Nearly 20 years ago, fresh out of college, I was kicking around Costa Rica, setting up an organization that would link international volunteers to local NGOs. The work was challenging (particularly since it was pre-internet browser), but there was plenty of time to explore the local milieu. A couple of times a week, Ernie, who worked with me, and I would head for the happy hour at the Grand Hotel of Costa Rica in the center of San José. There we were assured of some interesting conversation to go along with two-for-one beers and the free tapas bar, where we would load up saucer size plates -- dinner for the price of a beer.
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| The Grand Hotel of Costa Rica |
On the lovely arcaded terrace, or around the dark wood of the dimly lit bar, we met travelers, expats, international NGO employees, Costa Rican businessmen and government officials. The hotel was a true point of convergence, a little like Chalmun´s Cantina in the original Star Wars movie. Once, as the newly elected president of Costa Rica breezed through the lobby, he stopped to shake our hands and exchange pleasantries.
I remember an Irish entrepreneur who had sold a software business in the US and was hunkered down in a lovely house nestled in the hills above the capital, avoiding the taxman back home. He would swill whiskey, tell us stories, and when he really got going, recite Yeats and reams of Shakespeare in a brogue that seemed doubly exotic in the tropics .
One evening, an Ernest Hemingway look-alike hailed me as I passed his table on the terrace. His neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard was set against a black turtle neck sweater. My memory might be embellishing the moment, but I´m pretty sure he wore a black fedora. A stack of books rested beside his beer. In a glance, I realized that the photo on the cover could have been taken at the very moment. Same beard. Same turtleneck. Same hat.
"I am a poet," he announced with a Midwestern twang. "My books are only seven dollars." His black eyes flashed, daring me to defy his shill.
He recited a few of his poems, as I flipped through the slim volume. They were clever, racy, irreverent. A little conversation suggested that his life was a decent representation of his poetry; he bumped around from country to country, peddling his books, drinking beers and chasing women. A true bohemian, I thought.
But odd that he sells his own books. Somehow, this struck me as incongruous, even suspicious.
"Who publishes you?" I asked (annoyingly), thumbing to the title page.
"I publish them myself," he said. "I´m my own boss. I don´t have to wait for a royalty check, and the book sales keep me traveling."
I didn´t know how to respond. This meant the poems hadn´t been selected, edited or printed by a reputable house. He had done it all by himself. Real writers don´t do that. How vain! A filter slipped between my brain and William James´ (That was his name!) poems.
So much has changed in twenty years. Not only are there lots of volunteer-linking projects like the one I was trying to hustle off the ground in 1993, one hundred percent reliant on the internet, but in the same way that internet dating has become an acceptable way to meet a partner, self-publishing has lost a great deal of its "vanity press" stigma.
Over the past few years, technology has made it easier and easier to publish, market and distribute one´s own work. The lowering of the cost of entry converged with another trend: Many publishing houses don´t really edit anymore, rushing books out into a market as if they were throwing darts a board of market segments. And, they tend to save their marketing dollars for the books that are already selling.
It can make you wonder what benefits do publishing houses really provide, other than the advance against royalties?
I am going to write a series of blog posts that will explore some of the issues around self-publishing, technology, marketing and traditional publishing in the 21st century.
In the next installment, I will talk about two adventure tales, both self-published, but that offer quite different perspectives on the potential benefits of going it on your own.
They are:
Shanghaied by David Paul Collins
Tales of the Sierra Madres: Oro, drogas y fuga, or what happened when I realized that the little boxes of the Fifties had led me to the edge of an abyss by Francis White
But before I end this installment...eleven years after I met William James in Costa Rica, I climbed onto a city bus running north up Collins on Miami Beach. As I scanned for an empty seat, my eyes settled on a familiar face. He was still wearing a black turtleneck. He looked a little tattered around the edges.Perhaps he had been at his professional peak when I met him in ´93. He didn´t seem quite able to place me at the Grand Hotel.
I wonder now: How many books of poetry might William James have sold on Amazon? If he had kept a blog? If he had "friended" everyone he met in his wanders?
But if he had done all that, he probably wouldn´t have spent as much time in balmy terrace bars, enjoying the company of strangers.
My copy of his book is in an attic somewhere. Someday I am sure I will stumble across it.
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