Of not quite sixpence

Sometimes talking about straightforward things is not simple. The first draft of this column used the corporate names of the commercial entities to which it refers. Before I finished revising, the POD service implemented a new user agreement that, among other things, prohibits use of those names in any promotional activity. Does a blog post count? I won’t poke the tiger to find out. Please work around this with me.

Solitary bird

As many of you know, Stikmantica titles are published through a print-on-demand service (POD). I was charging forward with revision of Sleeper Awakes, the mother book of Habdvarsha, when I learned that the parent company of the POD — let’s call them “the Parent” — had ended distribution service for small, independent presses. This doesn’t affect me directly. Yet. The terminated service was a channel for physical books from indie publishers that still produce traditional editions. Psychologically, though, it smacked hard. Possibility contracts a little further. Another barrier drops in the path to public discourse.

Instead of producing traditional editions, Stikmantica relies on the POD to manufacture individual copies of books only as needed. Have four units been ordered? The machinery spits out four units. The POD operation has undergone its own contraction over the past few years. One result was that the cost of releasing The Seven Jewel Bird inflated. I designed and put together production files as in the past — and learned another hard earned expertise is obsolete. I ended up paying a third party to mediate what I had done in order to retain the cover I had created.

Today, the cost of formatting my great Icarian failure — the four books, Dvarsh, An Introduction, Dvarsh Workbook, Nod’s Way, and The Song of Worlds — would be so far beyond my resources that they simply would never exist. Because I do not have current tools, even minor changes, corrections or updates have moved out of reach. Of course, so few units have sold that they barely exist in any case. Their footprint will travel into oblivion when I do but, for a few heartbeats at least, they footnote folly.

Fly away

I had already reconciled with the inevitability of future books formatted to someone else’s defaults when I learned that the Parent had cut loose small press traditionalists. The change did not slam the door on me, but it did force me to ask, “What is the point of doing this?” I’ve never produced a single work of interest to corporate behemoths. Stikmantica’s market penetration is close to nil. Even the number of friends who buy my books barely exceeds that of my fingers and toes. And here came cold water in the face. Revision of Sleeper Awakes stopped.

I have been pondering. What is the point of doing this? The Seven Jewel Bird, for which I had such hope, sold 26 copies in the month it was released, but not a single copy since. The Song of Worlds, available exclusively in a language that (so far) I alone upon this planet can read, moved more than 26 copies before its sales went belly up. That’s a mystery I’ll never solve.

Given a solid story and a very good cover illustration, The Seven Jewel Bird seemed sure to outsell a narrative poem in an invented language. Wrong again. Not so wrong as the crazy notion a few years back that Dvarsh, An Introduction would find an audience, but wrong enough.

In the enthusiasm of first releasing The Seven Jewel Bird, I proposed making prints of its cover illustration if sales of the story underwrote the cost. Reality has canceled that idea. Sales are not going to underwrite a poster. Sales are not going to recover the expense of publishing the book itself, much less pay for another vanity. Likely I’ll make prints one day, financed by saving nickels and dimes to pay out of pocket. I love the drawing and there are people to whom I would like to gift it.

So, what is the point of doing this? The answer I have is that I want to say what these books say. I want to share the images that I make into prints. That is the point. What are the means? Beloveds, I am open to suggestion.

Over the rainbow

A few years ago on one of the social media platforms, I posted a question: What is lonelier than the song of a solitary goldfinch? Dozens of people responded, none on point. Each response named a sound by some creature that is solitary by nature. Even a decade ago, goldfinches traveled in flocks of dozens, and before that in hundreds. A goldfinch is fully a goldfinch only when it is in the company of other goldfinches. Their songs are plural, one song of many soloists.

I posted the question after walking out one afternoon and hearing a single goldfinch alone in a tree, singing fit to burst. There was no answer, no challenge, no response. No whisper of another goldfinch within hearing. And yet, it sang. The song was achingly beautiful. Painfully so in stark contrast to the polyphony of which it was not.

The sadness that caught me with that isolated song was twin to a bout one morning in a cloud forest in Mexico where I first saw a tree full of wild parrots. Constantly involved with each other, curious about the world around them, curious about each other, manifestly intelligent, quietly or raucously communicating, listening, watching, probing, together they were more than any possible sum of segregated individuals. And yet each was as individual as faces in a human crowd.

My first reaction was fascinated enchantment, but the more I watched the more I thought about parrots kept as pets. Those never see another of their kind. Captivity provides them no relation except humans.

That moment in the cloud forest I suddenly understood that parrots kept as pets are shadows of the animals they might have been. Wild caught or captive bred, they exist as biological extensions of their owners’ egos more than as autonomous creatures. Parrots isolated from their kind are rendered neurotic by captivity. The lone goldfinch was rendered neurotic by human actions that devastate its tribe. Still it sang. It had to sing.

I am moving back toward the revision of Sleeper Awakes. The characters call me. The story calls me. This book and any others I manage beyond it are a song I must sing.

What form the next publication will take is an open question. It may be no more than a naked computer file sent to a few close friends. Twenty-six would not be a burdensome number. Stick around to see. It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer right now. It is a question beside the point.