by michelle green and lisa b

creative autonomy

there’s no pressure to compromise, downsize or otherwise bend your words to fit someone elses’s idea of suitability i.e. marketability. you’ve only gotta please that toughest of editors – yourself.
self publishing waits for no one’s permission. it does not sit meekly at the back of the room/end of the line/ bottom of the pile, hopinghopinghoping for approval from those on high.

community

friends get a chance to demonstrate their support for you and your art by coming over for folding and stapling parties in your living room.
(…and that chapbook you left in a little bookshop on a little island a little while ago gets picked up by a girl on an adventure – she takes it home, halfway round the world, and reads your words and thoughts and incitement and excitement to a whole roomful of open eared people. years later, you get to meet that girl and those open eared people while on an adventure of your own, and the conversations continue…)

exploding the artificial constructs of time

self-publishing happens now. not penciled in to the 5 year plan of a risk-averse publisher that moves at the speed of schedules – other people’s schedules, that is.
you write to a pace that skips or slides to a scale of time that doesn’t divide evenly by 12, april to april? self-publishing, please step forward.

sex appeal

homegrown, handsewn individual touches on copies of limited edition runs of 200 or less are hot.

accessibility

it’s diy. that means do it yourself – not waiting around for prince(ss) charming to arrive on white steed with publishing contract tucked safely in saddlebag. no.
there is no recommended retail price, no barcode, no middle man. you decide how you want to value your work – whether it’s a gift, 2 for a tenner, or something you barter for someone else’s handmade creation.
self-publishing does not require that you force your creative impulses into one single direction. self-publishing is a format for painters who take photographs, singers who sew, graphic designers who write.
self-publishing raises a middle finger to dominant notions of what art is, what art is for, what art is worth, and who makes art.