Golden Age of creativity
 John Milton was perhaps the first self-published author, with his
Areopagitica (1664), in defense of Free Speech, which he published as a
tract and distributed free. He had defended self-publishing since -
“publisher wedges himself between the author and the public, and uses
his position as marketplace’s gatekeeper to take most of the profits
generated by sales of a book.”
Before the printing press became a business, there was no issue of
publishing. A writer would make one or two copies for distribution among
his friends, and sometimes his friends would make a few more copies. A
writer was like a painter, who created only one painting, which he kept
for himself, or gifted to another. Rarely would he sell it. Any copies
made of the painting by others were not considered as good as the
original.
When books became a commodity, the writer became the victim of the
businessman. The publisher decided what should be written and what
should be read and what should be paid to the author. This is the
unpleasant truth we have to accept today.
Just as there were farmers who may have refused to grow what the
trader wanted, and was satisfied with growing what he wanted and earning
what little he could from it, there were also writers who wrote because
they had the urge to write and were satisfied with what they wrote. Even
today there could be many writers and even artists and musicians around
us, who did not sell their creative works. But now even these writers
and artists have an opportunity to share their work with all mankind, at
no cost and at no profit. This door has been opened to them by the
internet, where anyone anywhere could upload their work, to be seen,
read, listened to and enjoyed by anyone else from anywhere in the world.
 For our poets, there are also websites like Writeclique and Pothpath
to post their poetry. Google and other sites offer the opportunity for
the artist and photographer to display their works. The singers can use
Youtube and other such sites, and all of them could use Facebook and
Twitter. Writers could use Wordpress.
For those writers who still want their work in print, the ‘Vanity’
publishers have been with us for a long time. The term was probably
coined in the United States in the early 1940s implying the author was
publishing it out of vanity. He paid for the publication and often gave
it away free, or sold it himself and often his motive was not earning
money out of it.
The mainstream publishers accept only books that will sell, that will
bring them a profit. They would not wish to invest in a book which would
not sell. However this did not mean that self-published books were not
of a high standard. Publishers are known to have rejected the first
books of authors who ended up on best-seller lists later on. The most
recent success story that comes to mind is Joanne Rawlings, whose ‘Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ was rejected by twelve established
publishers.
Michelle Kerns (Examiner 30-03-2009), listed many names who had been
rejected by mainstream publishers. According to her, Stephen King was
rejected with the comment, “Science Fiction with negative Utopias do not
sell”, George Orwell, because “it is impossible to sell animal stories
in the USA”. It has also been reported elsewhere that Joseph Heller's
Catch-22 had been rejected 22 times, and Louis L'Amour had met with 200
rejections!
But not all self-published books were vanity books. Mark Twain paid
for the publication of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, Edward
Fitzgerald paid for the first edition of Rubayyat. Howard Fast had to
publish his ‘Spartacus’ by himself, because he had been branded a
communist and publishers did not want to accept his book!
Today self-publishing is no longer for the ‘Vanity’ publishers, who
published their own works at their own cost, to satisfy their own ego.
Even today there are also ‘Vanity’ publishers who not only pay for
publishing their books, but pay their way through to win awards for such
books. This group includes writers who set up their own publishing house
to publish their writings, to avoid falling into the category of
self-published. For some Book Awards self-published books are not
accepted.
But for the creative writers, self-publishing has been opened up
through Print-on-Demand publishing, where for a very nominal fee an
author could get his book published, and receive royalty for the books
sold by the publisher. That is perhaps one more step towards
de-commercialization of creativity.
With the coming of age of digital books, the mainstream publishers
too had to get in on publishing e-books, which allowed them to publish
more books with hardly any investment, and also allowed the writers to
publish on their own and market their books through Amazon and other
on-line distributers, or through their own websites.
Now all of us have more than one choice. We can write, paint or
sculpt and keep them to ourselves. We can publish them through a
mainstream publisher and make millions. We can publish a limited edition
on our own to satisfy our ego. We can publish it through an e-book
publisher and earn some money, though not as much as from a print
edition. Or we can upload them on the internet for free distribution, to
share and share alike.
Could this be the Golden Age of creativity?
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