Jenifer’s Journal: Selfies

Although “selfies”— those ubiquitous, sometimes haphazard, sometimes carefully curated cellphone self-portraits — may deserve their own column considering what they say regarding the state of our society, the “selfies” to which I refer pre-date them by, oh, a couple of centuries, and yet they both carry similar negative connotations, to wit: self-absorbed, self-indulgent, “self-important, etc. 

My focus here is on those selfies produced by “self-publishing” — those “vanity press” creations bought and paid for by those self-deluded authors-manque who couldn’t see themselves in print any other way — or so I thought for decades.

Far as I was concerned, a legit publishing house would read my novel/short story/article — discover me, as it were — recognize my talent and even include an advance  so I could dedicate myself full time to my art while at last being able to (oh, so, modestly) describe myself as a writer. 

Why, the very idea of self-publishing made me queasy — it was unseemly, it was humiliating, it was cheating. Sadly, in the first 50 years of my writing career, I can count on one hand the number of pieces I submitted to a publisher, shriveling with each of the matching four or five rejections that I received. 

Then, 20 years ago, as the internet juggernaut gathered steam, people of every description were able to post, publish and blog at will on all kinds of online platforms. E-books “kindled” a wildfire of digital readers and writers, and, when I looked around I saw friends of mine — several of them Islanders, in fact, present and former, professional and amateur, all hugely talented artists and writers — bypassing the by-then struggling behemoths of traditional publishing and venturing instead, into the wild west of self-publishing. 

They weren’t apologizing, they weren’t trying to hide it like a dirty little secret.  They were taking responsibility for their creative “babies”— from novels to short stories to memoir to personal narrative to self-help to art to cookbooks and beyond — by taking control and finding ways to bring them to life.

It turns out that for all my prejudices against it, self-publishing has quite a pedigree. A 2022 Wikipedia article entitled, aptly, Self-Publishing, mentions some authors with whom you might be familiar: Successful examples [of self-publishers] are John Locke, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Martin Luther, Marcel Proust, Derek Walcott, and Walt Whitman.

Irma S. Rombauer, the author of “The Joy of Cooking” paid a local printing company to print 3,000 copies; the Bobbs-Merrill Company acquired the rights, and since then the book has sold over 18 million copies. In 1941, writer Virginia Woolf chose to self-publish her final novel, “Between the Acts” on her Hogarth Press, in effect starting her own press. Self-publication was also known in music: Joseph Haydn self-published his oratorio “The Creation” in 1800.

There’s a lot more than pickleball for which we seniors are well-suited. More than at any other time in our lives, we are in a position now to share our personal and professional experiences, family stories, historical perspectives, recipes, wisdom, humor, and creativity, etc. Self-publishing may provide us with an option for doing what we haven’t considered before. I

n his extremely helpful 2018 online article “Senior Citizens Self-Publish” (bookdesigner.com), Joel Friedlander writes this: “I’m not sure it’s very well known that some of our most famous and successful authors started very late in life. Examples include Laura Ingalls Wilder (“Little House on the Prairie”) and Frank McCourt (‘Angela’s Ashes”) among many others. Judith Briles says, ‘What’s exciting for me in working with many in the post-60 area is their enthusiasm for writing and eagerness to learn what publishing is all about. Those who come from a business background quickly ‘get’ that this is a business, and their book will be a product. They are open to learning the multitude of ways to build fans and connect with them. Social media doesn’t spook them and they are open to getting help. Many have come from amazing backgrounds and have a story to tell.’

“And for all those who help seniors get their books written and into print, Judith speaks to the satisfaction to be gained from this work: ‘For me, the ‘win’ is that I get to go through their history, marvel at their stories and experiences, and help shape them. For the authors, the pride is what they have accomplished and the mentoring that it delivers to new audiences. It tickles me as so many of the ‘silver hairs’ head to the classrooms and share their story telling gifts.’”

Would it surprise you to learn that a certain haughty (former) nay-sayer has, in collaboration with a brilliant Island artist and illustrator, dipped her own reluctant toe into the ocean of self-publishing? 

What will be the result?  It’s a page turner.