Over the years, I've compromised on a lot of things in my writing, and in my life. Sometimes compromise is good and necessary to survival. Other times, it is a big hammer and chisel chipping away at the things that are important. I'm not going to talk about my own compromises here, though I will touch on them. I'm going to talk about writing in general, as funneled through the commercial, mass market system, and see if the thoughts sliding around in the back of my mind make sense once they splat on the page.

Most of you who read this column know that last year I jumped into the world of publishing. It was a small start at that point – but now it's become something of a phenomenon. A business where most of the money stays with the writers and creative folks creating the books. It's grown so far beyond what I expected that I can barely comprehend the potential.

That aside, one of the original concepts that brought Crossroad Press to life was the resurrection of old books. Paperbacks long out of print, novels and series works that you have to hunt and peck and search for old beat-up copies of – copies, I might add, that won't make a dime for their creators. That has been one of the joys of this digital publishing age for me, and as a side note, it's brought a couple of other things to my attention – things I actually knew, as a writer, but didn't really put together coherently until I saw them in the notes, e-mails, letters and conversations I've had with others.

Ever since the beginning of publishing, publishers have had a part in the creation of books. Sometimes it was encouragement, other times copy-editing, and still other times complete re-workings of original concepts. The reasons for all of these intercessions on the part of publishers, editors, etc. are myriad. Sometimes they were for the best, other times they were (and still are) incomprehensible. In these modern times, marketing has take over the rulership of traditional publishing. How a book will present, what the target audience is, what is "hot" and what is not…all of these things can get their sticky fingers onto the words presented by an author and mold, shape, improve, or maim them. It's business – for better or worse, it happens.

There is another thing that happens along the way – particularly over the course of a long career. Authors collect manuscripts that have a variety of versions. Often their own vision is changed so drastically by the time a book is published that it's barely recognizable. We're about to publish a novel, Lycanthropos, by author Jeffrey Sackett. When this book was published, it wasn't really the same book at all. His concept was of a novel set against World War II – gypsies and werewolves – and Nazis. What was published was "The Mark of the Werewolf," set in more modern times with a neo-nazi cult as the big bad, and a lot of the cool historic stuff lost. The author is a historian, and he had a vision. What I find appealing, and even important, is that he has remained enthusiastic about his OWN vision, and though he likes "Mark of the Werewolf," he feels it is an entirely different book.

How often do we do this? When I wrote my novel "The Path of the Meteor," which has since been released as "Darkness Falling," it was in first person. In those days, and even now, the words "first person" were anathema in the world of novels. Only a select few stylists could pull it off, I was told. It almost never works. Books like "Interview with the Vampire" – of course – proved the lie in this, but I bought it from a long ago agent, and revised my entire manuscript to third person. I have never felt that it was as powerful, or as "right" in third, but I was told it was the only way to sell it. In point of fact, I never did sell it, and now I have to wonder. Most of "This is My Blood," the vampire novel I DID sell, repeatedly, was written in first person.

So back to this publishing epiphany of mine. I have been able to bring out a number of books with titles and text that were not what was published in the mass market. I have been able to give life to manuscripts sitting on hard drives that were never published at all because their genre, concept, or style didn't match the "brand" that publishers had created for their authors. When did it become more important what a 22 year old marketing suit thinks about literature than what the author thinks?

This is a new world. It's going to take time for the shifts to occur, because most of the traditional companies still have their claws in writers like Stephen King, Tom Clancy, etc. and the fandom for such authors is huge. There is still a ton of power backing those marketing suits, and there is still a huge wealth of talent publishing solely through the traditional marketplace. Why shouldn't they? Their advances are in the millions…how many millions do you need if you spend most of your time sitting at a keyboard creating stories?

A few of those icons of literature are shifting away, though, and the more of them that follow, the more the walls will continue to crumble. An author doing an audiobook through my company ends up making 40 percent of the money himself, over time, as opposed to the 10 percent a traditional publisher will give him…and he doesn't need to go through an agent at another 15 percent to get to me. This may not make the independent or even midlist authors rich, but the first time a Stephen King puts out a book like this, the money will be staggering. It's work…sure. Doing it yourself is a steeper learning curve than people believe if you want it done right, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for a different middle ground. A world where you write, and what you write is published with your vision intact – and most of the money for all that work writing comes right back to you, where it belongs. How much do you think Stephen King would make on a $5.99 eBook if he got 80 percent of that, instead of 15 or 20 percent of a $9.99 – shared with his agent? Mr. King – if you are reading this, I'd love to help you find out.

I guess what this is is a call out to those of you who have compromised your work over the years, but have held onto your original concepts, visions, manuscripts, and dreams. Don't squirrel it all away on a hard drive somewhere, get it out there. I'm not saying bring it to me (you can, of course) but if you wrote a book with a 40 year old one-armed detective, and NYC made you turn it into a book about a one-legged strong female protagonist for marketing purposes, let's see how it would have read if you'd written what you wanted to write.

I think literature can only be improved by the freedom to exercise clarity of vision. If those visions fail, or needed the editors and revisions and re-working to make them entertaining, maybe it's time for a new breed of writer with the talent to drag us into other worlds, lives, and realities.

While we're certainly not opposed to having a marketing department at Crossroad Press – I think I want them in Grateful Dead t-shirts and working out of coffee- houses. I think I want them enthusiastic about the books they are selling, rather than looking for niches to plug them into…and while I'd listen to their opinions about books, writing, literature, and change – just as I would those of anyone I work with – I don't believe I'd be turning those suggestions into rewrite notices to my authors.

I'm glad I still get to do these columns in first person. Such freedom! I'm also glad Chizine has survived their own recent changes…viva le'digital, (probably mangled).

From the Shadeaux,

David Niall Wilson