No offense to y’all, but how can it possibly be that Old Norse scholars are sitting around wondering how publishers can sell their books? This is quite possibly the most mind-boggling thing I’ve ever read in this history of reading about publishing.
Old Norse scholars and publishers, here is my advice for you, free of charge. Get your heads out of your asses about your audience and, even if you feel like folks who worship the gods of the people you study are stupid or ridiculous or spent too much time playing D&D or being in prison or smoking pot or all three as youngsters, suck it up and MARKET YOUR DAMN BOOKS TO THEM.
The number of books on anything having to do with Old Norse I would expect to be able to sell to scholars and academic libraries? Um. 500. Maybe. Possibly 750 if you can guilt your non-English reading colleagues into buying them out of fondness to you.
Here’s my question for you, then, Old Norse scholars and publishers. Do you think Hilda Davidson’s books have only sold 500 copies? No, and why not?
Because folks who describe their belief system as “the religion with homework” will buy scholarly books about their gods and ancestors if they know abou those books. And they know about her books and buy them. Every book about Old Norse and Old Icelandic literature I have on my shelves I learned about from Asatru and other heathen sources. Do not discount or disregard that market. It’s just so stupid it makes my brain hurt to write this post.
Sell to the amateur enthusiasts who are interested in your subject.
Do that and your discipline will thrive.
Are you going to sell 5,000 copies or 25,000 copies? No.
But you know what the difference between a project with a potential for 350 sales and a project with 1,000 unit sales? A project with a contract, on a list with a future in a field with some excitement surrounding it.
Edited to Add: I was all snarky in this post, but it’s stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about this all night, because it does boggle my mind that people who have information that people want feel so unsure about whether they can find an audience for that information. I mean, how many universities are developing courses on neo-pagan religions? You know what lecture I want to go to? The one where the professor of neo-pagan religions brings in the Old Norse scholar and the Old Norse scholar says “Here’s what the popular conception of these gods is. Here’s what we really know.”
I am at that class. I am liveblogging that class. I am crowding the dude afterwards like a lunatic.
My point? Maybe viewing yourself along the model of “Language and LIterture” as if you fall in with the Spanish and Russian and English departments does make you seem like Old English, but for an even smaller audience. But what if you are a vital part of someone’s MDiv or their Anthropology degree?
Then not only do you save yourselves, you’re the model for how less popular language programs save themselves.
Filed under: My Imaginary Friend is Better Than Yours
I can’t help wondering why you didn’t also leave a comment on Old Norse News about this.
I’m guessing the author of that blog doesn’t read Tiny Cat Pants. (Incredible, I know.)
Because, you see, Mundane Jane, Old Norse News is for scholars of Old Norse stuff, of which I am not one. I am a snarky observer of things that interest me. Luckily, the way that blogs work is that when someone links to you, it is very, very easy to discover that they’ve linked to you and you can go and read what they have to say.
That way I get to be my obnoxious self and not disrupt their unobnoxious site.
Everyone’s happy.
Actually, these guys are just really concerned with their “rune cred”, and don’t want to be seen as “selling out”.
Well, at my university my adviser teaches precisely such a course (entitled, “Scandinavian Myths”). It’s at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, and I’m sure there are a lot of universities and colleges teaching something quite similar. We also have an advanced level (graduate level) course on the same topic (Scandinavian mythology).
But I noticed there were only two other heathens in our class of 120. And as enlightening as the course is, the best skill anyone of any profession can learn is that one learns best him/herself. Having a qualified bouncing board sure helps, but Germanic linguistics or philology is not something that will likely be of interest to the average Ásatrú adherer.
The logical organization for Old Norse is within a Scandinavian department (which we have, appropriately grouped with German and Dutch), second best in an English department, and third best in a German department with an older Germanic languages track at the advanced level.
