The Other Kafka's Problem.

Let’s imagine a parallel universe in which you name is Franz Kafka and you’ve just written a most unusual, ground breaking novel called The Trial. And let’s suppose that, unlike the other version of you in the other universe, you would like it to be published. And let’s also suppose that, just like that other version of you, you have no wish be a career author, nor any interest in writing commercial best-sellers. So you delve into the world of book publishing and find that there are three ways to proceed.

1) You can try to get a mainstream publisher interested. Publication by one of those will ensure that your book will go onto the shelves of book stores and be seen by a lot of people. It will also be reviewed, favourably you hope, by critics who respond to quality as well as commercial potential. You discover, however, that to approach a mainstream publisher you have to go through an agent, and agents make their living from commission so they are primarily interested in representing career authors who have the potential to turn out a string of best sellers. They’re unlikely to be interested in somebody like you who lacks ambition, and they’re unlikely to be interested in a book that’s difficult to read and doesn’t have a thrill on every page. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that they recognise the book’s classic potential, they won’t want to wait fifty years to make a decent amount of commission.

2) You can try one of the countless small press publishers who don’t have plush offices in London, New York or San Francisco, but who work mostly from home and use the internet as their portal. The advantage with them is that they’re generally a little less commercially focussed than the mainstream, and so are more open to one-offs. There are, however, two disadvantages. Firstly, their books hardly ever get into bricks-and-mortar bookstores; they are almost exclusively available through the internet and will only be seen by people who choose to access that publisher’s website. This means that the potential for being read is massively reduced. Secondly, they mostly use part time editors who are aspiring writers themselves, and who tend to have an irritatingly self-important attitude to the job and their own capabilities. They also tend to view literature in a ‘correct,’ formulaic sort of way. You know that there’s more than an even chance that you will eventually have to withdraw your book because you won’t be able to tolerate the hatchet job these editors are likely do on it.

3) You can self-publish. You discover that, with a reasonable degree of computer literacy, this isn’t so difficult and costs relatively little money. The problem is this: how do you market it? Because of the way in which print-on-demand technology works, buying up a load of copies and trying to place them in book stores would be prohibitively expensive. Besides, you’re no salesman; you’re just a thinking sort of person who happens to have written what you believe to be a decent novel. That means you can only sell it via internet mail order, and who the hell is going to find you or have any reason to want to buy your book?

So what does this version of Franz Kafka do?

Now, although this problem pertains to me to some extent, I make no claim to be a Franz Kafka. Neither do I labour under any delusion that my novel is a work of any sort of genius. But it seems to me that there’s a general problem here. How do we maintain the tradition of publishing mould-breaking literature in the current climate? Are those days over now?