I recently attended an event at my local bookstore, on a book about “craft breweries.” It was all about the many tiny little brewing companies that have sprouted up all over New England. The author pointed out how these little tiny breweries can offer unique beer flavors that the major national brewers simply cannot do, either because of the difficulty of making the beer, or just because these oddly flavored beers do not appeal to the mass market of folks who just want to get drunk at a football game as cheaply as possible.
And then it hit me: I am a “craft publisher.”
I say this because so often you hear the word “self published,” and that phrase always carries with it the sense of “not good enough to be taken on by a major publisher.” Granted, if you are trying to do a mass-market trade book, it’s very hard to compete with the major publishers. However, like the craft brewers, craft publishers like me offer something that is unique. I confess, I am consistently tickled pink that my books get so many five-star reviews on Amazon. It never ceases to amaze me how people all over the world continue to somehow discover my books.
One of my rules for what my books can be about is, it can’t be like any other book on the market. Also, it should consist of simple truth that runs contrary to the current fashionable dogma. You would think this would be hard to find, but in fact it’s actually pretty simple.
Books from major publishing houses have their points, but, like the major brewers, they are limited in what they can do. They must create books that appeal to the mass market. Their factory approach does not allow for a truly distinctive voice to be heard.
It is eternally difficult to sell a craft published book, simply because there is just so much marketing noise created by the literary industrial complex. Most of them are subsidiaries of massive media conglomerates that also own the channels of mass communication. Even against that tide of massive media muscle, I still manage to get major media interviews. It’s not about connections or celebrity (I have neither), it’s about offering something unusual.
Budweiser is fine for most, but people who are looking for something special, those people who are willing to pay the money and make the effort to find a homemade cake instead of going to Costco to get the cheapest generic dessert, those are my customers, past and future.
© Justin Locke
