By Anti-Press © Copyright 1999 Anti-Press
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No bloodshed: boycott!
Boycott not Stephen King the man nor Stephen King the writer but Stephen The King. He's top o' the heap. Ruler of Royal Royalties. Good. But what about the rest of us, writers struggling just to get published in the mainstream once before we die? In the "golden age" there used to be more opportunities for an aspiring writer to break into print. Big names from Mickey Spillane to Tennessee Williams broke in through pulp magazines. And there were the "slicks", the classy magazines like Colliers that used to publish short fiction. All gone. Years ago with the paperback market you had inexpensive Ace Doubles, two books in one, especially for science fiction. An open frontier for Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and many others to stake their first claims. And the other fiction genres: mysteries and westerns. Sure, most of it was crap, but most writers had to crap before they learned how to walk. And some went on to run, runaway bestsellers that poured in the money and soon created the limited market for new talent. A publisher's (simple) mind: Why take a chance on a new writer with a new idea when Stephen The King can crank out another one and rake in the moolah on just name recognition? Cut down on the midlist, that middle zone of opportunity between the Big Bestsellers and the genre titles. Play it safe. Stay with a winner, even though there might be many other winners out there to be heard. Stephen King-- man and writer-- didn't create Stephen The King. It was the unimaginative middlemen (meddlemen) who run the major publishing houses that brought forth this massive hindrance to new talent. And now with one Big House buying out The Other Big House, it seems the day of One Gigantic House (Get lost, kid!) is dawning. (Yes, publishers are middlemen because they become between the writer and his audience. The world will be a lot better off with fewer people meddling with producers and their endeavors. For example, the struggling farmer would get more pay for his toil if there were less middlemen between him and the consumer, "facilitators" siphoning off too much money for their semi-parasitic involvement.) But while the publishing industry heads towards a literary oligarchy, hack editors aren't worried about fewer jobs tomorrow, they're just concentrating on the here and now. Their key operating phrase: Play it safe. Follow success, don't try to create it. "Hey, we need our own stephenking." Does your publishing house have a stephenking? If not-- losers! The cover blurb: THIS WRITER IS THE NEXT STEPHEN KING! (Gee, does Stephen King want to be the next Anti-Press?) We came across a New York Times article that stated The King had taken a cut on the advance for His latest book-- He was just getting only $2 million as opposed to His initial demand of $18 million. Boo hoo. Maybe we should start up a collection for Him and Disney honcho Michael Eisner. (You know about poor Mike: his _bonus_ is being cut from 9.9 million bucks down to a paltry five mil. How can he live on such a paltry bonus with his regular pay? Does this mean he can only buy three private jets instead of two?) A cut down to two million for The King. So the publisher saves money. How much of that savings will be put into showcasing up-and-coming writers? We spoke years ago to someone who was involved with a professional writers vorganization. He said publishers would rake in money off a book and then throw the dough into a bank to collect the interest before paying out royalties. It was a great system until the interest rates went down. So with conservative interest rates publishers went the conservative route and now avoid any dark horses. Fine. Let's show them how we appreciate their narrow-minded thinking. Don't buy a bestseller. Read it at the library or buy a used copy or bum a copy off a friend. Want to really stick it to 'em? Do some bin-diving behind your local bookstore and get a nice clean copy with the cover stripped off. The cover has been returned by the bookstore for credit so why waste the rest of the book? Recycle! Boycott with your bucks. If you enjoy reading Stephen King, OK, but realize you're supporting a stagnating system of stephenkings and johngrishams and tomclancys. If you don't read The King, then start a whisper campaign against his latest one. ("Bag of Bones"? That's not a horror novel; it's actually Gwyneth Paltrow's autobiography.) Save your bucks. And spend your time with creators searching for an audience out here in the Wild Frontier of cyberspace. Check out a backwater ezine. Visit a Web Site in the outback. Sure, there's a lot of crap out here, but it's NEW&DIFFERENT crap. |