'Too big to fail' is a term we never heard until Capitalism collapsed a year or so ago. Now it is claimed as the reason why a lot of failed institutions are kept alive on life support provided by your tax dollars and mine... and a whole lot more tax money borrowed in our behalf. We've mortgaged our country but there's a plus side to that. Imagine the derivatives that could be created from our debt to China.
Size matters when it comes to salvation... but only for the big players, the giants that have grown with years of conglomeration. For the rest of us the term is double speak that translates as 'too big to work'. I speak now as Ombudsman for the Luddite in all right-brained people, especially artists. My qualifications to be an Ombudsman for Luddites are too numerous to mention here, and I have contact with many artists during my work as a giclée prepress and printing specialist. My printing and publishing company, Vashon Island Imaging (www.vashonislandimaging.com), works mostly with artists, photographers, crafts people especially collage makers as well as writers producing hand-made books. For people like that the main stream art and book publishing has become too big to work. Case in point, my visit to Amazon headquarters in Seattle.
As the story unfolds keep in mind that I am the author of Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée (ISBN 9780-9865-75112, 272 pages, 477 pictures). Although I have a studio on Vashon Island, I am a resident of Canada and run my publishing business from Vancouver, B.C. so as far as Amazon was concerned I was visiting from another country. I mention this because it has been my experience elsewhere in the world that when you are visiting from another country people generally extend to you an extra level of courtesy. Also bear in mind that my business training was during the Sixties, which is one of my Luddite qualifications by the way. During that era business was conducted face-to-face. As long-distance became cheaper in the 70's and 80's, face-to-face became phone calls. More dialing of telephonic technology brought the fax, which replaced long-distance calling for business communications. The 90's saw video-conferencing replace faxes. Now of course it's the Internet. There has been a complete 'about face'. Face-to-face anything has largely disappeared from the business world, barring retail. Silly me, I should have remembered that before driving down to see the folks at Amazon about me beautiful book about pixel perfect printing.
Back where I come from in New York City big companies have big buildings with big lobbies making a visit to them seem like a big deal. It works... especially if you have a good meeting. You walk out feeling like you are part of that big deal. So as I parked the car on the street in Seattle's Chinatown and looked up, I was concerned to see only sky. Amazon's HQ is in a completely ordinary four-story building that you'd walk right past if you didn't know... which of course I did. But I found my way back and walked into a tiny non-descriptive lobby with a receptionist and a sleepy guard, both sitting at tables cobbled together out of rough, unfinished lumber. If I were in Vancouver I would have thought that I have come into a social services organization. Weird.
Even more weird was the look I was given by the receptionist when I introduced myself and explained that I was here to show my book to the appropriate people in order to do business with Amazon. She asked if I had an appointment and when I said no her eyes said 'we don't do walk-ins' as they slowly rolled. But I rolled on with my story... how I'd driven from Canada... blah blah blah. No dice. So I asked if it would be possible to make an appointment. She confessed that she didn't know who to ask or who she could ask to find out who to ask... but she was willing to try and so I was willing to wait. Eventually, I ran out of change and Pam ran out of patience waiting in the car as she was. I thanked the receptionist for her help and we left for the Vashon ferry. Times have changed, I commented to Pam. There we were at the headquarters of Amazon, and there was nobody there. It's a faceless entity and I ask you, can a faceless entity have a soul? Lamentable.
It was a different story when I went online and within moments had cleared the hurdles to sign up for their new Create Space publishing-on-demand resource for folks just like me. It looked too good to be true. It turned out that way as well. But they have their Internet act together. Someone returned my call the next morning and we were off to the races. Then I found out it was a steeplechase with a lot of hurdles. Create Space's concept fits right in with the current publishing trend both of which would make Procrustes proud. Procrustes is an innkeeper in Greek mythology. At his inn there is one size bed. If the guests legs are to long, they are cut off to fit the bed. Publishing has become Procrustean because it's all about templates. Hmmm, 'Life By Template' could be a fitting title for a future blog.
Art does not like confines. By definition art is expansive. Art expands the mind of the artists and their audiences. By breaking rules and being unconfined, it is for the neuroplastic mind like blazing a trail through virgin forest where no man has walked before. Limiting the territory of art confines the trails. The smaller the turf the more frequently we tred the same trails. That's when it's hard to see the forest through the trees.
They say that time spent on the Internet decreases one's ability to think deeply and make a pretty convincing case for this theory. 'Deep reading' can restore mental strength making books a 'vital' part of our lives... at least as important as Internet surfing. But now even books are threatened. Will man thus devolve into a creature void of deep thought... more like our ancestors?
