Publish. Your. Self.

Last night I had the fortune to hear writer Simmone Howell talk about her novels, writing processes and her brief spell as a publisher. Vandal Press, co-founded by Howell during her days in RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course, ran from the late 90s to 2002. Howell described scribbling short stories in one class, working on layout and design in another, before topping it off with a cheap print run.

The reason for this foray into publishing? The founders of Vandal felt that as young writers, the established literary gatekeepers ignored them; the industry was a fortress without a drawbridge.

Howell writes:

People tend to frown on self-publishing but for me it was a good thing. At the very least it meant I was doing something. I had a book I could hold in my hand; I could send it off to snooty literary editors to say, Who am I? I can WRITE! After Vandal I started sending stories off willy-nilly. I wrote my way around the world.

At the time, Mark Davis had just published Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism, for which he was both hailed and condemned. Davis railed against the conservatism of the cultural gatekeepers – he also launched one of the first Vandal publications.

Listening to Howell, I was reminded of recent conversations with new writers thirsting for some legitimacy, writers frustrated by the perceived inflexibility and insularity of the industry. I asked Howell if she thought that new writers were still marginalised and ignored. She thought not, citing Sleepers, Torpedo and even Text and Scribe as examples of how the industry now embraces new writers.

On the way home I pondered Davis’s book, the literary establishment and its gatekeepers, and wondered: If you want access to an industry that determines literary direction and publication but you’re ‘just not it’, aren’t you only left the option of self-publishing? How else do you circumvent an industry that doesn’t recognise your talent or potential? And honestly, how can you hope to alter the trajectory of a colossal and market-driven force such as publishing?

Researching this morning, I came across the growing DIY challenge: ‘2011: The revenge of print!’

The challenge is for anyone ‘who’s ever made/self-published a zine, a comic or mini-comic before to dust off the ol' photocopier and make at least one more new issue in 2011’. Far away, in Baltimore, Atomic Books says of the challenge, ‘We’re tired of all the END OF PAPER, the END OF PUBLISHING AS WE KNOW IT stories. We’ve been hearing and reading about it ever since we’ve been open (which is going on almost 20 years now).’

So what do they hope to achieve?

Needless to say, this pondering lead to reflecting on the Sticky Institute, whose reputation is built on the sweat and verve of Melbourne’s punk DIY publishing culture. It’s a culture where there are no gatekeepers, no censorship and no limitations. Unsurprisingly, there is also no guaranteed audience.

Then again, DIY culture – a method of attacking the powers that be – requires creating a new audience, a carving out of space for your work to be appreciated. The entire movement is underground, where it need not wait for approval or permission.

This subversive DIYness was brandished most famously by the Riot Grrrl movement, where music, art, politics, activism and DIY was like some great incendiary device with a manifesto:

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.
BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other’s work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.
BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.
BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

Another celebrated example, though less discernibly political, is McSweeney’s. It famously begun in Eggers’s kitchen with a friend, a printing press and miniscule print runs. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern was envisioned as a home to homeless stories: experimental fiction and non-fiction that had been rejected by more established publications. These days, McSweeney’s has its own distinctive flavour, and seems less DIY, more top-drawer.

A local embodiment of DIY turned renowned and influential would be Sleepers. Like Howell, Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn studied at RMIT. They went on to launch the Sleepers Almanac in 2005 and have been leaping and bounding ever since. What they epitomise about DIY is the relish with which they will attempt any challenge – an idea or a whim becomes a possibility in their hands. I mean, who can forget the Twenty-first Century Bookshow?

Other publications like harvest have cropped up on the literary horizon in the last few years. A stunning magazine that maintains a DIY edge, harvest fills a niche in the Australian publishing scene when it comes to design and original content, with a space for creative non-fiction, which isn’t a genre that’s been exactly welcomed in Australia. Recently, and possibly more DIY with its limited print run and radical politics, is Red Pen Zine, ‘a collaborative effort by a group of left wing activists engaged with radical ideas about society.’

Earlier this week, the BBC’s Andrew Marr said that blogging was not the new journalism because a ‘lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people.’

To which, Crikey riposted, ‘Marr’s right. Blogging alone won’t replace journalism. But his argument is stuck back in 1999. We’re not talking about replacing journalism anymore, we’re talking about fundamentally rewriting the book on it.’

Think about this: it only used to take some ink, some stamps and a Xerox to self-publish; now it only takes the internet – and the audience potential is astronomically greater, theoretically speaking. What better example is there of contemporary DIY culture than blogging? Forget waiting for the establishment to recognise your art/critique/ingenuity!

I’m not sure how much the cultural climate has changed or how many publishers are keen to be the launching place for new writers. Really, how many are taking cutting-edge works from the fringe? Indeed, is that even their role?

But DIY and mainstream publishing aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. As she was leaving, Simmone Howell handed out copies of her most recent zine, ‘xylophone’, which she wrote and printed and then distributes freely to students. There is something humbling about an established author who still practices DIY.