Author MetaCultures?

The Werewolf of Fever Swamp (TV special) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Right, OK. My writing journey began in the public sense on Myspace. This was the time before ebooks began their ascent and Lulu.com was where aspiring, Indie Authors went to get their stuff out there. It still is, but I think it has become secondary to both CreateSpace, and ebooks in general.

Now I would blog on Myspace, share my writing, and thoughts on almost any subject which attracted a good amount of attention, met some cool people, and had my share of internet heartache.

Now putting “author” or “writer” along with Lulu.com on my Myspace profile attracted all sorts of people. For both  good and ill. Among them I came across a certain notorious… horror author/publisher, who  I’m pretty sure many of us have encountered at one point or another. My only reason for even bringing him up is as a lead in to an observation I have made regarding online writing, and author metacultures.

Via my encounter with the notorious horror writer I observed what I guess I’ll term the Chicago horror-Gothic authors. This metaculure seems to be made largely of authors who publish through small publishers dedicated to horror and Gothic genres.  They also seem, how shall I put it? Well, they hold themselves in rather high regard…

Anyhow, I made the observation there seem to be at least two (and there may be others) parallel author cultures going, on, setting aside those who are part of the NY Publishing Establishment. You seem to have this small time press culture which as far as I can tell is mainly focused on horror and Gothic genres. Much of it seems to have an epicenter in Illinois.

And then there are those of us who mainly e-publish via Amazon Kindle and Smashwords.

Am I crazy? Is this just a figment of my own mind and there really is no demarcation going on?

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