SELF-PUBLISHING AND LIBERATION

PUBLISHING, MEDIA AND FEMINIST HISTORY The history of feminism is underpinned by histories of publishing. From the weekly working class suffrage newspaper The Women’s Dreadnought to publications of the WLM (Shrew, WIRES, Spare Rib, countless pamphlets, newsletters) to the feminism of the 1980s-1990s (Outwrite, Shocking Pink, Bad Attitude), to zines and blogs of the current day; feminists have written, published and distributed their media.

SELF-PUBLISHING Self-publishing has been a common way for many writers to get their work published. Walt Whitman, Anaïs Nin and Virginia Woolf all published, and in some cases printed, their work themselves.

CURRENT FORMS OF SELF-PUBLISHING Zines - (short for fanzines or magazines and pronounced ‘zeen’) are physical printed self publications. Usually photocopied, they are cheap to produce and fun to make.

ZINES Zines can be about anything. Music, art, film (fanzines), gardening, jokes, travel, fiction, personal experiences (perzine), health, topic related (feminism, anti-racism, etc). They can be of no particular length (1-100 pages). They are a tool for community building and subcultural communication. Can be collectively or individually authored.

BLOGS

BLOGS ARE.... a free website maintained either by an individual or a group of people a form of Web 2.0 technology that allows users/readers to interact with the content. the major developments in self-publishing in the past 15 years.

SIMILAR TO ZINES BLOGS Have a flexible and open format, and can be about anything Are used to build community and are an example of social networking tools on the internet. Low budget/ free (if you have an internet connection).

UNLIKE ZINES BLOGS are arguably visible to more people than the low-distributed, printed word; allow for the quick turnaround of information. Ana Laura, from the Remembering Olive Collective stated: ‘as information was coming in we could publish it straight away. It is very immediate and that really appealed to us’.

ZINES, BLOGS, FEMINISM In the past ten years, both zines and blogs are vital sources of communication and publishing shaping the contemporary feminist movement. They allow people to take the initiative and Do It Themselves, creating their own media in a landscape that rarely represents their interests.

PUBLISHING BOOKS Technological developments in recent years have made it easier to self-publish books through Print-on-Demand (POD) technology. POD is a professional digital printing method that offers high quality black and white and colour print bound books. Print-on-Demand simply means that when a book is demanded it is printed.

HOW POD DIFFERS FROM OTHER FORMS OF PRINTING For the small publisher, it makes publishing books more feasible since.... You don’t have to print 1,000-2,000 copies to make a print run economically feasible; There are little or no start up costs (depending on what company you use); There is not the problem of distribution and storage - a book is only printed when it is wanted.

ECONOMIC DRAWBACKS Because you are paying on a per copy basis for POD books, it does work out more expensive in the long run as a way of printing books. If you were targeting your book at mainstream audiences & high street stores, then POD may not be your best option. If you are targeting your book at specific communities of interest who can be reached through creative marketing strategies (e.g. social networking tools and the internet), POD could be for you.

Adventures in Kate Bush & Theory – the film

Adventures in Kate Bush & Theory – Budget (Lightning Source) 10 ISBNs - £108 Website - £35 for the year (Mr. Site – easy-to-update!) set up fee - £21 Print to Order £7 proof 3 copies - £63 Corrections - £53 Design - £300 (very cheap) 250 Copies book – £576 (including postage) Total Budget: £1163

Individual Book Costs Unit selling price: £ 2.60 (70p unit price + £1.90 – 190 page book + 1p per page) £ 2.60 Handling Fee£ 1.25 Subtotal£ 3.85 Shipping£ 1.31 Total£ 5.16 Retail 12 – 5.16 = 6.84 profit

HOW DOES POD WORK? POD is basically a big fancy photocopier. All you need to do is prepare your document using a word processing/ design programme, such as Word or ideally Indesign or Quark, create a PDF document and then upload it to the website. Your book will then be printed and delivered to you or an interested customer.

THAT SOUNDS A LITTLE TOO EASY Yes it probably does, and there are many steps you need to take in-between. Like publishing any book, preparing a book for publication requires certain skills. The main skills needed to prepare a manuscript for POD publication (or indeed any book) are Design; Proof reading; Copy editing; Editing.

POD SERVICE PROVIDERS There are a number of companies who provide POD services. The most important of these services are Printing your book Distributing your book Many of the companies also offer editing, copy editing, design and proof reading packages (which can be expensive, be wary of them! ). They also provide software to design the cover and inside of the book.

EXAMPLES OF POD PROVIDERS POD Service providers deal with individual authors Lulu Create Space Blurb Lightning Source are POD printing service, and only deal directly with publishers.

ISBNS To sell a book and have it catalogued in libraries you will need an ISBN. ISBN means ‘International Standard Book Number’. ISBNs are bought in blocks (10: £112, 100: £209, 1,000: £543 and so on). POD service providers can provide you with an ISBN. Although you do not have to invest in a block, it also means they become your publisher.

POD: DANGERS Print on Demand publishing has generally got a bad name because of its association with ‘vanity publishing’. ‘Vanity Publishing is seen as bad because it has no sense of ‘quality control’. In other words, because you can publish anything, you will and perhaps prematurely without seeking advice from others, editing the manuscript properly or checking for typos.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FEEDBACK While I advocate a Print on Demand approach, this does not mean you should compromise the quality of what you are writing and publishing. As well as practical editing, it is also a good idea to build a network of readers who have diverse backgrounds and interests whose opinions can then feed into final edits of the book.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLECTIVE WORKING This is why I want to suggest that collective working can be useful when producing a manuscript for a book. You may not have loads of funds to pay people to do editing, proof reading, or designing so why not get together, learn skills and support each other in creating the book that you want to read?

IT’S ALSO DISTINCTIVELY FEMINIST Skill sharing and demystifying how things are done was an important part of the Women’s Liberation, what was often called creating ‘women’s culture.’ Feminist publishers ‘wanted to see to see women’s culture available everywhere, and to change the accepted ways of working, hence they refused the traditional notion of employer/ employee, and attempted to break hierarchical relationships’ (Rolling Our Own, p. 29)

Only Woman Members of this press operated a ‘task- sharing system’ so they would learn all different aspects of printing and publishing: ‘In commercial publishing the process is incredibly split up from place to place. Here we are trying to pull the whole thing into a more integrated activity together. It’s out of a feeling we need to control our lives’ (ROO, p. 33).

POD is an opportunity... For people/ groups on low budgets to publish books and make an important cultural intervention; To learn new skills that can then be shared which re-invigorates cultures of collective working.

In small groups isolate what you see as 3-5 most important gaps relating to women’s experience/ feminism in contemporary literature (covering political information, fiction, anthologies of material that already exists e.g. in blogs, books, newspapers or magazines).

Isolate A barrier you face to self-publish material (e.g. a lack of skills, money) Factors that are standing in your favour to self-publish. If there are barriers, what creative steps can you take to overcome them?