1) Why did you decide to publish No Public Figure Too Big, No Personal Foible Too Small on paper?
I hate the environment.
The great thing about the Internet is that it allows potentially millions of people to ignore your work. This was a great leap forward for me, since only dozens of people were able to ignore my work before I started putting it on the Net.
This includes book reviewers. A newspaper arts editor once told me that they don’t bother reviewing online publications because they already get far more print books than they could possibly review. How many is that? So many that they’re constantly worried that a stack of them will fall over and kill an intern. When I pointed out that they wouldn’t be in such danger if the newspaper reviewed books published online rather than in print, he thanked me for my concern but said that they didn’t really care about their interns that much.
The damage to the environment was just the icing on the publicity cake.
3) How did you choose iUniverse as your publisher?
They hate the environment even worse than I do.
They publish hundreds of books. So far, I’ve only published one.
5) No, seriously, why did you choose iUniverse?
They offered a different kind of publishing system known as “publishing on demand.” Ordinarily, when a publisher has a book coming out, they convince booksellers to take a decabillion copies to stock their shelves. When it turns out they only sell three, it doesn’t matter to the publisher, since it has moved on to convincing the booksellers to stock a megajillion copies of its next book. Like a dinner guest who is still demanding desert three days later, unsold books are faintly embarrassing to everybody around them. Some end up on remainder piles. Some go to the Big Bookstore in the Skye (and other small municipalities). Most end up keeping the gulls company in landfill. Because with publishing on demand books are only printed when they are ordered, the gulls will have to find new friends.
6) Really? It doesn’t sound as though iUniverse hates the environment.
I may have been projecting.
7) What other advantages are there to publishing with iUniverse?
They place your book with such online booksellers as Indigo/Chapters and Amazon.com, allowing you to indulge in shameless self-promotion in Frequently Unasked Questions files.
8) Are there any disadvantages to publishing with iUniverse?
They can help get books into bookstores. Since I’m Canadian, this means Indigo/Chapters, so I’m screwed.
9) Why do you say that getting copies of the book into bookstores means that you’re screwed?
I’ve been writing Les Pages aux Folles for 25 years. For the first 20 years, it got no attention. For the five years it’s been on the Internet, it’s gotten three regular readers. I’m trying to do better, really, I am. However, the day I got notice that my book would be eligible to appear in Indigo/Chapters stores, a boycott of the chain was announced because owner Heather Reisman set up the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers. The Heseg Foundation helps Jews born outside of Israel join the Israeli army. Since I have issues with the Israeli army, this puts me in the position of having to boycott myself.
I’m totally screwed. I would kill myself, but I’m sure my next life will be worse.
Naah. If I got suicidal every time life handed me a disappointment, I would never have made it out of the cradle alive.
11) iUniverse is a self-publisher. Aren’t you concerned that the book will be seen as less valuable because you’ve published it with a – sorry to have to say this, but – vanity press?
If I had any vanity, I might.
12) Seriously, aren’t you worried that people will think that you published the book yourself because it wasn’t good enough for a publisher to accept?
Hey! If this helped a writer like Dodey Shreckheimer gain a wider audience for her boosk, who am I to argue?
Dodey Shreckheimer! You know, Dode… Dodey Shreckheimer! The author of Mrs. Finnegan’s Home For Wayward Strumpets? Dodey Shreckheimer! She was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize for Literary Congeniality! She was the runner-up once! Do you…seriously, Dodey Shreckheimer?
Uhh…maybe I should think a little more about this whole “self-publishing” thing…
14) Are there any other disadvantages to publishing with iUniverse?
Actually, the main problem with publishing on demand is that you have to actually create a demand for what you’ve published. Much as I love my three regular readers, I find myself oddly unsatisfied by you. I need more. Much more. It’s not you; it’s me. I’m a readership slut. I can’t deny it. I’m willing – no, eager to be read by every adult on the planet (except Newt Gingrich – a boy author has to have some standards!). What we had was beautiful, but I have to move on, to grow.
15) Wow. That was almost lyrical.
Did I mention that the book is available through a bookseller in South Africa? Now, that’s poetry!