IF YOU'RE ANY GOOD, WHY SELF-PUBLISH?

That's an easy question to answer, actually. Two words. Control and control.

I'm not terribly impressed with the cautionary nature of the modern publishing industry. They're cautious for a reason. To make money, they have to anticipate selling thousands and thousands of copies. If you write a novel without pictures about superheroes who are old, fat, gay, neurotic, or self-destructive -- well, where's the "mass" appeal? A valid question for a big business. I respect it and want nothing to do with it.

Wikipedia cites William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, and William Morris as authors of self-published works, would that I were in their company. Andre Breton's Surrealism army yielded a lot of work that bypassed the publishing institutions of the early 20th Century. Anything worth reading will be read, no matter what, so long as it finds an instrument for public consumption.

Am I vain? An egotist? Above the "law" of commercial publishing? Arrogant in my assumption that there is a market for novels about superheroes? No. Perhaps. No. And who knows?

That's for you to decide.

The most important rule for me as a writer is to write what I'd really like to read. I love superheroes, their mythology, their intersection with the common man. I can find such stories only in illustrated monthly issues of comic books or in Hollywood intepretations of such. Both are fine -- probably preferable -- vehicles for the superhero's tale, but I'm an old-fashioned prose guy. I like words alone on blank white pages and their power to ignite your imagination, which is equipped with its own arsenal of illustrations and cinematics.

Did I try to publish The Superhero's Closet through traditional channels? Yes. I pursued agents because you're never supposed to submit blindly to a publishing house when you're a nobody. I met the usual and utterly predictable assortment of responses: "I can't sell this, but wish you the best of luck." "If you tried this instead, we might reach a wider audience." "If you consider our Editing & Marketing Package, we can polish you book like a pearl."

Frankly, I like my story. In fact, I really dig it. I spent three years and four drafts tanning it in the sun to achieve the lustre I prefer in works I like to read. As a perfectionist with lots of writing experience, I had a good sense of what constitutes fat, when I'm being a pompous ass, when I'm just using the novel to work through a backstory problem that is of no relevance to the story or interest to the reader. Purportedly objective readers had a crack at the "final" draft, exclaiming all sorts of things like, "Nooooo, you can't do that to a main character," or "Do you have a problem with happy endings?"

I left the book alone for two years to reclaim my own objectivity. That helped enormously, let me tell you. Patience. A good novel is like a garden or a freshwater aquarium. A child, if you will. It takes time. Sometimes, you have to let it go before you can really appreciate it.

Would I self-publish again? Absolutely, but ask me that question after we see how The Superhero's Closet does.

Soon, I'll write about what a pleasure -- and a learning experience -- it was to work with photographers, models, bookstore managers, and Xlibris, my "publisher," who, for some money, made this an extraordinarily exciting venture.