I may have mentioned it before (and also I may not have...), but recently I designed the cover for the book of a friend of mine, The Good Slave. It's going to be self-published, which I realise many people remain critical of because for some reason the business model of publishing, which is irrevocably bound up in the business of money-making, is taken to be bound up in the business of publishing good literature.
Not that it isn't, in some way - as in, certainly one could equate a book being published by a company that wishes to make money and therefore will only invest in quality products with a book being published because it is quality; and conversely, there are many self-published books that really might have benefited (greatly or otherwise) from being critiqued a bit more strongly and perhaps more objectively before they were published.
However...there is a certain amount of error in assuming that having money thrown at a product is the same as that product being certified of quality. We've all read books that serve a purpose and perhaps are over-filled with clichés which frankly wouldn't have made it through edition if the point of the endeavour wasn't part of a greater promotional model. I've read a couple of books associated with a certain franchise of games that has itself gained notoriety and reputation for being things of quality, give or take different definitions of "quality" used for each different game; the books themselves are entertaining enough, but they suffer the same predictability of phraseology that riddle so many so-called epic story-telling genres today. It detracts, at least for me, from the story itself - one can't roll one's eyes and read simultaneously, right? Not that I actually do roll my eyes, and I hope I don't sound like I'm being too negative - it's more that it's something I notice, and because I notice it I'm taken out of the story.
There's a lot of wiggle-room, of course - if a book is set in a certain time or is supposed to conjure up certain imagery, then use of language to paint that imagery and be indicative of the time makes total sense. It's when it comes down to a stilted sense of drama that it become an issue. It's when the word patterns becomes clichés in themselves - something which I've spoken about before. Resorting to the same old, same old by way of how someone speaks or how a secret is revealed isn't something that stories should do.
Ultimately I think that's part of the reason people shouldn't just assume a book is of lower quality because it's self-published, and it's certainly a great part of the reason people shouldn't just assume that a book that has been professionally published is good.
I'll absolutely offer the disclaimer that one person's good is another person's bad, and vice-versa. I'd never want to pretend that my opinion is more important or more justified than anyone else's - why would I? It's pointless trying to tell someone else who literally perceives something in an alternate way to me that their perception is one of error - because, for one thing, they could say the same of my perception, and for another, diversity of experience and perception is something that I don't feel is celebrated enough. But then...that's the point really: the old view of being published by a company of repute may be enough for some to regard a book as a thing of quality might mean they won't regard a self-published piece of work as comparable...but there are plenty of those out there who aren't so hung up on the status symbol of a publisher's logo on the spine or on the publishing information page.
Don't mistake me: I'd love to be published by a reputable publishing house, as it will mean the greatest possible exposure of my work to eyes and minds that might want to read it. Who wouldn't want a wide net cast on their behalf? The troubles with this are several, though, including that it's about as easy to win the lottery as it is to have something you've laboured over for years, possibly, deemed worthy enough of publishing. As I said, a publisher is only partially motivated by promotion of the literary arts in engaging in actual publishing; there's a large amount of economic toing-and-froing that must go on, and in the end if there's any doubt that a book will be a good investment, the publisher just won't invest. Everybody's heard of the Harry Potter books, and almost as many people have heard of the struggle J.K. Rowling went through before a publisher's daughter requested of her father that he publish the first instalment of the series. He wasn't going to, otherwise, because he didn't view it a wise investment - as didn't the however many authors (many, as my understanding goes) the manuscript had been sent to prior to that. Imagine if the series had had to be self-published? Would it have had the same success? No, probably not - but not because of quality of work, but because of exposure, or lack thereof.
Beyond this concern, though, is the fact that once someone entrusts a work of one's own creation to a faceless publishing house (for unless they're small-time they are indeed faceless, as any multi-national corporation becomes regardless of how much they might want to remain seen as a caring, personable entity that wants your money only because it costs money to love you so much), one actually loses creative control of the work. The words can't be changed (though changes can be requested), but the visual representation of the work in question becomes the task of a graphic design and marketing team, and is only partly, if at all, the business of the author. I'm all for giving graphic designers work (I've studied it myself and remain in the process of trying to break into the industry) - but the truth is an author's idea of how they'd like their story visually represented may be taken into consideration...or it may not. Ultimately the marketing team are going to be able to strong-arm most authors (or at least, new authors) into following their lead because, after all, they know best what consumers respond to.
I know what it's like - as a designer with freelance jobs I do invest in the projects I do in order to work in partnership with clients, because often clients have ideas but don't know the different aspects of design they must consider, or whether their design idea is the best to achieve what they want. But that doesn't mean it isn't a partnership - the designer is hired to design something, but good design isn't just the designer sitting down and drawing something out and then telling the client the design is finished when they've decided it is. Good design involves how they client sees their product, or themselves, or whatever it is the design is being created for, as well as the designer's skills, including their advice and their creative direction. Design isn't just about doing what the client wants without investment on the designer's part, and it definitely isn't about the designer telling the client what the client wants. When I designed my friend's book cover there was a lot of back-and-forth messaging - I felt I'd cracked it, but he wasn't quite as happy...and so I'd make another alteration. Long-distance this sort of fine-tuning can present hurdles, but they're cleared easily enough if communication remains free and open - and it did. I might have felt I'd arrived at a good outcome, but because he wasn't quite so pleased, there was more work to be done (a lot of it had to do with balancing brightness and tones in the art - the intent for now is for a digital piece ready for an e-book reader, and so the brightness on my laptop screen wasn't identical to that of the standard brightness it needed to be tailored for. The same thing happens for print design: you have something super bright on your screen and when you print it out it's dull and dark, purely because you're not dealing with the same parameters in one format as you are in another). In the end my friend, who was in this case my client, was the one who decided whether the cover was finished or not - because it's his story, and his vision. And I was able to deliver something he was extremely pleased with, and that made me feel I'd done a great job.
The question is, though, one of who gets to claim the title of client in the publishing sphere. Is it the author, who wants to be published and who has likely been turned down by other publishing houses before? Or is it the publisher, who gets to accept or dismiss manuscripts for publication? Power relationships, in which one party is in a far less powerful position in comparison to the other, are a real phenomenon even when it comes to writing and invention: after all, you have to be able to argue why someone should part with their money in order to get that money, and if you push it too far (say by refusing to acquiesce to your publisher's desires regarding the images on the cover of your book), you might end up being told to sling your hook. It's your product, but the fact is you're just another aspiring author and the publishing companies have their choice of investment. They hold the power.
As a friend of mine say, publishing companies (and companies like them) are gatekeepers: they get to decide who to let through and who to bar from entry, and they don't have to actually explain their perspective. It's a useful comparison, and a very apt one. It's also depressing, if one stops to think about it, to consider that the world loves creativity but the amount of artistic ability that gets ignored or dismissed by those who get to say yea or nay because of what their perception of market tastes are. That's a whole lot of stifled creativity.
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