florida. The UF campus auditorium was filled with local wanna-be's, and the guest speakers consisted of published authors and poets and industry representatives. I recall a book editor from Chapel Hill Press who spoke on publishing. Someone in the audience asked this young woman "How do you get to be a book editor?" She merely gave the audience a blank stare and replied, "I don't know." (This is a direct quote.) Her reply was of course nonsense. She naturally knows full well how she got her position, but couldn't respond because of the way it was framed. Doubtless she was some corporate flunky or someone's grad-school English major neice who got "promoted" with, by her own admission, little direct experience in writing.

2.) Some twenty years ago, when this was a hot topic, I wrote an 800-+ page fictionalized biography of Stalin. I showed it to various agencies. One liked it and agreed to represent it. From the first there were "problems." This was back in the days when agencies charged "reading fees," so they could pay grad students to read submissions for them. This particular college kid "couldn't understand why anyone would want to write about Stalin." Getting over this hurdle, as if subjects worth publishing must pass his moral filter, the agent found an interested publisher. Said editor wanted a resume of "sources" used in writing. Well, this was a work of fiction, but as I did depend on sources for background this seemed fair enough. So I compiled a bibliography. Next, the editor wanted to know my "affiliation." I asked my agent: what affiliation? This is a work of fiction. What kind of "affiliation" could I possibly need? Well, she said, this editor wants to know my credentials for writing. "What credentials are needed?" Some organizational affiliation blah blah blah. . . . So the manuscript never got anywhere because I didn't have "accreditization" to write a work of fiction on an historical character. Find another agent? I'd already run off $300 in copies for her (this was in the days you did that for them, too) and I was determined she was going to live up to this investment. Suffice it to say the ever-loving market was flooded with Stalin stuff while mine remained in this hole.

Now I know I'm going to hear a resounding "So what?" to all this. But other than Horatio Alger cliches about "working hard and you'll get ahead" and ponderings on my sexual profile, there will doubtless be naught but yet more flatulent air than solid response.

Bud Wiser

As for ideas and projects that would be extremely difficult to get published in the USA's "free marketplace of ideas," I'll throw out a few gratis that I'm sure lin's faded gray cells would never grasp on his own. They are based on reality, and can be worked up as non-fiction or dramatized.

1.) An Iraqi resistance fighter who plots to blow up American Marine Hummers on a Baghdad road, knowing he might die but is willing to sacrifice himself for the liberation of his homeland from the foreign aggressor.

2.) A Jewish KGB commissar in post-war Soviet Latvia, who hunts down Nazi-collaborating Latvian war criminals and dispatches them with a clean conscience.

3.) A black man in Texas accused of rape, (actually guilty) hung in the middle of town with no protest from the black community, because the guilty party was not a local boy and local blacks did not want any association with the man's crime.

Paladin Press is fine, but it too has a "full client list" at this time. Good luck!

angevinedb2

When I get into arguments with people, and am put on the spot, my language sometimes drifts over to the pretentious side. I've really been trying to cut back on it, thats why you won't see it in me now, because every time I do I look back in retrospect and apologize to people for talking like I was an 'intellectual' jack ass.

Part of intelligence is being aware and adaptive. For one, I don't know the first thing about what real publishers are like, however, I believe that your supposed insight is nothing but an accumulation of bitter rejections. As many have said, there are markets for just about everything, but I'm running into assumptions here. Maybe you are right and there is some stigma against whatever kind of writing you do. Even if you are aware, you lack completely the other asset. You seem to have no versatility whatsoever.

Being adaptable doesn't necessarily mean compromising. You don't have to bend to the will of others necessarily. How many publishers have you tried? All of them? Every single one? And have you ventured into self publishing? I mean, from your words, you are an artist that is uncompromising, and I respect that man, but seriously think about it for a second. Do you think that the same publisher's will just magically up and change their minds for the same piece of writing? chances are they won't, and that doesn't mean that the whole publishing world is out to get you.

However, I think its hilarious the way you talk. I'm sure it takes very little effort now, since I can imagine you've been speaking in that voice for years, but it just doesn't sit well with people. That's why I'm trying to cut back on it. Its not really how you assume what rebuttal is coming up, or how you think the world is squeezing you to death. Its how you seem to label people without any knowledge of them. I mean, in order to live, efficiently, assumptions need to be made, but they should be subtle in communication. This is all but subtle, its in your face obvious. Just from your language, you spit on people as though you think they're nothing.

Conceit alone will not get a person published. Just because you have a grasp on the English language's form close to origin, does not mean every circle of people will respect you. It isn't going to happen like that. Language is evolving with human kind; tone, voice, style, all of it part of cultural advancement. If your writing voice is close to your speaking voice, or the voice you are showing us now, I can see why many publishers would find your manuscripts unworkable. Thats not to say there isn't a market for them, but that is to say that the market is decidedly smaller for pieces of work on Stalin. The world is changing. The freedom of it isn't constricting, it is merely constricting on the part of the market you have now missed entirely. The freedom is changing.

Although you probably think you've been slighted, and you're probably right, so have six billion others in one form or another. The US does have an 'icy grip on justice and freedom', but its not the grip you think it is. We live in a democracy, the market is determined by what the people want. Stephen King doesn't sell because he is a literary genius. He sells because he just happens to write what many Americans want to read. You either need to adapt to the times, find the right publisher, self publish, or go to another country where such a thing is marketable.

The market does not have less freedom, it is merely changing, and that is only what I see. I won't sit here and tell you I'm absolutely right, because I have the intelligence to be objective and accept that perhaps I'm wrong on every point I've ever made. That doesn't make me any less an artist, it just makes me adaptable.

valeca

How's about we take this in a slightly different direction. Bud, let's say for arguments sake that you're correct in your belief about the publishing industry. What, if any, solutions to the problem have you come up with?

I'm assuming you've thought this out beyond the rant stage.

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Shawn

Actually... the OP has described freedom in its essence. The publishers are choosing what to publish. My God! Something has to be done about this. Call the government! Call the army, the air-force, and the police! We have to force these publishers to publish me even though my writing isn't marketable!

If you're really creative, you'd take the resigned path that I've taken and start getting your work out there without making any money. Because if you're not writing for the message, what are you writing for?

Money? Pshaw!

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valeca

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lin

Paladin press publishes actual books, not flaky ideas. I didn't suggest you try them, I cited them as an example to counter your moronic concepts of conspiracy/repression.

Yeah, a biography of Stalin. That's pretty controversial, all right. There are hardly any of them around.

Again....you want to win us over to your so-far-idiotic-bellowing, post something you wrote and if we're impressed by your writing we might buy into your stupid theories.

It's called "back up your bullshit".


AND, somebody might know a publisher for it.

Otherwise, you're just a wannabe looney smearing shit on the walls to get attention.

Put up or shut up.

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