OAKLEY, Be
Publishing Now: GenderFails Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing

“Publishing Now: GenderFails Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is a 18,000 words/35 Chapters book about my journey running GenderFail.
We aren’t taught anything about actually finding ways to make a living being an artist from art school. It’s bullshit especially when you think about the debt working class and low-income are getting into for the off chance of making their dreams a reality. I found a way to make a living off my publishing platform GenderFail and in this publication I share how I think that happened. This is the professional practices or guide I wish I had when I first started out.
With GenderFail I didn’t have any funding when I started and over the 7 years of the project I have found a way to make the work I want while also paying my bills. Publishing Now: GenderFails Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is my attempt to have an honest account of advise, true stories, resources and other information that can help other low-income and working class people find ways of making a living as a artists. This book also acts as a crystallization of my interests and goals as an educator. The title in part, Publishing Now, is taken from a class that I taught for 4 semester at SMFA at Tufts. In this I wanted to give an honest survey and account from the perspective of a working class artist and publisher. This book in many ways is the core of what that class intended to share.
Publishing Now: GenderFails Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is imperfect and acts as just one account of one artist. My hope is this publication will help inspire and motivate other working artists to share this journey to help low-income and working class people find ways to make money in the arts.”
—Be Oakley

Published by GenderFail Press, 2023
Artists' Writings / Book Culture / Economy / Queer Culture