I’m a practicing heathen myself, but the two disciplines (heathen faith and Old Norse studies) only collide on the popular level. Heathens, and I am completely generalizing, have little interest in Old Icelandic, the literature beyond what they can find in cheap translations on amazon, and books on Scandinavian or Germanic myths (again, on amazon for cheap). The question in the post was oriented towards people on my side of the Germanic aisle; those in academia, scholars, or those desperately wishing all our journals and our entire field of work weren’t crumbling before our eyes to be replaced by applied sciences and technical training.
Clearly publishers have caught on that there is a revitalized interest in Germanic mythology, Icelandic poetry and sagas, but almost everything has been translated and put in a cheap Dover edition. I think you completely missed the point Aunt B. on this one. I would go so far as to say that our “religion with homework” needs to take into account that there need to be specialists working in the field from an objective point of view and not producing reading at the 4th-grade level for those heathens who chose not to do their homework properly. I encourage you to do yours as well.
Paul, here at Tiny Cat Pants, all are welcome to be condescending know-it-alls, but they have to earn it through the utilization of such skills as, say, reading comprehension. You don’t just get to pull out your dick (metaphoric or real) and wave it around and expect deference.
So, goody for you that you have an adviser and go to the university. You think the rest of us are eating dirt here or something?
No, we are not just sitting around here eating dirt. We are also mulling things over by bringing our background knowledge into play.
So, first, let’s start with the approach of your adviser, teaching a class called “Scandinavian Myths.” Answer me this, Paul. When I go down the list of courses available for people to take at your Religion department, am I going to find the courses on early Christianity or Judaism or Islam under “Middle Eastern Myths”? I think we both know the answer to that. So, why are our stories treated differently?
Second, which I believe also proves that you miss my point–your university doesn’t seem to offer a class on neopaganist movements. It doesn’t look like there’s any faculty qualified to teach it. One of the most rapidly expanding religious movements in the United States and your school is devoted to monotheism and myths.
So, obviously, instituting my plan of having you guys seem like a vital part of a wider range of departments on campus is going to require, first of all, for other departments on campus to pull their heads out of their asses. Fair enough. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that my initial recommendation was to move yourself out of the closet of “some boring shit no one but those Tolkein freaks even remotely care about” and into the “No, look, what we know is not just ancient history but current and vital.”
But part of that is going to start when you view what you’re teaching as not just dead mythology but living religion.
Second, you’re making my point exactly. If you guys–and by that I mean teachers and scholars–continue to treat heathens as misguided idiots, then, yeah, they’re going to avoid taking your classes. If they’re even in college to begin with. Which again shows how you missed my point. You’ve got to get outside of this notion that you’re owed a traditional publishing path to success (I see that in your pissing and moaning about the Dover editions, too). The days in any field of “I write a book and I sell it to my colleagues and students and I become well-known and well-respected and my field thrives” are over if they ever really existed.
You and your publisher have an obligation to your material to go to your audience. You don’t just stand in front of your classroom and wait for your audience to go to you.
And if you have to write some popular books in order to subsidize your less popular books? Well, fuck you, if you’re too good for that.
Listen to me. I’m telling you that your “logic” is making you irrelevant. The post over at Old Norse News is grappling with the fact that the “logical” ways of thinking about doing what you’re doing are making you irrelevant. You don’t have to listen to me. Fine. I don’t have a dog in your fight.
But if you guys want to sit around and piss and moan about why the old ways of doing things aren’t working, but refuse to consider new ways of doing things, then you deserve your obscurity. That is the truth. I can give you no more truth than that.
Ósnotr maðr er með aldir kemr, þat er bazt, at hann þegi; engi þat veit, at hann ekki kann, nema hann mæli til margt; veit-a maðr hinn er vettki veit, þótt hann mæli til margt.
I should point out that I don’t actually read or know Icelandic, so if that doesn’t say something akin to “Better to be silent and thought dumb than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” only in more Havamalian ways, it’s because the internet steered me wrong in my efforts to briefly make Paul nervous that he was dealing with someone who might know a little somethin’ something.
