Deren Hansen undersells the breadth and power of his book Artisan Publishing: Why to Choose the Road Less Traveled, claiming it’s a “why-to” rather than a “how-to” book.  The truth is that the book fills both roles, and more besides.

At the core of this very interesting meditation is a single realization. The current revolution in publishing opens up not only the high-volume, hard-sell, pulpy avenue that is clogged with so many (bad) self-published novels, but also a “road less traveled”: carefully crafted, likely small- or medium-audience, books. Hansen calls such publishing “artisan,” and the bulk of the book distinguishes artisan publishing from both trade (or “traditional”) publishing as well as other kinds of self-publishing, with reflection on why artisan publishing can be attractive to a writer-publisher.

Along the way, Hansen also dispenses lots of strategic, tactical, and business advice.  He also offers comfort, mostly in the form of candid, bracing observations.

Artisan Publishing strikes a chord with me.  At a 2013 Salt Lake Comic Con panel on self-publishing, depressed by the other panelists’ (probably accurate) suggestions that quality of writing had no connection with sales figures, I closed by urging the audience to write unique books, weird books, books that no one else could write, even if there was no realistic audience to read those books.  I didn’t articulate it as well as Hansen does, but artisan publishing was what I had in mind: a deliberate decision to tell stories that are unusual, maybe uncommercial, and that can only pay off over a long thin tail.

I’m grateful to Hansen for writing Artisan Publishing; next time the subject of self-publishing comes up in front of an audience of aspiring authors, I have a book to recommend.

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