The Dalit Caste Writer.

I wanted to be a writer since I was seventeen. For a lot of reasons I decided not to pursue a formal route into writing. Sending manuscripts to agents and publishers, seemed a pointless task. Agents don't read your work, and even if they do, it's still very hard to get their backing. It is a tough business, with thousands of people wanting to become writers and only a few being able to do so. But every single person I have ever spoken to in the industry has been rude, ignorant, unhelpful and mean spirited and very rarely do they read work you send them. They still believe, however, that they have the right to insult your work - work they haven't read. This puts me squarely into the Dalit class of the publishing industry. I am a self publisher for a start. That's a massive handicap. My books are POD printed. That's another industry no no. I haven't got a degree from Oxbridge and I am not connected in any way to industry insiders. This puts me into an untouchable category of writer, where the entire industry from booksellers, to agents and publishers, will not engage in correspondence or conversation at all. Even Waterstones have been up and down on local or self published authors. Whether you have a decent book or not, at one time they would not countenance any sort of offer to stock my work. Then they changed their mind and got my book into about 30 or 40 stores. Then they started to offer book signings. They had a local buying system where each store manager could make the decision to order your book or not. Now they've centralised all book buying decisions, and they've stopped offering local authors book signings. No doubt they'll change their policy again.

The dalit caste writer, will often have an awful book, poorly designed and poorly written. So the industry will defend its walls against us, looking at us and treating us with disdain, almost anger, that we have the cheek to ask for something from them. But there are also a lot of decent writers, who have tried and tried to go the formal route, and rather have their book unread, they decide to get their work out there and to see what readers think of their work. Some of the great and popular books of recent history are self published work that was eventually picked up by bigger publishers. For example the Celestine Prophecies. Bloomsbury which is now a massive publishing business, started off being a creative Cabal run by a group of intellectuals, writers and poets. And the fact is, I am less than a self publisher and more of a small imprint. That's what I wanted. A publishing business starting with my own work and moving up to signing other authors eventually. But what I got is an industry unwilling to help. Because I come from a poor background, with only a basic formal education, I have found it more difficult than anticipated. But this doesn't mean I will give up. On the contrary.