Nobody Here But Us Chickens

There’s a lot of noise around a chicken coop. Chickens aren’t quiet birds, especially in groups. Sometimes they squabble among themselves. That’s where we get the phrase “pecking order,” because people – like chickens – like to know who’s better than whom. Ideally the “me” wants to be positioned above the “you.”

Some might argue that’s just human nature, but I prefer to think humans are better than chickens.

See, chickens need to establish a pecking order to organize the social aspects of their flock. Things like who gets to eat first, who gets the good roosting positions, or gets to mate more. It makes sense for the health of the flock that the strongest birds get priority over the weakest.

A lot of the dissension in RMFW – the schism that exists between those of us who chose the traditional path and those who chose to self-publish – bears a striking resemblance to trying to establish the pecking order in our own flock. Those who are stronger will have more of what matters, so it’s important to know who’s stronger.

But here’s the problem.

We’re not talking about who feeds first or who gets the choice roosting positions. We’re talking about art. We’re talking about who gets to participate in the specific form of art we all engage in.

There’s a legitimate perception that the self-published authors are eating all the grain. That we’re an interloper flock that needs to learn its place in the pecking order. We’re perceived as a threat to the status quo.

As I see it, we’re not actually in competition.

We all write, right? We don’t all write the same thing. We’re not all at the same place in our careers. None of us writes like another writer. That’s a good thing.

This schism comes from whom we choose to sell our books to and how.

I’m not competing with any title written by any other author in RMFW. I chose to publish my own words for reasons I feel are justified because that’s what I want from my writing. It’s how I practice my art. I’m not even competing with other indie authors who write in my genre niche. There are not enough writers to satisfy the audience. It’s not like a reader will only read my book so they can’t read anybody else’s. It’s more like there are ten thousand chickens out there who all want to eat, and I’m only throwing one small bag of corn on the ground for them. There are no limits on the number of people who can participate in my niche. Even the traditionally published titles get sold there.

The reality for those on the traditional path is very different. That path is obstructed by fences with few gates, because consolidation of the means of production into the hands of a small number of presses results in an ever-narrowing capacity to produce works, even as there are more and more people vying for those slots. The high-quality books that eventually reach the market aren’t in competition with my books – or any other books – because there is insufficient capacity to produce enough reading material for the global demand, even with the million-plus titles published worldwide per year.

The reason is simple.

It’s art. It’s not fungible. You can’t substitute a Warhol for a Rembrandt, a Stephen King for a Nora Roberts. I won’t read a Clive Cussler. Not my genre. While I occasionally find my TBR pile gets a bit leggy, the reality is that I frequently find myself looking for something new to read. There are millions of books to choose from, but because I don’t read those genres or that author or books that simply fail to appeal to me, I find myself in a well-known situation: 57 channels and there’s nothing on.

Because we sell to different customers – self-published authors sell to readers while traditionally published authors sell to publishers – the two flocks are not in competition with each other. We get our corn from different farmers.

One can argue that my own little basement operation competes with Macmillan and Orbit and Tor and Baen. On its surface, it’s a laughable comparison. My goal as a publisher is to produce works that rival those works produced by the Bigs (and the Smalls and the Mediums). My goal as a publisher is to run my enterprise with sufficient profitability that I can continue to run my enterprise.

But we’re not Rocky Mountain Fiction Publishers. We’re Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and we need to support our commonality. We all need to know what to do when the final draft gets saved. Yes, the self-publishers need to know how to produce and market their books, just like the traditional authors need to know how to write a query letter and keep track of submissions. Some brave souls find themselves in the purgatory of working both paths and need all of that.

But at the core, we’re all writers. In the end, there’s nobody here but us chickens.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.