Ten Years of Independent Publishing. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

It was January 1, 2010, New Year’s Day, when I announced to Facebook and the world that I would be editing and publishing my first two novels.

And eyes proceeded to roll, eyebrows proceeded to crawl upwards, inward shudders were sternly repressed, and the more polite ones proceeded to ignore me as best they could.

Who can blame them? Ebooks had only been around two or three years. No one had any real idea of what an ebook aggregator was. Amazon was just beginning to make some pretty heavy waves. Borders, second largest chain of physical bookstores in the U.S. was dead or in the throes of death.

Of course they hated us—

They hated me, and I knew it. But that's okay, ladies and gentlemen.

That was okay with me.

The real bestsellers were fairly secure in their contempt, but the mid-list authors, the ones who were being dropped or in danger of being dropped due to indifferent sales, hated us.

That was ten years ago. No matter what one might think of my writing, editing and publishing skills ten years ago, the fact is, I have persisted.

Writing and publishing is one of the most speculative ventures that I have ever encountered, although there are no doubt others. Here’s the thing. A person can get a job as a plumber’s helper, some twenty year-old, and after a few months, everyone accepts that this is indeed a plumber.

Ten years later, some guy on Facebook, mentioning no names, reared his ugly head. I have no doubt he was just a troll. Something about his story, the one about winning a writing contest with his very first attempt, sounded fishy. Follow up on the name, there was literally nothing there—he had no books, no stories, nothing for sale on Amazon.

Why was he there? He was trolling authors, the basic premise was that only he was capable of determining who had the right to call themselves a writer. A writer is one who writes, surely a plain and sensible definition, but no. No, ladies and gentlemen. Only those who had won awards, those who had million-dollar advances and New York Times best-selling status had the right. The rest of us were all shit, and he knew it. I saw all those other budding authors, all the people with one or two books, many of them independently published, all of the poets, many of them being published ‘for the love’, which is to say no pay. And I saw their comments, most of them trying to explain, or to justify, why they had the right to call themselves writers.

Suffice it to say that I dropped the creep, and have no regrets about that. Hopefully some of the other ones smarten up as well. Take away his victims and his audience, that one has nothing—nothing, ladies and gentlemen, except perhaps one or more bogus names on Facebook and a bad attitude that ain’t going to cure itself.

In ten years, I have published twenty-two novels under five different pen-names. With paperbacks in two different sizes, with numerous novellas and short stories, I have at least one-hundred and fifty-four titles. Each title comes in a half a dozen formats. That's a lot of products.

The funny thing is, I have never introduced myself as a writer. But then, I suppose I have never introduced myself as anything other than what I am.

I’ve done every kind of shit job, on a thousand different job-sites. Just for starters—

I’ve been on disability for over twenty-five years. I have a part-time job making pizza dough, and I have spent over thirty years in learning how to write a story.

I’ve learned a lot in ten years of independent publishing, but then I have put in the time, made the effort, made the sacrifices, and done the experiments. I have taken a few hits, and thrown the odd punch along the way—but then, who wouldn’t.

Who wouldn’t.

If nothing else, I can tell you what doesn’t work, if only one was prepared to listen—most are not and that’s fair enough.

I have nothing but confidence in my ability as a writer.

And I would actually like to thank that person, whoever they may have been.

Thank you for reminding me of why I came here in the first place.

We will be celebrating our tenth anniversary here at Shalako Publishing and Long Cool One Books, and to hell with the likes of you, sir.

END


Editor's Note.  Louis forgot to mention that he's been published in six or seven languages, sold stories here and there for real, actual money and stuff, and, this is the part they really hate, he's given away approximately 150,000 ebooks over the last ten years.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Kobo.

Image: borrowed

Thank you for reading.

Am I Living In a Filter Bubble? Just the Facts, Please. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Am I living in a filter bubble?

I don’t know. Why do you ask?

Are you genuinely concerned for my informational needs, or is this just a polite opening where we quickly move on, to saying that I don’t agree with you and that therefore I am an idiot?

When someone says ‘people are living in filter bubbles’ it is possible that they have an agenda. They want to begin their lecture now...

In my case, I would have to say the answer is no.

On the Toronto Sun website, I am allowed ten free articles per month. Sometimes I go to the site and find a story that interests me. I can get the same story somewhere else, in fact I usually have already. What interests me is the spin.

What interests me is the reaction.

The spin is one thing, the comments section is often pure swamp for some reason. Now, when I am reading an acknowledged leftward-leaning news source, the spin isn’t quite so apparent. 

We must assume it is there, perhaps rendered invisible because for the most part we agree—there’s nothing there so egregious that it begs contradiction. We might quibble on the details, or the dearth or abundance of coverage of any particular issue.

Recently, the big story provincially is the rise in the minimum wage. I can read liberal papers, and see what stories they carry. Then I can go off to the conservative papers, and see what they are saying. And yes, I already have my own opinion. Most of us do—we already have our opinions.

The columnists have their own slant, and they’re carrying the flag to some extent when they write for public consumption, i.e., the sort of folks that subscribe to that particular outlet, and presumably to that particular outlook.

I’m not a card-carrying party member. In the past, and I am fifty-eight years old, I have voted Green Party once. I have voted multiple times for the NDP and the Liberals, federally and provincially. I know who on city council has run in federal or provincial elections and for what party they ran. Once I was sorely tempted to vote Conservative, mostly in protest of an incumbent Liberal that I didn’t much like.

To have a range of opinions, which don’t always coincide with any particular party template, to more or less agree with a position, perhaps to support a side would be a better expression, is not the same thing as living in a filter bubble. Of course I’m looking for facts to support that. That’s because I have an agenda too.

It’s pretty simple, actually.

I would like to know the facts.

When I read a local paper, I am perfectly aware that head office has a conservative or liberal outlook on things. And things are complicated—the real trolls in the comment section seem to have a simple, ideological answer for everything, and anyone who doesn’t agree is living in a filter bubble.

Because we’re not too fond of listening to them. That’s why it quickly gets so personal when someone disagrees or tries to introduce some facts which have been left out. They have the pulpit and they don’t want to let it go.

They have their beliefs.

They don’t need to convince themselves or their fellow-travelers. They need to convince that silent, middle of the road majority, who, if they are listening at all, must be rather appalled by all of this. All of these opposing claims—contradictory claims.

Looking at my search history, I can see that I read dozens of stories and publications daily.

For the most part, these are credible sources of a liberal social, economic and political nature. 

They are the more forward-looking and thoughtful publications out there, and yes, that does include the local (arguably, socially, a little bit conservative) paper a lot of the time. Every once in a while, we run into a real dog and we wonder why anyone would even bother…anyways, that is my bias.

It’s a lot better than what the amateurs are saying when they get all riled up on ideological grounds and then turn everything into character or moral judgements, using the most simplistic and bigoted reasoning known to man.

Maybe that’s because things are complicated.

And amateurs are amateurs.

END

Louis Shalako books and stories are available from Amazon.

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