Who are these Xlibris people?

An author whose latest manuscript I'm working on asked me the question above. I said I had heard the name before, but I really didn't know. This was about a month ago. He said he got a call from someone claiming to be from Xlibris Australia (she talked funny, so he believed her) and started giving him some hard sell about why he should publish with them. It was the usual: worldwide reach, thousands of copies, etc, etc.

'How did they get my number? How do they even know me?" he asked.

The question is easy to answer in these days of Google. The first one stumped me. "Not from us, I said unnecessarily."

"I know that." I thought he sounded a little annoyed that we thought he would even think we'd give his contact to anyone without his permission.

A week ago when we met again, he said that they were hounding him again. "They have called me four times, including two calls to my wife at home." They were all again from Australia and the usual hard sell: why go to a small publisher, we are international; don't you want to sell 50,000 books? We do e-books, too."

I told my author that if they promise him 50,000 copies, ask them for an advance instead of paying for their services. MYR100,000 thousand will be nice, thank you! MYR200,000 thousand, would be better. But, that's not going to happen, is it?

I am surprised at two things. One, how did they get so much information on the author? Do they have commission agents or spies or scouts in Malaysia? In any case, phone calls to someone's house, to me, borders on intrusion and bad ethics. Two, why are they so desperate? Is the self-publishing market that cut-throat? Or are they merely playing the volume game: print thousands of books in the hope of finding the next Fifty Shades? And what better way to do that than getting the authors to absorb publishing costs themselves. As P T Barnum famously said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

I decided to google them. The first entry was their official website. I found a quote on the sponsored link that said, "As of 2000, The New York Times stated it to be the foremost on-demand publisher." Okay. The next link was to their on-line book-store. The third link, a Wikipedia entry, was probably written by them, too. The fourth was the first independent link. It was from GoodReads, from one Mrs D whose basic message was: beware, Xlibris is a POD publisher from hell with bad  editing and are unprofessional. The 'comments' section was revealing. I saw one from a Rueben (who appears to work for Xlibris), "I notice that your concern with the poor level of service, and professionalism didn't detrimental you from using them for your other books." Wow! Fantastic! Is he a recent English graduate from a Malaysian university?! Doesn't quite boost you confidence in their editing, does it."

Okay, that's not fair. Maybe, they are not always that bad. They are probably better, although it's scary to think that they could be worse. Whatever it is, beware. POD publishers are on the prowl promising you riches. This Forbes story (August 1, 2013) puts it in perceptive:

"Here’s the problem with self-publishing: no one cares about your book. That’s it in a nutshell. There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe. Many of those – perhaps as many as half or even more – are self-published. On average, they sell less than 250 copies each. Your book won’t stand out. Hilary Clinton’s will. Yours won’t.

So self-publishing is an exercise in futility and obscurity. Of course, there are the stories of the writers who self-publish and magic happens and they sell millions of books, but those are the rare exceptions. How rare? Well, on the order of 1 or 2 per million."

The good news is that the figure was 125 copies (according to the New York Times) in 2003, up 100% in ten years. (The latest figure probably takes Fifty Shades into account.)

Consider this: If an average POD customer pays USD2000.00 to publish a title, and 300,000 of these are published ever year (conservatively), that will make it a USD600,000,000 industry in the US. Is that all? I must have got my sums wrong. The total size of the book industry in the US in 2012 was USD 15 billion.

Oh, by the way, google 'Xlibris complaints' for lots and lots of dirt.

Why we publish

I had a meeting in Singapore recently with personnel of the National Arts Council over there. It appears that they liked some of the work Silverfish Books is doing and asked if we would collaborate on more projects in future. Of course, we'd like to collaborate, I said, but I'm very picky. I added that, to Silverfish Books, there was no such thing as 'good enough'. If a work was considered'good enough' than it was not 'good enough'. It is either good or bad. (My friend Joan told me that years ago.) There is simply no point in becoming champion of Subang Jaya.

Anyway, that, at least, is our ideal. When Silverfish Books started publishing, we set out to put Malaysian writing in English on the world literary map. (We hoped Malay and Chinese literature would be handled by others because that was not our core competence.) That we have done to a certain extent. (Apparently, the Silverfish Books' 'footprint' in several School of Oriental Studies in international universities is 'huge', according to some travelling academics. So, we have the 'fame', but I can't help thinking that a bit of 'fortune' would be good too!)

That was the other reason I was in Singapore. NAC has given us money to translate, edit and print a series of books. And they want to us to do more, their only condition being they have to be Singaporean authors. Is that selling my soul to the devil?

The kaya syndrome

I grew up in Johor Bahru and Singapore was my backyard (or the front-yard, depending on which direction you faced when you woke up). I have friends and relatives in Singapore. We share common experiences, at the non-political level at least (although some in Malaysia may regard that as almost blasphemy). But, most importantly, they are willing to give me money to help establish Singapore literature to the world, and they are serious. What are the chances of Silverfish Books (or any other independent publisher) getting assistance from any such institution in Malaysia? Are there any we can take seriously? (I can hear all sorts of sarcastic remarks coming up, but you get my point.)

To Malaysian government institutions, anyone in business is kaya, rich. And this kaya syndrome is killing the country. They have no idea about the sacrifices we make (not to mention our frequent 14-15 hour days). They think we exist to support them, when it should be the other way round. They cannot understand that without businesses, government servants won't get paid.

Why we write

So why do we persist? It's almost like the plot of a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie (but then he always win in the end). I recently read an article on Why we write? George Orwell listed the reasons as sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. Others have suggested other reasons like: an access to her own mind (Joan Didion); for fun (David Foster Wallace); to find a gateway from the darkness to light (Joy Williams); springing from the soul like a rocket (Charles Bukowski); and for the comfort of belonging to a collective enterprise (Italo Calvino), amongst others.

Strange, how all this applies to publishing, and I guess to many other enterprises except maybe crass commerce where the only motivator is greed. Okay, here I go:

• Publish good Malaysian works that will last for years, no decades -- sheer egoism (Orwell)
• For the enormous buzz something good creates -- aesthetic enthusiasm (Orwell)
• Record snapshots of history before it's all lost -- historical impulse (Orwell)
• Says something important about us -- political purpose (Orwell)
• Says something new about ourselves that we didn't know (or shut out) for whatever reason -- access to our mind (Joan Didion)
• For entertainment -- for fun (David Foster Wallace)
• For empathy and acceptance -- darkness to light (Joy Williams)
• For the 'wow' factor -- like a rocket from the soul (Charles Bukowski)
• Stories about us -- for the comfort of belonging to a collective enterprise (Italo Calvino)

So, there. Like the good troubadour said: If my thought-dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine.