In the music industry, there is no longer that fabled idea of getting “discovered” by an important person in high places. Musicians today know that their progress relies solely on themselves.   That is why so many current bands and musicians are self-releasing their albums. It would be self-inflicted sabotage for a band to write the best material it can, record it, then send it out to record labels in hopes that a producer will listen to it, like it, and offer them a contract; the band would be waiting forever to be noticed. Instead, musicians will do as much as they can by their own means in terms of recording and manufacturing their albums. Some musicians consider this self-sufficient process a beginning to their ultimate goal: grabbing the attention of a record label that will offer them a contract. However, it is becoming increasingly more common for musical artists to choose to self-release all of their albums with no intention of trying to “get signed”; it is entirely possible to sustain a successful career as a completely independent musician.

Self-releasing records has become the norm for independent bands. No new band would ever hesitate to distribute and promote their work simply because they are unsigned. Songwriters want people to hear their music; they do not wait for a third party to validate their work before others may experience it. They put it out for people to listen to, and in the listeners’ hands, the music will ultimately live or die.

Writers, on the other hand, know that if they self-publish their work, they may be inadvertently ruining their reputation. Some agents even claim that it is better to be unpublished than to be self-published. However, few editors are willing to publish their work unless they have already been published. In other words, the way to get published is to be published. It is the writer’s grand paradox.

So, why is it that writers take such a different approach than musicians? Why is it up to the literary agents and editors to act as the middleman when it comes to distributing writing? Why not let the end users – the readers – decide which writers are deserving of success? There is a multitude of celebrated books that have been rejected repeatedly by publishers, only to eventually emerge and gain the renown they hold today, to name a few: Carrie (30 times), Diary of Anne Frank (16 times), Harry Potter (9 times), Watership Down (26 times), and Gone With The Wind (38 times). Publishers may be the gatekeepers, but that doesn’t mean they are capable of detecting every literary hit, nor determining every work readers will dismiss. Often, manuscripts are rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing itself, but simply because the publisher may not have the time or funds to take on another book at the moment.

Many hard-working musical artists will choose to create artful and intriguing packaging for their albums. The packaging is another facet of the product that musicians can design in a way that makes a statement, and thus take full advantage of their product and their image. It is not uncommon for bands to make limited-edition hand-made packaging for their CDs. This is a good idea not only because they are offering their fans something exclusive and valuable to people who want to follow the artist and collect their works, but also because they are putting something out there that will get people talking, thus building a buzz around their product. Musicians sometimes package their CDs in all kinds of clever high-concept unfolding die-cut flip-out packages that have the power to get fans excited, often before they even hear the music. The musician does not wait for the record label to do something creative for them. The truest thing about all art is that no one will ever care more about it than the creator.

What about writers? If they are lucky, they may get their book published. What will the book look like? It will probably be a rectangular stack of papers glued together on one side – a functional and effective format nonetheless – but in terms of design and presentation, there is more that can be done with the book-as-object? I would argue that the book form, in contrast to the CD, lends itself to greater possibilities of conceptual design. Just as we know that every major record label releases their music albums as plastic CDs in plastic jewel cases, we know better than to expect book publishers to put out artful book designs for their trade paperbacks. Publishers only try to produce and distribute as many copies as they can. But if musicians are taking advantage of their ability to creatively craft every aspect of their product, why aren’t writers doing the same? There is room for expression in ways that complement and enhance the words within. Die-cut, screen-printed, letterpressed, colored texts, and integrated images, could all be incorporated to create a product that visually intrigues.

True, there are some small presses putting out artful and conceptual works of literature as creative book-objects (Featherproof Books and X-ing Books, for example), but when it comes to books, creative packaging is the exception, not the norm. And still, those presses will only publish the writing that their respective editors accept. Even the most popular of vanity presses (companies that will print anyone’s book at the writer’s own cost) such as iUniverse, Xlibris, and Lulu, only offer formats in which the author’s only aesthetic choices during production are the book’s height and width dimensions. This method may be suitable for those who have written a book that they want to give or sell to their friends and family, but if they are writers who intend to publish books that compete with the ones they find in book stores, their best option is to ignore the vanity presses and have their book printed by a commercial printing company, such as Westcan or B&R Printing. This way may cost slightly more, but it is the preferred way to go if they are serious and dedicated writers who want to work hard to self-promote and sell their own books to more people than only their friends and family. Vanity presses, on the other hand, might be for them if they just want the thrill of holding a printed book with their name on the cover, without wanting to promote themselves and build a fan-base of readers. The vanity presses’ books’ cut-to-form format is far from intriguing, but a commercial printer will allow them to direct the physical design of their book, so anything goes. It depends only on what they are willing to spend.   Then, it depends on the readers.

Michael Filippone is a senior at Drexel University. He is studying Music Industry.

People