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by Barbara Beckwith

As a well-published essayist for newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and New Age, I was miffed when editors turned down my most recent submissions. I'd written them in the same conversational style that publications had praised and paid me well for.

But I'd switched topics: I was now writing about racism (my own) and white privilege (my own, as well), and no publication seemed interested.

So I chose to independently publish. My goals were modest: I'd use a copy shop to produce an inexpensive booklet that I'd just hand out at the class, White People Challenging Racism: Moving From Talk to Action, that I've been co-facilitating at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education since 2001.

I paid the graphic artist I play squash with daily to proofread and format a 38-page "chapbook" of ten essays that I'd written over the past few years, with feedback from racial justice activists and from fellow essayists I knew through the National Writers Union.

It cost me about $60 to pay a techie to help me register my copyright via the U.S. Copyright Office, using the name Inquiring Minds as my publisher name. My local Harvard Square copy shop, FlashPrint, charged me about $50 for set up costs, plus just over $200 for my first printing of 200 copies. I gave copies to the 16 people who helped me, and posted one or two of the essays on my blog.

I heard back from far more people than I would have had I published these essays in various publications. And after two prominent racial justice activists emailed me unsolicited praise, I asked if I could use what they said as blurbs on the back cover. I've since printed two more "editions," adding those blurbs and deleting an anecdote about stereotyping that upset my sister, replacing it with a similar anecdote from my cousin that she okayed.

My booklet went further than I imagined: I found that I could reach a good number of readers on my own, without the help of an agent or publisher. I gave my booklet away in my classes, but sold it at National Writers Union and social/racial justice events.

At a White Privilege Conference, I dropped by the display table of a "real" publisher, the New Jersey-based racial justice micro-publisher, Crandall, Dostie and Douglass. Soon after, I later pitched my booklet to the publisher as an accessible and inexpensive introductory booklet that would serve as a "bridge" between pricier books and academic monographs on his list. I wisely ran the publisher's author-distributor contract past the NWU's Grievance and Contract Division to insure that the terms were fair. He now distributes my book via www.cddbooks.com , selling it for $8.95, of which I get $4.50.

I do wonder: Is this a slippery slope I'm going down?

Will self-publishing this booklet make me give up on submitting my essays to magazines and newspapers? Am I losing the persistence "muscles" I've worked so hard to build, that determination to keep submitting until an editor accepts each submission and it appears in print?

Back in the 70s, I started writing back as a way to explore the world, to share what I found, and to get the word out about issues I cared about. I eventually discovered that I could get paid for my writing, first as a reporter and then as a freelancer. For years, I've been writing, and as a National Writers Union activist, encouraging others to write "for love AND money."

Ed. note: Barbara is NWU-Boston co-chair. Visit her Web site to see more of her essays.