The threat to books is 'templatization' compounded by 'Walmartization'. It's a combination that provides a level of synergy that is hard to resist, especially for anyone who does not read the fine print in all the contracts. Frankly, I normally don't. I jump to the bottom line and click right through. But after investing more than a year of my life putting together Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée I didn't want to just give it all away. Fortunately, I had done a bunch of looking around and getting bids, checked out e-publishing, etc., so I already had a bunch of numbers on my little yellow pad. When I did the calculations based on 'market price' I came out a net loser. But it got even worse. Originally the book was about 400 pages. Then I investigated printing costs and instantly cut the length back to 272 pages... and I hate red pencils so you can imagine how painful that was. But I believe in what I call 'market price'. With my illustrations, which I sell as limited edition giclées, mostly on canvas, I ask people what they want to pay. I've gotten used to those low numbers now so I don't get 'sticker shock' pricing my pictures anymore. What I do now is remember what it would have sold for a couple of years ago and divide by two. People today want twice as much for half as much. If you price accordingly, your pictures will sell. Makes sense, right. So that's what I mean by 'market price'.
Right from the start, I figured that the most anyone would spend on a really good reference book would be $59.95. So to make Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée irresistible the target price became $49.95. It was further decided to pack the book with quality. Good printing, good paper, etc..The self-publishing bids ranged from $30 per book to $130... ouch. To sell at the market price we would still lose money and if we raised the price a certain number of prospective readers would fall off the gravy train.
Not only would we lose money producing the book, those numbers don't take into account the costs of promoting the book which are huge. You cannot imagine how many books you have to send out as freebies in hopes of getting a review here and there. You send them out into the night and never know what happened because there's nobody that will take your call. Out of more than two dozen publications I was unable to speak with any editor or writer whatsoever, or email them either with the solitary exception of Mary Ann Gwinn at The Seattle Times... the only polite editor in the bunch. Thank you Mary Ann. You might as well take hundred-dollar bills and toss them out the window. At most places you can't even call to find out who is the right person to send the book to... that includes some prominent schools and universities. Pathetic and all part of what promoted me to write 'The Invisible Man' blog the other evening.
Anyway, the CreateSpace deal sounds oh so good, especially if you are a new author like me. Their printing prices are competitive with the low-end bids I was getting from other online print-on-demand shops. Better yet they give you a place at the table in Amazon's retailing empire... that's a big table. Too big unless you fit in their chair. If you don't fit you're left at the side of the road-to-riches with your thumb out. Fitting means not only the book's template, but the distribution system as well. Soon the local bookstore will have have machines that make books in moments. You'll order a latte with a 'Larsson' of your choice, a croissant with a 'Chrighton'. Five minutes later you're savoring a piping-hot book with your freshly brewed coffee. You're song won't be in the jukebox if it doesn't fit, however. Either will your book if you don't use the right template. None of this bothers me really and maybe someday I will write a book that will work within the confines of that expanded publishing capability Ironic isn't it... that machines make a vastly larger market for ever fewer artists. Tragic.
Publishing and Internet powerhouses are already joining forces. More and more 'templatization' will confine the artists pumping content into the vast 'Walmartized' product distribution system. Portions will get smaller and smaller and our brains will shrink a commensurate amount as opportunities to read deeply dissipate our ability to think deeply. Life as a constant distraction, without any introspection. Food for thought but not a pretty picture.
Thus I concluded that I would have to look at mainstream book publishing straight in the eye... and wink. Not blink. Wink. For real artists who disregard templates, the system is too big to work. Form should follow function not vice versa. It's like Ed Malecki taught me at Queens College in a class on advertising copy writing back in 1965. When I asked how long a piece of copy should be he replied, 'as long as it needs to be'.
For a writer a book without end is the ultimate luxury... for the reader it is too provided the book is a good one. Much of my life has involved writing to fit or copy fitting as a publication layout artist and screen designer. So I know what it is like to be constrained. Templates have long been with us. They just haven't been as ubiquitous. So when I sat down to write Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée the first thing I said to myself is that this book will be as long as needs to be. Then I set out and put together the only complete book with everything you need to know about making giclée art. The first write was too long so I put on my 'Burt Holmes Hat', got out the red pencil and hacked it down to what it is now, 272 pages. That's how long it took to tell the story. Could I make it 250 pages to fit the CreateSpace mold. Yes. But why would I want to sell less for more. Where I come from it's supposed to be the other way around.
Now that I have had a look around the publishing world I'm going to get out one of my favorite signs and dust it off. It was made from a slogan I got from Ron Jacklin who is a colleague from Vancouver who runs a content production company called Mediafx Group (www.mediafmgroup.com). It says simply:
We're Not Big, But We're Small
Amen.
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