Ink Stained

An Independent Magazine for

Independent Thinkers

In this Issue:
Exploring the
Relevance and
Impacts of
Self– Publishing
in the Digital Age
Ink Stained

Budget Publishing © 2011

All Rights Reserved.

Should any part of this work be stolen or

appropriated for commercial use, a kitten
may or may not die of heartbreak.
Stealing isn’t nice. Don’t do it.

All articles written by Grae Rose

Cover and Layout Design: Grae Rose

For more information, visit:

facebook.com/grae.s.rose

To contact the author, e-mail:

Grae.s.rose@ou.edu
Letter from the Editor
The purpose of this electronic magazine (or e-
zine, if you prefer) is to outline the changes caused
by the widespread availability of independent and
self-publishing due to the rise of technology such as the internet,
and to present multiple points of view on the worth and/or poten-
tial impact of such an institution. Here, independent publishing
will refer to small presses, with a focus on services offered online,
and self-publishing will refer to micro presses with no involve-
ment by a third party publisher. In other words, if all costs, layout
and formatting, design, content, marketing and distribution are the
work of the author, it is self-published, including xerography,
desktop publishing, print on demand, and work posted to the inter-
net.
This magazine also seeks to argue that, whether good or bad,
independent and self-publishing has significantly changed the en-
vironment in which we read and learn, especially in the context of
the internet. Independent publishing has important implications
for educational structures as well as academic communities. To
exist in the digital world, we must adapt to this set of changes or
be washed out in a flood of information overload.
Finally, this is an independent project meant to highlight one
dimension of the new literacies for academic purposes, and as
such all articles within, if not the views they pose, are the work of
a single author. Happy reading.
— Grae Rose
 The Rise of the Amateurs:
How Publishing is Adapting to the Digital Environment
By Anita Change
The digital shift represents a very im-
portant change of perspective toward the me-
dia we consume. It is hard to deny what
Henry Jenkins claims in his book Conver-
gence Culture, that ―contradictions, confu-
sions, and multiple perspectives should be an-
ticipated at a moment of transition when one
media paradigm is dying an another is being
born,‖ but this transition does not
have to be a negative one.
Rather, our culture is shifting
from valuing brand recognition
to valuing the trust of an individ-
ual, or rather, moving from a cul-
ture of professionals that prefer
to specialize and stagnate to one
of amateurs ready to explore and
express.
No longer is the public
willing to be told if their work is
―good enough‖ by major pub-
lishing institutions. They let their audience
decide. As Nick Bilton puts it, ―It no longer
matters who created the content,‖ because
―mediocre content and cookie-cutter storytel-
ling‖ are not likely to gain a broad circulation
among discerning internet consumers. Ap-
proval no longer precedes production, so the
reigning opinion of what quality work should
look like no longer matters to the same extent,
or at least is not being decided by the same
group of affluent white males. Anyone can
participate in the broader cultural discourse
now, and traditional publishers are having a
difficult time keeping up with all of this
change. In fact, in 2009, independent publish-
ers produced more books than traditional pub-
lishers for the first time. Although this was
only a 3% decrease for the traditional publish-
ers, this upheaval represents an increase in in-
dependent publishing by more than 130%.
Clearly, independent and self-publishing of-
fers their users something that traditional pub-
lishers fail to provide; namely, direct input
and personal freedom.
With individual trustworthiness being
held over brand recognition, millions of possi-
bilities are opening up for writers
who don’t have the money or con-
nections, but have the ideas and
the drive necessary to enact major
changes. This is exemplified by
the growing prevalence of politi-
cal and social advocacy, Everyone
from political bloggers to journal-
ists to politically-minded novel-
ists now has a platform from
which to gain previously unheard
of amounts of attention and feed-
back. Independent publishers are
filling niche markets that larger publishers
have overlooked, giving marginalized forms
of expression, such as poetry or personal es-
says, are given a broader, sometimes even
specialized platform through independent
publishers. Also, independent and self pub-
lishing can serve to nurture the careers of
budding authors in an environment which is
less exclusionary than traditional publishers
tend to be. Overall, whether you are
downloading e-books from independent au-
thors or publishing your own books through
one of these budding new channels, the over-
whelming level of availability and productiv-
ity offered by the internet and the influx of
authors ready to build their own publishing
institutions certainly indicates a brand new
day for readers and writers alike.
 A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing:
Does Self-Publishing Sacrifice Depth for Availability?
There are many who praise
the rapid growth of independent
and self-publishing for expanding
the availability of the means of text
production and opening up a visible
platform for the masses. However,
it remains to be seen whether grant-
ing a virtual megaphone to anyone,
regardless of message or skill, is
really what is best in the struggle to
maintain the depth and overall quality of the work
this society produces. Because the internet is a
boundless space with millions vying for attention
for their work, an increasing reliance on attention-
getting gimmicks, such as parody or dramatic pos-
turing, is emerging. This sacrifices depth for en-
tertainment, by reducing success to the number of
visitors to a website or comments on a particular
posting. The emphasis on quality and usefulness is
lost in the scramble for recognition, and the effec-
tive institution of peer review suffers a huge blow
in this, as does the prestige of traditional academic
and corporate publishing.
Nick Bilton, who embraces these techno-
logical changes, admits in his book I Live in the
Future that ―the digital anarchy we’re experienc-
ing today has torn apart markets as they have been
known for hundreds of years, replacing them with
something still taking shape and yet to be deter-
mined.‖ Any kind of technological shift is accom-
panied by an adjustment period, but these new in-
stitutions are destroying the selective capacity of
legitimate publishers. There is no way to ensure
