Like, no doubt, many of us, I enjoyed reading the transcript of Ursula LeGuin’s recent speech at the (US) National Book Awards, and on first reading was carried along by her stirring words (eg http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365434149/book-news-ursula-k-le-guin-steals-the-show-at-the-national-book-awards)

But longer and more sober thought made me wonder, and then I came across the following open letter contribution to the debate:

http://myth.typepad.com/breakfast/2014/11/an-open-letter-to-ursula-k-le-guin.html

It’s well worth reading, with snippets like “Books are about freedom, as you said. Freedom to write and create what you want…What tore down freedom and made writers think they would never be good enough was the traditional gatekeeping model where agents and editors had to be convinced that a writer’s book was worthy of publication.”

I really don’t want to enter into the debate as to whether the traditional publishing houses should or should not feel threatened by the rise of indie publishing. I myself am wildly enthusiastic about the indie world, and the liberty that some easily available technology and a few willing companies have provided. For me, and for many others, this has provided a back door into a world where the front door is resolutely shut for a whole variety of reasons, often purely commercial.

I guess what has remained the biggest disappointment for me in Ursula LeGuin’s words is the sense of establishmentarianism in them. She persevered at writing kinds of literature which were, in the early days, not reckoned to be “proper” genres at all. Now they are accepted, and she herself has been accepted – which is fantastic. But does that then mean that the establishment becomes the norm? Perhaps all it has done is tried to absorb what was – and hopefully still is – a voice of dissent.

I thought back to one of my favourite LeGuin characters – Shevek, the anarchist theoretical physicist of The Dispossessed. What, I wondered, would he have done about publishers and the indie world? But of course we know the answer already – Shevek went ahead and self-published a treatise on highly abstruse, ground-breaking mathematics. There’s a marginal commercial proposition if ever there was one – far harder than science fiction, or fantasy, or Bronze Age historical fiction, and so on. The logical end of his personal commitment to truth, the tradition bound context of both cultures he encountered, and the combined creative ability of a small group of friends… was to self-publish. Long may that remain the case!