The Perils of (Pro-White) Publishing

What the last generation went through to get our ideas to the public. It’s better now in the world of self-publishing and the Internet, but the System’s — and the Opponent’s — hostility remain the same.

HOWARD ALLEN has received several unsolicited manuscripts, some deserving to be published, some not. In every case the author seemed to be under the delusion that right-wing publishing is no different than any other form of publishing, that is, the publisher accepts the manuscript, gets it printed, merchandises the finished book, pays the author his royalties and everybody gets famous and makes money. Unfortunately, one major cog is missing from this idealized mechanism. Books favoring the Majority do not get reviews — and without reviews the whole sales operation falls apart and, instead of making money, everyone loses money. Only part of the advertising and promotional cost of such books is ever returned in the form of sales. Consequently, there is no money for royalties. In fact, unless a book is subsidized by a friend or admirer, or by the author himself, there is no money to publish it.

The situation could be compared to manufacturing Cadillacs without being allowed to have any Cadillac sales agencies. The key to book sales is a review in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek and interviews with the author on various TV shows. These promotional prerequisites are forbidden to books that have a Majority slab.

To provide would-be authors of forbidden books with advance warning of the problems they will face, we reprint part of a small booklet entitled Samisdat written by Christof Friedrich, a Canadian writer who tells of the trials and tribulations of becoming your own printer and publisher:

The writer can save his money by living frugally, adding dollar to dollar until he has amassed the thousands necessary to pay the printing bill. Then he may start looking for small job typesetters and starving commercial artists, all intimidated, who in the dark of night will assemble his work into printers’ forms. Then he must find a lithographer to process the films into plates and so forth. Each step of the way the author realizes that he is at the mercy of the people he deals with as to prices — and mistakes. Eventually he finds some small print-shop which is willing to print a small edition upon its small, uneconomic press. After printing he must find a collating and bookbinding firm willing to risk its neck by processing his book into the finished product.

At last comes the day when the author arrives at the back door of the bindery in his own or a friend’s car to pick up the pitifully few boxes, the culmination of all his efforts. Paying cash, as he has done all along the way, he takes his treasured books home and hides them in his apartment or basement.

Congratulations! He has written and published his book. How many people are able and willing to go through all this hardship, trouble, effort and heartache? Five per cent? We think the proportion is far less.

Now he has the book in his hands! Where will he sell it? How can he sell it? The cost to him, in terms of money is five dollars. Of course this does not take into account his many hours of thought, research and composition, spent in grim loneliness as the only man on earth who cared about something more than food, sleep, sex and drink. Regardless of the fact that publication has virtually bankrupted him, his book is not a slick, colourful production. It cannot compete!

Again he saves every nickel and dime, piles quarter upon quarter, dollar upon dollar, scrounging enough to place a small advertisement in local newspapers. Nationally circulated magazines often charge thirty or fifty dollars a word, or eight hundred to a thousand dollars per column inch. If he is lucky, his ad may get past the scrutiny of the Editor, the Inspector of Classified Ads, the Advertising Councilor or some other censorship body. He is elated! His ad has been accepted and he is about to make a breakthrough.

Elation and euphoria turn to despair very quickly when there is “no response” to his book. Usually he finds that the sales don’t even cover the cost of the ads, not to mention the cost of wrapping, addressing, stamping and mailing. Moreover, there is the additional cost of replacing orders which are lost or damaged in the mail. His morale is near the breaking point, but his troubles are only beginning.

A number of individuals and organisations, both private and governmental, have become alerted to his writings. Soon, he is visited by plausible characters pretending an interest in his book. Desperately he grasps at their straws of hinted help. Once again, he is exuberant! Finally someone has taken notice of his lonely, idealistic struggle. For awhile he is buoyed by new hope and great visions. But nothing happens, at least nothing of benefit to him.

Suddenly he receives threatening phone calls. His wife and children are menaced. His employer receives visitations, letters and anonymous phone calls. Then come the tax assessors, the city licensing inspectors, all with lists of difficult questions which only a qualified bookkeeper and maybe an attorney can answer suitably. Fire inspectors determine that the storage of so many books and papers constitutes a fire hazard. The postal inspector demands to know what he is selling through the mail.

If these formidable and inscrutable foes have not broken and embittered his spirit by now, he soon finds himself besieged by charges under the various “Human Rights Acts,” libel suits, copyright infringement allegations and so on.

By now he is broken, unemployed, divorced, a penniless recluse, ready to be hauled into court where he will be “defended” by a court-appointed public defender who is anxious not to offend “his peers,” that is, the puppet masters who secure him his job and who decide upon the appointment of the judge now glowering down upon him and the wretched author.

For his “far-out,” “abnormal” thoughts the writer is made to suffer a mental examination, necessitating a stay in an insane asylum until the “findings may be evaluated.” In consequence, he suffers traumatic damage to his self-respect and his family and friends (if he has any by then) suffer all the more.

If he escapes this orchestrated persecution with body and soul intact, he is a rare man, indeed. Thus does our “freedom of thought and expression” give another soldier in the cause of Justice his baptism of fire.

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Source: Instauration magazine, October 1976