Self publishing in the 21st century

Abstract

With literary content becoming increasingly accessible through various online sources one needs to question if traditional forms of publishing are on their last legs. For my book project I would like to discuss traditional forms of book publishing and newer forms of publishing. What brought this topic to mind was the Aikiwenzi-Damm article on indigenous versus non-indigenous editors in the publishing industry, which led me to the question of the amount of autonomy that indigenous writers have in telling their stories when having the looming possibility of those stories not being considered marketable to an editor. Various platforms online such as blogging platforms that we use in this class offer aspiring writers autonomy to develop their own platforms for their stories that were unheard of to previous generations of writers. I would like to explore what this means for the future of traditional forms of publishing through the use of an interactive website. The reason I’ve chosen this particular format is because it fits the theme of the argument being made, which is that online forms of self publishing are becoming more popular and may potentially end up overshadowing traditional publishing, particularly for marginalized communities. To do this I will outline a number of basic points. The first will be the history of the publishing industry and its propensity to privilege certain groups of writers over others. The second will be the rise of new forms of online based publishing and how online forms carry the potential of being empowering to marginalized groups (indigenous communities, colored communities, etc). Lastly, I will discuss where the two stand in respect to each other. The goal of this project is to take a comprehensive look at where the publishing industry has failed in regards to representing marginalized groups and how the use of new media is used by those communities to remedy that failure.