A friend named Andrew Boardman sent me the following link, which he also put on his fascinating website, Deckchairs on the Titanic:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html.  The link will take you to a great article in The Washington Post—read it!—about a fascinating musical experiment it conducted with relevance to all Outsider Writers.

The Post plunked an apparent busker into a subway station at morning rush hour to see how commuters would react, whether they would stop and listen to his music.  The busker was no ordinary street musician—he was Joshua Bell, a world famous violinist.  “His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” 

The answer: nope. 

Only two people stopped to listen.  Everyone else kept walking.  After 43 minutes of excellent music, Bell had collected $32.17, most of it from the two people who stopped.  The problem, the article noted, was “framing”—people did not expect to hear great classical music in the subway so they didn’t.  The folks lined up at the nearby lotto booth did not even remember hearing music.

For Outsider Writers, the same experiment, in its way, is conducted every few years.  An author takes a world famous short story and sends it with a “nobody” author’s name to various magazines--where it is invariably rejected.  The story, as a simple typed manuscript,  is rejected because it is the work of a “nobody” in a “slush pile.”  If the editors were told it was a lost manuscript by James Joyce, they’d drool.

Now, go one obvious step further.  Take an excellent poem or short story, write it out by hand (so it looks "amateurish") and the average reader will say: junk!  Print it out from your computer?  Still “junk”.  Print it as a chapbook, it looks a little better—but, of course, chapbooks are for authors who can’t “really’ get published.  Stuff the words into a paperback, the poem starts to look okay.  Put it into a hardcover & now you are talking!

Presentation, for most readers, is everything. They DO judge a book by its cover.  It takes a keen eye to see through gloss.

Then there is the stigma of being “self published”…or, the more respectable monicker, “independently published”.  How many readers respect a book published on Lulu? The author can’t get a publisher, so it must be bad. Right?  This is not a slam against Lulu--it is a terrific free site.  The problem lies not with Lulu, but with readers.  There might be great books on Lulu, but for the average reader they are DOA.

Overcoming reader prejudice is a long haul issue.  

What is the answer?  There is none.  There may never be an answer.

Currently, the best solutions are sites like this one, putting up a blog, or getting a My Space page.  Those solutions do not feel "self published".  But somehow none of them feel like a replacement for a book and for the respect a book brings. Which in the end is why so many frustrated writers continue to use sites like Lulu. 

Last update : 09-04-2007 20:02

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