In Defense of Wikis, Self-Published Authors & Other DiY-ers

I have to admit I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons and all things collaborative. I love the idea that there's this enormous knowledge/information/research entity out there, with a zillion participants posting, borrowing & swapping information all at once, like a virtual flea market for ideas.

Like any other research tool, wikis have their drawbacks but I've found some good information on them. Since I've worked in both public school systems and libraries, I'm familiar with the usual objections over using information found on wikis and collaborative commons. But dismissing them out of hand isn't a useful response. According to a study done in 2005, Wikipedia had close to the same factual error rate as Britannica. As one writer on a site devoted to recording such error rates pointed out, a better tactic would be to teach students how to use Wikipedia and other such sites wisely.

Something similar is happening in the world of publishing. Fifteen years ago, beginning writers were still being told to stay away from self-publishing (not to be confused with vanity publishing). Self-published authors were suspected of lacking credibility or being hopelessly amateur.

Much has changed in the last decade. While fiction writers are still advised to hawk their novels at conventions and pitch their ideas to agents, self-publishing is perfectly respectable for writers of non-fiction. The grandaddy of all contests, the Writers Digest annual, even has a category for best self-published nonfiction books. What caused this change?

I haven't done any exhaustive studies but my guess is that enough writers became tired of spending 9 hours pitching & querying for every hour spent writing. A few brave souls said "to heck with it" and began publishing their own material. Eventually a critical mass was reached, a turning point where self-publishing became a common practice.

I'm betting that much of this movement came about because large numbers of writers realized that they didn't want to spend the rest of their lives chasing someone who could make their dream come true. Pursuing agents and publishers takes enormous amounts of time and energy, most of which could be better spent in actual writing. In cases where the author desperately wants to be published, it puts a lot of power in someone else's hands. And in the end, some of my fellow writers argue, an agented book is not necessarily a better book; there's a lot of mediocre writing out there.

DiY tools have kinks to work out. They're not perfect. But they make the distribution of information much more accessible for those who want to participate. They open to door of participation to more people, most of whom want to participate because they love their topic of choice, not because they're getting paid. They allow us to consider the possibility that maybe we're all smart; maybe each of us has something worth saying, a contribution worth making.

Making a contribution is, after all, the whole idea behind the DiY life.