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    (CNN) -- Where is independent literature heading or does the concept even exist anymore? CNN asked Kevin Smokler -- blogger, editor and publishing world consultant and author of "Bookmark Now: Reading in Unreaderly Times" -- for his definition of today's indie lit and thoughts on the future of publishing. (Smokler sometimes consults for Time Warner, which is the parent company of CNN.) CNN: How do you think "independent" in the publishing and author world has changed in the past five or 10 years? Or has it? Smokler: I think in the past, pre-Internet, pre-Amazon.com and pre-explosion of chain bookstores in the late 1980s and '90s, you had a class of independent publishers. ... It was possible to have an industry essentially of mini-majors -- folks who were publishing things that perhaps major publishers wouldn't touch, but were dealing with general literary fiction and perhaps some forays into poetry, monologues, drama and experimental work. What you had was a network of independent bookstores that supported and promoted them. ... There were independent bookstores interested in rooting out overlooked gems. The growth of chain bookstores and the growth of the Internet changed all that, changed it in good ways and bad ways. Good was the cost of print went down drastically. It wasn't as economically challenging to run a small press. But the difference was that: 1) There was a mass slaughter of independent bookstores, so there was less of a promotional outlet for [indie lit works.] 2) People's attention started to get pulled in 50 different directions. Interested readers had the time 20 years ago to go rooting around for rare and interesting books. There's simply a greater volume of noise now than there was before. So now you have to actively say, "I'm going to look for something that I wouldn't otherwise find. If it's not at my favorite bookstore, maybe it's something my favorite blogger finds. And the truth is, people don't actively charge out the door and say I'm going to go find indie literature. CNN: What is your definition of "indie lit"? Smokler: Indie literature is not a category. It's more determined by lack of access or lack of interest by New York publishing houses than it is by a style. I think the term is fractured in a hundred different directions. .. But is there a class of indie literature? No, because there isn't a single kind ... With literature, it's not like there's a pop mainstream and an alternative to that mainstream. Or maybe there is, but solely in the economic sense. Saying Random House publishes one kind of book is foolish because Random House publishes both Anna Quindlen and Britney Spears. Economically, there's a large New York house that indie literature seeks to place itself in opposition to or in rebellion of, but stylistically, I don't think so. ... I'm not saying there's no such thing as indie lit. I'm saying whatever parameters you use for what is indie lit is ultimately based on sort of romantic notions that don't apply anymore. If there is an indie lit movement, online literary magazines are a big part of it. They're exploring new ways to distribute new literature to people. The most significant things about indie lit, if they exist, are: cheap cost of production, radical new means of marketing provided by the Internet, cross media promotional opportunities -- books as gateways to films or art exhibits for example -- and the reinvention of the literature magazine for the digital age. But that is all about how literature is produced and disseminated, not an aesthetic. CNN: What are a few ways technology has changed indie publishing, from production to marketing and even reading literature? Smokler: The biggest shift technology has brought is one needs to seek out their own trusted sources of information about books. It's much more difficult to find which books that will speak to you because reading is 1) a time-consuming activity and 2) a very subjective activity. So it's harder to browse books than it is CDs. You can listen to three minutes on a CD and decide whether it's for you or not. Books -- you can't really read 10 pages and do that, or maybe you can, but people don't typically browse that way. Technology has opened up the still to conceivably every book in print ... so the number of options has increased. It used to be that if a book was out of print, unless you could stumble into a rare book dealer and they have a copy, you were out of luck. It was essentially extinct if it was out of print. Now, there's no such thing anymore. Every book is available through elibris.com or something like that. From a marketing standpoint, there's 10 times more noise than there used to be. In the past, people either followed bestseller lists, or went to their local bookstores and asked, "What are you reading?" or looked for what they heard on the radio or on television. People are much less trusting of those sources now and they're simply hundreds of thousands of more options. So technology demands that everybody find their own little group of experts, be it your friends, the clerk at your local bookstore (but most people don't have local bookstores anymore), they're turning increasingly to the Internet, to bloggers and the like. The Internet brings the power of collaborative filtering, where you can say, "OK I read this, what else would I like?" CNN: Is there something once considered indie that's now mainstream? Is there something considered indie now that will be mainstream in the future? Smokler: Thanks to people like David Foster Wallace, or earlier like Robert Coover, and thanks especially to McSweeney's and their approach to book publishing -- this sort of post-modern, self-reverential blurring of the lines between author and text, the use of specific kind of paper and cover art and the talk that book is art -- that is something that has increasingly been brought into the mainstream and what used to be the province solely of small publishers. [Book as art] is expensive to produce and it was considered off-putting and strange to readers at one point. McSweeney's has definitely brought that closer to the mainstream. I think the things that were once considered absurdly underground but now are mainstream is 1) the focus on the book as object; 2) The looking for authorial talent in places other than the magazine world and prestigious MFA programs. That's the rise of bloggers writing books and poetry slam winners writing books; and 3) Self-published has come into its own. It used to be you could only self-publish, generally, if you were a failure at playing the mainstream game. Now people are electing to publish themselves simply because they're smart businesspeople and they get to keep the royalties and it doesn't involve the investment of capital it used to. Now through lulu.com or blurb.com you can run off 50 to 100 books and sell them any way you want. And with the Internet you have a sales channel you never had before. What is indie now that may become mainstream later? I think it's hard to say. People will always, culturally, consider a book a mark of respectability. There's much more cultural weight placed on publishing a book than releasing an album or even making a movie. So what I think you'll see is a pull in two directions. A book will become a calling card for people with mini-media empires. So people will use a book to kind of advertise themselves. And that is already happening with someone like Suze Orman, but you'll see it happening even more. Second, books will become branding. They're so cheap to produce now, I would not be surprised if companies that are all about branding start publishing books, too. Like Virgin or Starbucks or Nike. Companies that are not just about selling dry goods, but about lifestyle. As to the content of literature we'll produce, who can say? CNN: Do you see a connection between various indie mediums? For example, do trends in independent movies influence literature and vice versa? Smokler: Content-wise -- the thing that has happened culturally in the last 10 years -- we can no longer say, "Oh, indie film is about this and that." Because it's not anymore. In '86 and '87, Spike Lee was coming along or when Kevin Smith was coming up, you could say, indie film is about people and their relationships and a lot of talking and not a lot of fast-moving cameras. Not the case anymore. ... If indie film is anything now, indie is a brand -- the Independent Film Channel, Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards. Indie simply means, vaguely, made completely and without totally pandering to commercial tastes. But what it is subject-wise or what it looks like aesthetically, it's as varied as the colors of the rainbow. In literature it's kind of the same. It's very tempting and romantic for us to think that indie literature is about [a set of] values and because these values aren't mainstream, indie lit isn't mainstream. That was the case in the '60s and '70s when we had a very bifurcated country, when you could say, "This is the mainstream, that's not the mainstream." Not the case anymore. Largely, we're a country of a million little niches. Saying something like, "Is indie rock dead?" is useless because nothing is ever dead. Everything is alive to the people it matters to. Does that mean culture is paying attention to it? That's a different question. But it's kind of an irrelevant question because if it's something that you have to pay attention to, for it to become "alive," then that's not what indie means. |
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Kevin Smokler
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