Paul, many of us in this crowd already have our PhDs and are publishing scholars ourselves. Stop talking down like you’re trying to help us count our toes and get over your bad “I go to grad school at UMTC” self. Please. There is more complexity in heathenism than is dreamt of in your philosophy, both practically and in academia. What do you think your teaching career is going to be, Paul, if not taking students who come in knowing little about your subject, capturing their interest where they are right now, and showing them some things that are neat about your field so that they be more sophisticated in their thinking? If that’s a task beneath your dignity, do your students a favor and go find something to do that rewards the sneering bibliophile, like comic book sales.
Paul, here at Tiny Cat Pants, all are welcome to be condescending know-it-alls, but they have to earn it through the utilization of such skills as, say, reading comprehension.
Or, like me, by just saying it with such force and fury that none dare contradict. (puts dick back in pants)
Popular books like http://www.amazon.com/Word-Origins-Know-Them/dp/0195161475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221979030&sr=8-1 (Word Origins and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everybody). Or articles about trolls, Njáls saga, and so forth.
http://blog.oup.com/category/reference/oxford_etymologist/
‘There is more complexity in heathenism than is dreamt of in your philosophy…’ Are you retarded? My philosophy is admirably heathen. I’m not just some “young punk” graduate student; I have a life and a family. And I am a Swedish teacher.
Want to hear about my trip this summer to Iceland, and spending some quality time with the Ásatrúarfélagið at Þingvellir (the sixth week of summer) and the week before for the summer solstice?
All that I will maintain is that the two things, academe and neo-paganism are best kept separated on paper. I’m building my career on knowledge, but in my private life I enjoy all sorts of things (who doesn’t?).
I do specialize in Old Norse, but I am definitely more into my Swedish side and Swedish culture (what’s left).
My adviser (mentioned above) is just as interested as the religion as heathens, if not more so. He is a Russian Jew of genius abilities in Germanic philology; why hold it against him? Plus I think he presents a brilliant approach to tracing the origins of EVERYTHING, not just some selected time period of the religion and Icelandic-literature mentions of pre-Christian Germanic cults.
As a heathen, I think it is by far superior to spend time DOING and not talking. So with that said, and all the dumbass responses you all have to offer for a wasted breath (metaphorically at best, typing on a fucking computer), suck my fucking balls and heill hin almáttki Áss!
And put your fucking dicks away, I have little interest in your voyeuristic fetishes or Freudian slips (being caught by your mother).
Heathens aren’t going to buy books about Old Icelandic Christian texts, or Gothic breaking.
Look, I have a massive dick. Ginormous in proportion. I can type about it and fell just as confident if I saw you in real life. Get real.
Pity both Paul’s students and his teachers.
I just thought I’d correct two of my typos to continue this discourse. *Hinn, not “hin” almáttki Áss. Forgot to add the extra -n for the masculine demonstrative pronoun (hin is feminine, and Áss certainly is not). And *feel, not “fell.” Fuck off bridgett.
Ah yes, the “I got caught being a patronizing jackass and, when teased about it, got hostile and defensive” flounce. I’m going to give it just a 3 for originality, but I’m going as high as a 7 for element of surprise because of all the ways I thought this conversation might go, I really didn’t think three comments full of flailing, cussing indignation would be it. I am also, though, going to give Paul a 9 for asking us to imagine his dick, claiming to be a grown-up and yet still using the term ‘retarded,’ and then correcting his spelling. That, my friends, is so something as to almost redeem Paul for me.
It’s not often one gets called a retard for paraphrasing Shakespeare. However, the gods love a joke, so he’s got no worries.
Almost redeem me? I thought the dick comment was worth at least a full 10, since obviously my dick is not ginormous but just mentioning it makes me proud to have one.
I’m just curious when “retard/retarded” went out of fashion. Thoughts?
We’re all winners. Pat yourselves on the back for (supposedly) taking me down a notch.
I would say that 24 is grown-up, and I do suppose that every 24 year old imagines the same. In any case, hail the gods.