Guest-blogged by Anne Elizabeth Moore, in response to “A Call to Action: Support the Indy Press.” Links added.

Allow me to make clear at the outset of this essay that, as the Associate Publisher of Independents’ Day Media – a minimedia conglomerate that includes Punk Planet and Punk Planet Books – and the author of “Hey Kidz, Buy This Book!” on Soft Skull Press, I have a personal interest in your support of the independent press in general and of my projects in particular. I forward this information not to stun you with my inability to write a catchy lede but because it illustrates the greatest advantage the independent press holds over corporate and mainstream press: our agendas are transparent. They are not dictated by the goings-on in backroom board meetings nor tied up with cross-promotional licensing deals. My family members will not benefit financially from whatever I may say in this essay. They are not involved in independent media. (And why would they be? There is almost no money in it.)

That there is currently little to no money in the independent press is glossed over in Jennifer Nix’s Indy interview and AlterNet essay in which she criticizes celebrity progressives Michael Moore, Amy Goodman, and Al Franken for putting books out with big presses and offers Chelsea Green’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant” by George Lakoff as an antidote to this cancerous expansion of lefty big media projects. Because she avoids acknowledging it, Nix misses both the explanation for why “our” celebrities abandon us, and an understanding of the fantastic potential for change that the independent media provides.

The failure of Moore, Goodman, Franken, et. al, to turn to the independent press, in addition to being evidence of hypocrisy and a betrayal of their more radical supporters, is easily understood by anyone who has ever published independently. For while there is little chance of making money in the independent press, there is even less chance of becoming famous on the level of such figures. For while Moore, Goodman, and Franken may be progressives, more importantly they are celebrities and trade in fame. If authors want to make a living exclusively off sales of their work – and this goes double (or so) for the fame-hungry – most currently need to work in the mainstream. This is a fact, but it is neither immutable nor is it bedrock. Again I state, there is little to no money or fame in independent publishing. Except, possibly, for George Lakoff.

And, if I may be so bold, for Joe Meno. Now in its fifth printing and 40,000 copies strong, with film deals in the works and a whole line of new authors and projects ready to follow in its footsteps, Punk Planet Books’ “Hairstyles of the Damned” is a fantastic, unabashed success. So the potential for success of independently published books may be changing.

Yet it hasn’t always been easily won. Here at Punk Planet Books, and at our partner Akashic Books, and throughout the rest of our Independents’ Day Media projects, we’re not simply trying to figure out how we can sell as many books as, say, “Dude Where’s My Country?” – or for that matter “Don’t Think of an Elephant” – we’re trying to change the structures that allow only celebrity authors the ability to make a living doing what they do. That is, we don’t want to compete with celebrity. One of the most promising and invigorating aspects of the independent media is that we don’t need to look to celebrities as role models. We want to fundamentally change the system that rewards celebrity exclusively.

At Independents’ Day Media, we hope to contribute to a sustainable model for publishing. The standard model relies primarily on a book contract, which gives writers a very small percentage of profits of sales. Called royalties, these usually sit at between 5 and twelve percent. As Nix points out, an advance against royalties is granted based on an author’s predicted sales. Big advances are needed to secure big authors – and imply big investments that publishers then work to ensure pay off. It’s a system that works, but mostly for big names like Moore, Goodman, and Franken. (It’s an especially good system for names like theirs, who promise otherwise hesitant progressive markets).

When a similar unsustainable structure came to light as standard in the music industry, independent music producers realized that changing the underlying economic structures that uphold the industry would be mandatory to allow independent music to proliferate. This meant giving up a large percentage of profits. It also meant creating a new contract, to allow independent music publishing to become more beneficial for artists.

This is the model we use at Independents’ Day Media: that the author and the publishers profit approximately equally. In the short term, this means fewer books than other publishers, and more concentrated efforts on individual projects. In the long term – we hope – it means the standard book deal is simply one of the options from which authors may choose if they wish to make a living off their work.

Yet this is merely the first step. For the means of getting books out – almost all of them – is via a model nearly as flawed and damaging as the author royalties system: book and magazine distribution. Solidly networked independent distributors, not linked to the Big Five media conglomerates, are difficult to find. Big Top, the Independent Publishing Association’s distribution arm, is one, although it contracts through the major distributors; Consortium is another. Amazon.com has begun to level this playing field – as long as the buyer knows in advance what book she or he is looking for – but still, the survival of these models rely heavily on orders from Borders and Barnes & Noble stores. This can result, surprisingly efficiently, in even the most independent of independent publishers refusing books that do not closely mirror the tastes of HarperCollins readers.

And this resounds throughout the US. Independent booksellers are not surviving in our media environment. Between the time that I planned my 2004 book tour for “Hey Kidz, Buy This Book”, in April, and the beginning of the tour in June, two of the 30 independent bookstores at which I was scheduled to appear closed up shop. Already I have lost one more on this summer’s route. Booksellers, whether they sell “Elephant” or “Hairstyles” or not, need to be brought into the fold. If we are to be concerned with the viability of independent media – and, admittedly, few are – we need to be concerned with all aspects of it.

We are in a time when we, as a culture, are rethinking media anyway: perhaps we should recognize as self-evident that cultural producers should be able to make a living from their work, and that the biases of big government, big corporations, and big media should not effectively prohibit their survival.

The sustainability of independent media projects and producers is achievable, but Moore and Goodman and Franken aren’t going to help. These celebrity progressives, Nix mentions, could have used their celebrity to bolster indy publishing, but they did not. And they probably won’t. Instead of feeling betrayed and complaining of hypocrisy, let’s allow this information to point out the flaws in the system over which we do have control.

In the interest of expanding this debate, allow me to problematize one aspect of Punk Planet Books’ own success. As good of a model as “Hairstyles of the Damned” has been for independent publishing, it’s success as an independent is complicated by the book’s inclusion in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. That is to say, the popularity of “Hairstyles” relies partially on its assimilation into a corporate, mainstream media system. Similarly, and just as weirdly, Punk Planet is sold at Borders. It’s also read by staff at CNN, The Washington Post, and the “Gilmore Girls.” This worries me a bit, as do all incidents of assimilation. Sure, we’re benefiting from it – so, I’d like to think, are the kids that otherwise would never have come across “Hairstyles” or Punk Planet – but soon we might be left with no choice but to purchase our progressive or radical literature from the most conservative of sources.

There are other, more egregious examples of the assimilation of independent culture. The influence of Converse on independent media freaks me out daily. Absolute Vodka art shows and BMW indy films make me very, very sad. Tylenol’s Ouch! campaign, in particular the new King of Zine contest, in which zinesters will send self-published booklets in to Tokion magazine and Tylenol in exchange for a year of health insurance, concerns me deeply. The problem of these campaigns I that they undermine the very notion of independence. And once we’ve sold that out – once we’ve become used to finding our radical literature at Wal-Mart or getting it free with our bottles of shampoo – the cost to retrieve it might be unfathomable.

– Anne Elizabeth Moore is Associate Publisher of Independents’ Day Media and the author of “Hey Kidz, Buy This Book!” (Amazon; Powells; BookSense).