Why we are publishers and not an army:
(aka. a commitment to DIY ethics)
The Literary publishing world is one well defined in the public imagination. In the mind of many, to be a writer means to enter a constructed world of corporate publishing houses based out of New York, where writers are represented by agents and make million dollar contract breakthroughs based on the recognition of their pure solitary genius. These individual geniuses are recognized, and given a chance, by one gutsy editor willing to stake it all on a new talent.
While the occasional Hollywood ending befalls the rare privileged author to make this fantasy self-propagating, the world we can create with writing is so much larger than the limits of an industry struggling to define itself in a changing media Universe. Between rapidly developing media technology, changing social expectations on literacy, and a market that devours the social, political and cultural persona of its authors often without ever engaging their content, literary citizenship has never been limited to the definitions of a literary industry and is even less so today.
We stand upon a pivot point in human history.
Never before have so many people engaged with the writing of so many different voices: Tweeter feeds, Facebook accounts, thousands of online media sources, texts, emails, billboards, advertising posters, product packaging, disposable coffee cups, magazines, newspapers and sometimes even books. The idea that so much of the media that most people consume can be (and is) created by almost anyone has become a terrifying crisis for many institutions accustom to traditional media gatekeepers.
And yet…
The media cyclone of content generation rolls on, obliterating forced efforts at creating a critical consensus on how to define quality or credibility.
One solution that is being adopted by more and more authoritarian states around the globe is to work to limit people’s access points to media content, whether by state or corporate sanctioned sources, with status quo-sanctioning agendas.
But authoritarianism is not the only alternative to uncertainty.
We do not have to surrender or dreams and fantasies to false promises of tyrants.
An alternative solution is to embrace the democratization of media from the bottom up and recognize our personal potential and responsibility to practice ethical literary citizenship and content publishing.
Instead of giving our intellectual labor over to power structures that promise to silence or drown out the voices of those we fear (and reacting with shock with those structures are turned against those we love), we can work on building media networks that empower dialogs instead of political platforms, promoting the best listeners instead of the loudest shouter.
The Black Unicorn Press is us.
One editor’s two thoughts on how they, she, or he tries to reflect “publishing ethics:”
A writer is someone who writes.
Before publishing your novel, or becoming a famous influencer with millions of followers, you must commit to making and consuming media. The way you demonstrate this commitment to yourself and to others is by doing it. Being a Publisher—or being an engaged literary citizen—means participating in the kinds of literary world you want to be a part of creating. Do you like writing poems? Do you want other people to read your poetry? Then you have to find places were people are writing and reciting poetry that you want to read or hear. Finding your voice is just as often a question of finding your audience in the world around you as it is a question of activating some hidden potential inside of you. The Black Unicorn Press seeks to support and foster as many audiences for media making as it can…but is just as limited and time strapped as you are. We want you to make your art or message heard by the audiences that you are trying to connect with, but we acknowledge that quest ultimately resides in you.
Don’t sell trash.*
Do not try to make a profit off of work you know to be valueless. If you don’t believe in the importance of the work you are about to publish (to put out into the world and not just make for your own enjoyment), don’t do it, don’t publish it.
– When the the work that you want to publish is the work you are ready to do, then do it, and know that your work is not wasted, no matter what happens next.
– If you feel like the work that you want to publish requires more work to be done before it is the work that you want out in the world, then do that work first, until you find yourself with the courage, the need or the passion to make the work anyway.
– If the work you have already done has lost its value to you, stop making more of it. Give away what has been made to someone who wants it or redo whats been done into something that needs doing.
– When you are not sure what work to make, immerse yourself in the work of others. Just because you don’t want to make work that you feel is trash, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the mountains of trash all of us have already made.
*It is very tempting to use a different word that trash here. In the past, this point used to be “Don’t make trash.” And while that message works for us at the Black Unicorn Press, it only works because we realize that the word trash only applies to objects being viewed as potential commodities. Unfortunately, many of us human beings have been trained to believe that anything we do that we cannot monetize is trash and is thus not worth doing. If the face of this definition of trash, we say Make Trash And Trash Making! And so we use sell instead of “make” in this title now to clarify that we are saying “Don’t” to the effort of trying to monetize you process of making.
Give away only what you can afford.
Some people are rich enough to walk this earth and never worry about where they will get their next meal or who is going to pay for it. The rest of us are not. Only you can decide what work you can afford to give away and what work you need to exchange. The Black Unicorn Press is not for profit. We are also not a nonprofit. The Black Unicorn Press is also not for the exploitation of workers anywhere, whether their work be paid, traded or gifted.
If you are currently feel exploited in the process of your media making, renegotiate your means of exchange by any means that do not become your ends, but pay attention to the cyclical nature of exploitation. There is a difference between appropriation and re-appropriation, and understanding the difference is not an argument in semantics.