The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
-Maximilien Robespierre
I hate being free. Nobody to blame but myself for my failures. It’s not Mrs. Dave’s fault when I’m a pissy bastard, nor Wee Dave’s. It’s not even the Placeholder in Chief’s (though I could likely muster a decent argument otherwise). Nor is it Amazon’s for somehow stealing the sales which should rightfully be mine and giving them to bettermore deserving writers. Nor is it Hatchette’s (or Random Penguin’s, or S&S, or, or . . .) for not having the business acumen or grasp of ethics to pay me what my books have actually sold.
I hate that on the days I’m genuinely too busy to write more than a few hundred words, it’s my limitations that impose that. I hate that I can’t justify blaming my parents for my failings; that all the crusty, suppurating bits of my alleged soul are solely mine to claim. I’d love to have someone to blame; someone onto whom to shift that burden of responsibility.
But I can’t.
I’m an independent author-publisher (and part-time adventurer; dragons slain, former maidens rescued, villages razed, no job too messy or too small, reasonable rates, act now!) and all of that falls on me. While I cherish dreams of becoming a hybrid author, for now I’m the boss. The sole boss.
For those who missed it, the Int’l Lord of Hate (seriously, Larry, did my Junior Hatemaster application end up in Albuquerque or something? Must be the vicious, carnivorous moose at The Mountain) put up an author ranking metric based upon arguments by which his interwebz-equipped casters of aspersionsRighteous Persecutors label him a “D-list author.”
Hell. I’d love to have Larry’s level of success. I’m afflicted with that American masculine need to support my family through the sweat of my brow, and right now that isn’t exactly happening. Mrs. Dave is … more supportive than I feel I deserve, as are most of my close friends and family.
That said, my writing earnings are still beer-and-skittles money, at this point.
And yet …
And yet, I have the freedom to write whatever the hell I want, see that it gets edited sufficiently, slap a cover on it, and put it up for sale. Sure I have to do my own books (Spreadsheet the Combat Accountant is conveniently unavailable), make sure taxes get paid, rustle up cover art, and carve out writing time from a schedule dominated by my pint-sized tyrant, the Tiny Kilted Wonder (seriously, this kid is cute. like, lethal levels of “d’awwwwww”). But that’s the thing: I get to do that. It’s hard, don’t get me wrong, but I honestly wouldn’t trade it to save my life. Well, I might, but it’d take quite the offer.
That brings us to – finally – the quote up at the top. That dropped into my BaceFook feed yesterday. At first I was going to argue the point, but then realized I was mincing semantics (I like to mince mine reeeeeaaaally fine. That way you get more flavor out of ’em, and nobody can tell what you meant in the first place). It’s not that I don’t think Robespierre didn’t have a point here, just that education is, in general, insufficient.
Humans don’t generally want freedom, per se, and so simply teaching that freedom is both possible and desirable isn’t enough. What we want – most of us – is security. For today to be more or less like yesterday, and for tomorrow to be more or less like today. We want three meat meals a day, a warm house, a cold beer and for the kids not to embarrass us in front of the boss/neighbors/fire-priest (licensed variations approved upon request). In short, we want rules. We want rules that are applied evenly across the board, but we’ll settle for rules that inconvenience our neighbors as much as they do us. Witness the nonsense occurring across the US. The peasantsserfscommon folk are waking up to the reality of their existence and are getting *ahem* restive (Revolting, we already was, after all).
In an interesting parallel, Amazon went and committed the same grave heresy in publishing that ubiquitous, decentralized communication has done to the world at large: made it possible (and easy: never forget how important convenience is to human activity) for the sufficiently inconvenienced to tell like from unlike, and do something about it. “Wow, [REDACTED] says I’m only selling *just* enough copies of my title to stay in print, but my fanbase suggests their pants should be asbestos lined.” “Huh, other writers have gotten the same contract clauses in this as-yet-unsigned document on my desk, and they all bemoan their predicament now.” And most significant (to this article, at least), “there’s this service offered by this company, where if I put my unpublished work up with them, I get 70% of the ticket price, access to their distribution network, access to their sales and payment data, etc, etc, etc.”