the validity of independent publishers, because
there is no one to monitor them but themselves.
Many of these publishers are considered ―vanity‖
presses, which allow authors to pay for the privi-
lege of being published, rather than determining
which works are worthy of being produced. When
anyone can have their own book, it no longer
matters if you produce one through legitimate
By L. Uddite
means. Writing a book becomes sig-
nificantly less impressive when any
teenager with a printer can claim the
same feat, regardless of the sound-
ness of the work itself. In this way,
independent publishing is to tradi-
tional publishing what viral videos
on YouTube are to classical film-
making– a cheap, shallow mimicry
that can never hope to live up to the
standards of depth and quality required to enter
the big leagues.
For those authors who are less ambitious,
there are also platforms such as Twitter and Face-
book, which, although not generally compatible
with long-form texts, may be the most indicative
of user generated content and its effects on quality
and thought. Even if there are some posters who
post philosophical essays in Facebook notes or go
out of their way to Tweet important political sto-
ries, the sheer magnitude of online production of
content dilutes the positive contributions through
information overload. Bilton tells us that on any
given month, there are ―close to 35 billion links,
news stories, random blog posts, and pictures and
videos‖ posted to Facebook, and average of 70
pieces of content per user. If you have several
hundred friends, or even a hundred friends, the
effort required to make use of all the information
crowding your News Feed is often greater than the
actual gain from sorting through the useless to dis-
cover the good. In short, more information,
whether published independently or self-published
to a social networking site, does not necessarily
benefit anyone. As Marshal McLuhan put it,
thanks to the new capacity for anyone to share
their thoughts on a worldwide forum, ―all the
world’s a sage.‖ It is up to us as intelligent readers
to discriminate between worthwhile content and
the overflow of trash being produced by anyone
with a keyboard and an internet connection.
 Wearing Pajamas to Class:
How Digital Forums are Changing the Way We Learn
The best technologies should challenge the
way we think, and potentially alter the way in which
we share and gather information. Self-publishing has
achieved this in a couple of ways, both inside and out-
side the traditional classroom.
The advent of online courses in colleges has
opened up a lot of educational potential for digital
technology. Most online courses make use of a dis-
cussion board, which allows students to interact with
one another from the comfort of their home at their
convenience. Online courses lack the pressure of
spending time in traditional classrooms, but rather al-
low students to work around their own schedules. As
such, students are more engaged, because they come
to ―class‖ when they are ready to work. Some classes
which are not internet-based will even incorporate
electronic elements into the curriculum, from having
students respond to their professor on a blog or open-
ing a Facebook group to foster student interaction.
Such methods provide an informal environment which
most students are familiar and comfortable with, mak-
ing the learning process feel less like a lecture and
more like a conversation.
Outside of the classroom, two major phenom-
ena have emerged which speak to the way that self-
publishing can foster individual intellectual growth:
fan fiction and academic blogging. Fan fiction (or fan-
fic) are works of fiction of any length which are gen-
erated as an expansion of or an alternative to an exist-
ing fictional narrative, often a book series or a televi-
sion show. Writing fanfic increases creativity and sto-
rytelling ability, and young writers can use it to gain
familiarity with narrative structure. Fanfic also pro-
vides immersion in cultural practices through analysis
and critique of social constructs within the original
texts. Henry Jenkins tells us in Convergence Culture
that when teen writers produce
fan fiction and discuss the
works that inspire it, they
―make comparisons with other
literary works or draw connec-
tions with philosophical and
theological traditions; they de-
bate gender stereotyping in the
female characters; they cite in-
By Samantha Honey
terviews with the writer or read critical analyses of the
works; they use analytic concepts they probably
wouldn’t encounter until they reached the advanced
undergraduate classroom.‖ All this, all on their own.
Participating in these recreational spaces as a
function of learning allows students to gain a unique
understanding of skills and concepts which may be
overlooked in the standardized testing initiatives all
too often used by schools as a measuring stick for suc-
cess. Students are able to teach other students in these
spaces, and lack the usual creative restrictions of a
classroom environment, which often focuses on aca-
demic writing and may disallow connection between
the student and their work. The traditional
―scaffolding‖ method of teaching, in which new skills
build on previous ones, is not lost; the structure is pro-
vided by an entire community with similar goals
rather than a single figurehead such as a teacher. Self-
publishing in the realm of fanfic can complement
classroom learning and increase its applicability by
putting language skills to the test in a real world set-
ting which does not deny participation based on age
or experience.
One way that academics have come to partici-
pate in self-publishing is through academic blogs.
Academic blogging puts ideas out into the world in an
informal setting, in which the authors do not have to
be peer reviewed but can simply be share their ideas
for what they are. One of the appeals of academic
blogging is the ability to work outside of the bounda-
ries enforced by traditional academic publishing. The
draw of instant publication lies in the fact that ideas
which are still being developed can be shared in order
to garner feedback from an engaged academic com-
munity. Because the internet is essentially boundless
in its audience, a post may reach members of the aca-
demic circle whom the blogger may not have been
able to be in contact with otherwise. With this being
the case, academic blogging also enhances profes-
sional relationships which suffer from distance
through digital interconnectivity. Hypertext allows
even further expansion of this phenomenon, causing
the entire ―shape of the traditional article to go from
linear to multilayered, citing others’ work and joining
it in interesting ways to your own.