[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I've just self-published a sonnet that I was helped with here not so long ago. There's a sound file too. Thanks!

Duncan

[Michael Cantor]

Duncan - You published a sonnet? On your own blog? Wow!

I believe this is called a Vanity Post. Putting up your own sonnet on your own blog is not an accomplishment. It does not make you an Accomplished Member. It's simply self-promotion.

You've been doing this kind of thing lately. You dragged up a five-year-old thread here as an excuse to show off another poem from your blog, you resurrected a three-year-old thread to wave around still another blog poem here.

Duncan, I see nothing wrong with somebody posting an announcement - once - on Announcements indicating that they started a blog (I believe a number of members have done just that), but if everybody who had their own blog started posting their own poems on the Sphere - using the blog as justification for "publication" - this would deteriorate into a silly vanity site. I know we have restrictions about posting our own poems on General Talk, we have restrictions about including links to blogs as part of a poster's signature, and I would have thought that common sense and modesty would stop people from posting their own "self-published" blog poems on Accomplished Members. Guess not. So let me suggest to the Mods that we add that prohibition to the other restrictions on vanity/self-promo that make this an effective site.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Michael

You may not like the idea of self-publishing, but it's part of the current scene. That I decided to self-publish this sonnet does not necessarily make it a vanity publishing. You may, of course, think what you like.

I never announced on Eratosphere that I started a blog. I have linked to my blog on three occasions when something that has been posted or workshopped here has reached publication. I have many other poems on my blog that were workshopped here that have been previously published, and I have, of course, not flagged these.

This sonnet was workshopped here, and people here, you included, spent time helping me improve it. Surely it is an act of courtesy to inform people that it has now been published? And, if it is visible on the internet, to let them see (and hear) it?

Since you have chosen this thread to make suggestions as to ways of improving the forum, allow me to make my own suggestion. I would suggest that it is permissable to publish critique threads at a later date. It seems strange to me that this is a public forum, and yet, as I understand it, we have to seek permission from every participant on a thread before we can publish it. Which is a huge barrier to publication. And a huge loss to poetry.

Duncan

[Michael Cantor]

Oh for God's sakes, Duncan, the sonnet wasn't published - nobody accepted or selected it - you put it up on your own blog. Do you really regard that as an accomplishment? Do you really think we're going to be impressed by the awesome feat of publishing your own poetry on your own web site?

Duncan, it's vanity. It's what I said before - if everybody had your attitude, it would turn the Sphere into another silly site where amateur poets praise each other's amateur poetry. You want to brag of your accomplishments? Write the best poem you can, and have it accepted and published by some critical/literary entity other than yourself.

Re your comment on critique threads, why in hell would anybody want to publish them except as further self-promotion? Note that Michael Cantor said that my poem is so awful that it attains a certain kind of grandeur. (Well, maybe other threads would work better.) When I crit on the Sphere I assume that it's done with a certain amount of privacy, within a relatively restricted group, and that the comments will disappear within a few months - not that somebody is going to slap it all up on his blog (as I see you've done with a thread from Sonnet Central.) I applaud the Sphere's action in restricting access, including Google, to the Critical Boards, and don't want to see any threads in which I participate thrown up on somebody's blog. All that would accomplish would be to discourage open comment.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

You're entitled to your opinion, Michael. But the sonnet has now been published. That is a fact. It counts as a publication.

To dismiss self-publication as self-promotion is misguided in the extreme. It is undoubtedly more a case of self-promotion when you get someone else to publish your poems.

Likewise, I fail to see how it is an act of self-promotion to provide an insight into how a poem was created by way of publishing a workshop critique. You might as well say that adding notes about poems and giving interviews are mere self-promotion.

But, Michael, for now I'd be grateful if you'd take your complaint elsewhere. This thread is meant to be all about me basking in the limelight of having published a sonnet on my own blog.

Duncan

[Simon Hunt]

Nice-looking blog, Duncan!

At risk of alienating both you and Michael, I'll step between you to say the following:

You're clearly right, Duncan, that it's a publication by definition, just as a book you wrote, edited, and published yourself would be.

On the other hand, Michael's clearly right that it's a vanity publication by definition.

I remember a kerfuffle a while back on one of these threads where one member posted his accomplishment of publishing a poem in a nice journal and then had its accomplishyness questioned by others because he was also the poetry editor of the said journal (details off, perhaps, but you get the idea)... Perhaps your thread and that one would have been better received on the GA board than this one. I think there's a little less traffic there, though.

Best, --Simon

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Thanks, Simon!

Good call!

I can certainly see Michael’s point about there not necessarily being much accomplishment in self-publishing, but the description of this forum is “Announcement by members of their recent publications/awards....” So I didn’t consider GA. But yes, that would perhaps have been smarter.

However, I’m not sure that Michael would be appeased by this solution. He objects to me linking to poems on my blog anywhere on the site:

“You've been doing this kind of thing lately. You dragged up a five-year-old thread here as an excuse to show off another poem from your blog, you resurrected a three-year-old thread to wave around still another blog poem here.”

(Though one would have thought that the reason for the existence of these five-year-old and three-year-old threads is that they could be “dragged up” and “resurrected”.)

Duncan

[Catherine Chandler]

Self-publishing has been around for a long time. See this link:

http://www.simonteakettle.com/famousauthors.htm

Sometimes the only one who has faith in the value of his or her work is the author or artist. I'm not ashamed to say that I self-published my first two chapbooks, both of which sold very well.

I'll check out your blog later on this evening, Duncan, but thanks for letting us know about it.

[Alex Pepple]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Michael about the expectations for The Accomplished Members. Without getting into the debate of the merits or lack thereof of self-publication, Accomplished Members is for publication accomplishment that involves something more than self-validation. After all, blogs and their contents -- any content -- can proliferate in just the amount of time it takes to fill out one's profile information, real or fake, on Blogspot.

I'll let this post stay, but after this, that will be the end of the grace period for everyone.

...Alex

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Thanks, Catherine!

And thanks, Alex! Perhaps, as Simon noted, GA would be the place for this.

Duncan