YEAR ZERO

Is 2009 Year Zero for the Publishing Industry?

Local author, Gupter Puncher/Oli Johns, has joined an international venture to take on the publishing industry. Year Zero Writers is a group of 20 authors from as far afield as Hong Kong, the USA, France, Dubai, Greece, and Finland who have joined forces to bring their unique brand of contemporary fiction direct to readers.

The group, each of whom is committed to publishing their own work and selling it directly to readers, started up as a response to and protest against a publishing industry dominated by market trends that squeezed out original, edgy fiction [not bitter, rejected writers…honest].

Year Zero Writers (www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com) espouses a simple manifesto, based around the principle that literature is a living conversation between readers and writers, in which a publishing industry that demands editorial changes and toning down of content has no place [not that we don't edit, of course]. The group's first project, started in March 2009, was a novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, written in real time as a dialogue with readers, and given away for free on the social networking site, Facebook.

Gupter Puncher/Oli Johns, a founder member of the collective, says “Read our stuff, decide for yourself. We don't think we're better than the mainstream, we just see ourselves as an alternative. If you don't like it then the bookshops will still be there.”

Thirteen of the Year Zero Writers, including Gupter Puncher/Oli Johns, have provided samples of their work for the collection Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair, which the collective is giving away as a free pdf (available from the website) to showcase its work. This is only one of a set of marketing strategies that embrace new media such as the microbloggnig site Twitter, where the group's writers already have a devoted following of over 1000.

The first novels by members of the collective will be released on September 1st and will be available from Amazon. The first titles will be Benny Platonov by Hong Kong resident Oli Johns, which tells of an exile from the former East Germany who believes he can save Hong Kong's homeless with his stories…if only he didn't have block; Glimpses of a Floating World by Larry Harrison, the poetic story of police corruption and the underbelly of London in the year heroin first hit the capital's streets; and Songs From the Other Side of the Wall by Dan Holloway, the heartbreaking story of a teenage girl growing up in post-communist Hungary who dreams of following her mother to “The West”.

“It's time writers started thinking less parochially and traditionally,” says Gupter Puncher/Oli Johns, “and more like the musicians or artists, who give stuff away for free. That's what we're about….well, almost. You will have to pay for the books, if you're interested enough. But not the sampler. Isn't that a fair deal?”

Gupter Puncher's novel `Benny Platonov' will be released on Sept. 1st, 2009.