The future of publishing?

Tuesday, English majors at Duke received an e-mail from the department alerting them as to the existence of a website directed toward “aspiring authors and aspiring Italians.” The site, writersmafia.wordpress.com, is run by a man who refers to himself only as the Don, and who posts daily links to writing contests, calls for publication submissions and, once a week, reveals the contact information for the ever elusive query-seeking agent. The e-mail noted, quite rightly, that this website would be of particular use to creative writers.

This came only a couple days after the New York Times ran an article on Monday’s unveiling of Figment.com, a website dedicated to the exchange of original fiction between teenagers. Initially conceived in the format of a social network, its “friending” capabilities were quickly scrapped in favor of more useful features, which are geared less toward making friends on the site and more toward browsing the fiction of other young members. Users can work together on projects, and are also able to give and receive feedback.

Predictably, a considerable amount of the interest surrounding the Figment project is that it belongs to the publisher, who can for a small fee make content available on the website as a sort of sneak-peek advertisement to kids, presumably in an attempt to generate interest in the books that they carry. The site is also valuable, some say, for the insight it will give marketers into the young adult mind, at least as it applies to the fiction they read.

Probably the most intriguing aspect, however, of a website like Figment, or even its less professional counterpart in Writer’s Mafia, is the step it takes toward accessibility, not to mention meritocracy, in a field that is still largely about who you know. Because of the multitude of aspiring writers, most of whom prove to be talentless, unmarketable or both, there is a relative lack of available agents and, more importantly, publishers in the literary world. As a result, their time is limited and in high demand, and a faceless manuscript amid a stack of those just like it is unlikely to ever see the light of day, especially when it comes as an unsolicited submission without weighty reference or recommendation.

And although this succeeds in weeding out so much of what doesn’t belong—namely, the self-ingratiating and overstated romantic ramblings of innumerable hacks—it also inevitably overlooks what might be truly stellar works of art, not for fault of style or content, but rather as a casualty of the machine.

Sites like Figment and Writer’s Mafia are starting to change that. By affording the writer a public arena in which to hone and display his craft, these sites move toward an overhaul of the industry that begins to place the power with the talent, rather than publishing capability. This is roughly analogous to the evolution of the music industry in recent years, where artists have been able to successfully navigate the market with little recognition, initial or otherwise, from record labels, thanks in large part to self-exposure on the Internet. Where once dissemination to the masses was impossible for the anonymous, it is now brought into the bedroom, shortening the gap for the deserving between obscurity and recognition, while at the same time starting to remove the external obstacles to that recognition.

The hardships of the interim are also being mitigated. Groups like United States Artists, inspired to act by the dwindling allocation to arts of both public and private funds, have very recently launched websites that accept donations and redistribute them to working artists based on an application process in order to “democratize arts patronage.” So far, the site claims to have raised more than $12 million and financed 305 artists in 56 different endeavors.

The greatest part about initiatives such as these, better even than the ingenuity that goes into their conception and execution, seems to be that there is not really an appreciable downside, at least not to be realized by the consumer. Great work will always be great work, and so a diminution of worthy literature is not to be expected; rather the opposite, as it is quite possible that there begins a proliferation of publishing regarding talented but previously undiscovered artists. Of course, this will also lead to increased ambition on the part of those who would do better to put down their pen, and the literary world may even stumble upon its own Soulja Boy, a meme-made superstar with no real claim to recognition.