Some good points here. I’m very interested to see where your research takes you. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there to pull from, that’s for sure. I’m gonna try and address your comments in order:

- I don’t really think there’s a concern that indie lit could take the form of mainstream lit (boring and predictable) simply because you’d be hard pressed to find a publisher who’s interested in changing their content to appease a new readership. People in this scene publish what they want to publish cause they love it.

-Exactly. I’m interested in finding out what kind of readers are out there beyond the writing programs and publishing circles.

-I think drawing the indie film comparison here is getting a little too nuts-and-bolts. The industries and processes are so vastly different in terms of operation that I don’t think you could use it as a model. I don’t know what incentive a wildly successful author would have in publishing with a small press. I don’t think publishing houses work like that. I think if a popular writer has a weird manuscript that’s different than what she has been writing, her big house publisher is going to publish it anyway because her name sells books.

-Yup, there are plenty of writing and book festivals. But, again, you’re pretty much preaching to the choir if you go to sell books at AWP. I’m with you that we need events that cross markets. That’s why I suggested flea markets, swap meets, shows, mainly a place populated with people looking for something interesting, a place outside of the writing community. We’re going to try this Brooklyn Flea thing, see how it works out. In the meantime I think it’s important to keep looking for new places to do this sort of thing. That’s what’s interesting about this whole thing: now that we’re thinking about it, the possibilities open up.

To me it seems that new indie magazines and presses have to break into an established readership that consists mainly of writers and editors of indie lit. This does not seem like a good long term strategy, which is exactly what you’re saying. I see things like bios (thank you Jessica) and MFA programs (ie Iowa) as ways to reinforce the structures already in place. There are clearly exceptions to this…

Again, i don’t have a thesis or an answer, I’m just looking at individual issues as they come. Hopefully my research can clarify some of the underpinning issues, but I doubt it. If anything, it will bring more issues to light.

So what is that answer to getting to the mainstream? I think what you provided in your post are a nice start, I just think there are more. I mean, indie movies have capitalized because hollywood movies cannibalize old hollywood movies, making them boring and predictable. Actors don’t like being in these type of movies because they are not challenged (they still take the checks) so in their spare time they make indie movies. These movies then get seen because of the attached start or festivals…

Are there lit festivals? I mean there are, but they normally involve writers that are not really on the cutting edge. They are big name authors who either broke the rules decades ago or are very good at following a mainstream formula.

This is not the way to cultivate new readers. New readers are not excited about Catherine Coulter… My mom is…

There are a lot of events that have great writers, writers that would, if given the chance, be able to cultivate new readers… But these events are populated by other writers (conferences, readings, awp, etc.) We need events that cross market. Get new readers there for something else and then hit them in the face with a great reading and in turn makes these people into readers (I don’t know what I’m talking about here… But maybe like a lit/music/film fest?)

Anyway, just thoughts…

But that’s the plus side of this scene, too. There’s so much cool stuff being made that it’s easy to get sucked into the world, check out all the cool things people are doing. So once you get an outsider hooked they’ll want to know more, get deeper into it, just like movies, just like music.

But back to community building. I don’t think it needs to be anything beyond raising awareness to presses and writers that we need to be working toward a common goal of reminding people of the fulfilling experience of reading print. I think in terms of uniting the scene it will have to be under an idea that we can’t simply market to each other anymore, we have to get the general public interested. (pause for laughter) Seriously. People have forgotten about the power reader has over your mind. So much more impactful than movies or television. The only problem is that it is inherently inaccessable. It takes time and effort. Things that are in short supply by humans these days.

That’s another thing that’s appealing about indie lit. Most books we publish are under 150 pages. They’re short, powerful reads that don’t demand much of your time. And in terms of cost, you get roughly 8-10 hours of entertainment and fulfillment for the cost of one night at the movies.

Now I feel like I’m the one ranting. Let me know what you think…

Anyway, one thing that stuck out to me was this: “The negative effect is that the more we write and publish toward each other, the more insular we become, the more splinter factions of style choices are created, the smaller the niches grow until it’s Writer A writing a story for the singular audience of Writer B and vice versa, ad infinitum, the literary version of a circle jerk.”

I’d been talking about this very thing with Jessica Hollander recently and out of that came a blog post she did over at fringe (http://www.fringemagazine.org/blog/whats-in-a-bio/) which explores a bit about how bi0s have become uniform in a way that tries to legitimize the author, instead of the work… This comes full circle for me do to my hegemonic studies and I think is important to this sense of community your getting at… IOW if authors legitimize some magazine and choose to ignore others, then a capitalistic system of power develops (already has) and the indie lit scene becomes another main stream lit scene, with less audience.

So, how do we avoid the pitfalls that so many have stepped in before? How do we build a community without, at the same time, segmenting ourselves? If indie lit is to have its boom, it will come because indie lit is united… Right now, indie lit can feel impenetrable to an outsider, you need a guide to get you started, how does this change?

End rant….

Jarred: That Literary Variety show sounds amazing. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do with the few events that Annalemma has thrown in the past, a move away from straight readings. They are boring events most of the time, unless you got a firecracker of a writer onstage, which is rare. A writer should know how to deliver, how to grip a live audience, engage them. Most tremble like they’re in front of a firing squad. No biggie, really, just hard to watch as an audience member.

A D: These recent posts have been partly inspired by your recent treatise at Big Other. Thanks for posting that, it really codified some ideas I was having at the time and caused me to think about this scene from a different angle.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Jarred