So, education is happening, and this is good and all, but it doesn’t really explain why the distributing partner (and those of us who choose to utilize their service and support them) are coming in for so much flak from those in a more, ahhh, hideboundtraditional (I swear it’s got a mind of its own; this is why we can’t have nice things) relationship with more reactionaryestablished business partners (see how carefully I didn’t say something rude, like “slavedrivers?” Ah, darn). It’s not, strictly speaking, a matter of ignorance, though the Big Merger-Not-Yet-Finalized Publishers would probably like that.
No, it’s more a matter of better-the-devil-you-know. Freedom is scary. See above. I can’t say, “well, I’m not selling because I’m (just) a midlister,” or “I’m not rolling in Benjamins because Bigname Starauthor gets so much more push than I do.” Nope. Excuses are grand. It’s nice not to have to take responsibility for your mistakes and failures. It’s also a sure route to the death of the soul. And what’s worse: it’s immature. When humans grow sufficiently, we call them “mature.” One of the biggest ways we have to discern the juvenile human person from the adult is that adults take responsibility. Let me repeat that: Mature human beings take responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof.
Neatly dovetailing with that notion is this one: freedom lets us succeed or not on our own merits. When I write a cracking yarn and it shoots to the top of the lists and gets bruited about by the Blogfather; when the Int’l Lord of Hate bombs my book with the stupendous force of his readership; when media folk come to talk to me about the mythical, the legendary “Options” (I suspect it’s some kind of rare delicacy, but I am uncertain), that’s a result of something I’ve done. The flip side is that when I’m a M or N-list author and making enough for a pizza every couple of months because I haven’t taken the time to cover finished projects, work up dead-tree copies or post to Kobo/Smashwords/etc, or don’t have the time/energy/whatever because himself requires feeding/changing/is so adorable I get lost in wonder, that, too, is on me.
Because I’m free to chart my own destiny. I hate being free, but I hate being a slave more.
Mad Genius Club 
21 responses to “That is how the free man do”
Interesting thoughts. Two observations:
1. Freedom can be described as the absence of coercion. That means I’m free to do anything I want, but I can’t be forced to do something I don’t want. Unfortunately, when times get tough those who’ve used their freedom to prepare and position themselves for survival are likely to find themselves subject to all sorts of coercion – moral, regulatory and legislative – that didn’t exist in the good times. For example: “You built up supplies of food and necessities in the good times, but your neighbors didn’t. Now they’re hungry, so it’s your duty to provide for them out of your surplus!” I reject such ‘coercion’ as illegitimate . . . but how do you deal with it when it’s imposed at the point of a gun? Effectively, opponents of Amazon.com are attempting to impose that sort of coercion on all of us marketing our books through its channels, by trying to force us to “toe the party line” drawn by mainstream (i.e. traditional) publishers.
That leads me to my second observation, which is:
2. Freedom is contingent. It’s not absolute. Oh, in theory it can be as absolute as you want, but in practice it’s constrained by the realities of your everyday situation. As Robert Heinlein observed, let someone who’s drowning in the ocean protest that he has a “right to life”. The ocean will drown him regardless. In the same way, we may claim and assert a theoretically unrestricted “freedom” – but reality will impose its own constraints upon that freedom. There’s no such thing as unfettered freedom except in our imaginations. Amazon.com presently offers what looks like increased “freedom” to indie authors, but it’s always contingent on Amazon’s own interests. If those change, the terms and conditions offered to us by Amazon will change as well.
I think the only way forward – in publishing as much as any other part of life – is to assert as much freedom as one can, resist overly egregious incursions upon it, and minimize the risk of coercion by avoiding situations where it might be a factor. If one does, one might “slip under the radar” of the enemies of freedom. If one doesn’t, one’s martyrdom on the altar of political and publishing correctness may at least serve as a lesson to more discreet practitioners of and aspirants towards indie freedom . . .
