I can't tell you why a slushpiler hates Crad Kilodney

I came across a blog (see slushpile.net), with this subject line: Why people hate self-published authors.

Do they? I wondered who these ‘people’ could be; does the writer intend that we conjure a specific demographic? Well, I don’t hate these people.

The writer sets out to explain why ‘self-publishing is so reviled.’ I began to read but stopped after a few paragraphs because he (she?) hadn’t begun to answer his own question.

It’s always a shame when a person chooses to waste some of his precious time on earth reviling.

There is no need to revile anyone who writes, or has the audacity to dream of others reading his or her work.

I was reminded of the self-published writer who was well-known in the small press Toronto world of the eighties: Crad Kilodney.

Crad was a famous curmudgeonly writer who sold his self-published books on the street.
He’d wear a sign that said: ‘Buy my books – they’re terrible,’ or words to that effect. He called his one-man, one-writer op Charnel House. A great name.

He deigned one time – it took some convincing I was told – to let Coach House Press publish one of his books. I was a junior coffee girl at Coach House then.

I’m embarrassed not to remember which book it was that ‘we’ published. It may have been Lightning Struck My Dick, but maybe that’s just the title I remember best (for some reason).

As it turned out, we didn’t move as many copies as Crad did himself. He got to say, I told you so.

Then came the day he said he’d had enough and was moving away, to California as I recall.

I googled his name just now and discovered that he’s back in Toronto and may not have been gone for long. He has ‘retired’ as an author of books but does write on www.cradkilodney.wordpress.com and a quickish look reveals some good, funny reading lies ahead.

As for the blogger who wants to tell us why people hate self-published authors, he fails to see the irony: He is one of them. So am I. Anyone can and, yes, does blog – you don't need a publisher, you don’t even need permission.

You don’t get paid either, but writers don’t do it for the money, do they?