Michael Hartford

Yesterday I “contributed” two story collections to the Free-E-Day event, “the World’s biggest celebration of Indie Culture.” While I still got more traffic on this site from people looking for the answer to 35 Across in last weekend’s L.A. Times crossword puzzle (it’s Byzantium; maybe if you spent more time reading poetry and less time Googling crossword answers you’d know that…) than from people looking for free “Indie Culture,” about a dozen visitors did download one or both collections. If you were one of those visitors, thank you very much!

And if you missed the opportunity–well, for now I’ve removed the links, but I’m thinking of putting them back up. Whether they will be up permanently, or occasionally, I haven’t yet decided.

I occasionally go through my publications history to see what’s still alive. And the attrition rate is pretty steady; the vagaries of small press publishing claim untold numbers of on-line publications every month. And my print publications are even more likely to fall into obscurity: most have been in journals with very small print runs, often available by subscription only. The path to eternal fame and great fortune is surely not paved with literary magazines.

Of course, eternal fame and great fortune aren’t really my goals; I write what I write because it’s what I like to write, and I’m perfectly happy in the short story world (there are some pretty amazing people in this corner of literature). But I do like to be read; much as I love and admire Emily Dickinson, who could write such wonderful poems for a drawer in her bedroom desk, I believe that writing must be a form of communication, even co-creation, and that the loop is broken without readers. When one of my stories disappears when a web site goes out of business, or when the last magazine ships out of the editor/publisher’s attic, then that story is in great danger of extinction, which makes me sad.

In this Maclean’s interview, Cory Doctorow makes the case for his practice of posting his books for free on the web: “An artist’s enemy is obscurity, not piracy.” Mr. Doctorow, of course, is a lot more successful at this than 99.99% of the people who try it. But I think that point, and the point of Free-E-Day, is valid.

I’m not interested in going the full “self-publishing” route, with a wide-open path between my pen and the public: I believe strongly in having an outside editor, and in the mission of literary journals that act as curators of short fiction. So my current practice of polishing up a story, sending it out to a likely venue, getting it back and sending it out again, will continue. I may experiment a little with sharing less-polished work (Fictionaut, for example, is a great venue for this), but I don’t consider that “publication” per se.

But I do want to try to avoid complete obscurity (properly understood, within the context of the world that cares about the short story). So I will probably experiment with making collections of published stories available, likely including a story only after it’s been in print for six months to a year, and with putting up out-of-print stories on a site I control (like this list of stories).

And if you missed Free-E-Day and really want one of the collections, let me know; arrangements can be made.