What name do you use when you publish an ebook. I have searched Amazon and Baen and can’t find you.
David E. Pascoe. Turns out the E is extraspecialimportant. There’s a David Pascoe who has something to do with boats (I think) and a British author of the same name.
Yes, that’s the one. I still like that cover. *sigh*
I loved the article Dave and thanks to Dorothy, for the link, went and picked up the book. It appears to have 3 things I like, Marines, Monsters and the Northwest 😉
Semper FI
Thanks, Jim. I hope you enjoy the story as much. There’ll be more Marines in later episodes. More Northwest and more monsters, too, now I think on it.
It is a glorious cover. Congrats!
Thank you! I like it a lot, and while it looks great, I’m not certain it conveys exactly what I want it to. The lovely and talented Dorothy Grant has done several posts on cover art and design, and I’ve learned a great deal from them. Mostly that I’m not the best judge of what should go on a cover. This particular one says “soldier” and “fire” but not exactly how the two go together. More “mystical” or “eldritch” fire would have been better. As it is, it could be simply milfic.
Agreed, freedom is scary. The many options for success and failure are tremendous. This is why some people would rather everyone fail equally rather than individuals rise or fall on their own merits. Freedom is even more terrifying to those who want to control things for us peasant types. They like to control who rises and falls… and love to do it in the name of equality and security.
Ramen
I think there’s a significant portion of humanity who no matter whether they say they want freedom or not, actually can’t handle it and really, deep down, don’t want it.
masgramonndou
Even in a free society they can manage to find the constraints they want. They just have to know they can, and hope what they trade for their freedom isn’t more than a soul can bear.
And if that were all it was, I’d be happy to leave them to their servitude. It’s when they come out and scream, “- and you don’t get to be free, either!” that we start to have issues.
Exactly. Live a D/s lifestyle 24/7 if that floats your boat. Go do your thing. Just not on my dime, in my space, or while insisting that the government prohibit/subsidize it. (Human sacrifice and involuntary chattel slavery excepted.)
Human sacrifice and involuntary chattel slavery excepted.
Certainly. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, and at the nose of every other person who hasn’t swung at you first.
I have enough problems with the constraints imposed on me by my own body and mind – and I’ve been relatively lucky.
I am immensely grateful for the people who fought for the freedoms I enjoy (I don’t take them for granted), while at the same time knowing these freedoms are not uniformly dispersed, even here in the land of the free (just somewhat better than most other places – and we have an EXPECTATION of them, whether it is always satisfied or not).
In return, I keep my own little corner of the universe tidy, stay financially responsible, try to be a good person, and try to provide at least something of value to the world.
I know I am unbelievably lucky in where I was born and returned to after being brought up elsewhere (which provides a LOT of perspective); I’ve had my big scoopful of bad luck, too, and I try not to whine about it too much.
Freedom good.
Nice post. Love the cover – maybe you can tweak it with the silhouette or darkish outline of an appropriate cityscape to scream the right genre? I love things on fire.
Or flame colored reflections in the background, off just enough curves to show a monstrous shape?
Like! Just something that talks to the genre more – but the basics are very attractive already.
I’m a natural loner and hermit. I love not needing to find someone/persuade someone to do editing, covers, conversions . . . not that other people couldn’t do better, but it would be more stressful for me to get someone to do it than it is to do it myself. My biggest break in writing is these volunteers that showed up to beta and typo hunt. Well, the first break is probably just Amazon. But the beta readers are a very close second.
I thought I had better check in before laying this old body down. Now I know your true name. Thanks to Dorothy Grant, (the pilot?) I now have your book on my Kindle.
True freedom is dangerous and scary. The stark reality of absolute freedom is the absolute freedom to FAIL. That said I’d rather crash and burn than be swaddled all my life.