Samizdat is a sexy word borrowed from Russian, as its foreign-to-English consonant cluster zd unmistakably signals. But its literal translation renders a very unsexy, even dopey, notion in the anglophone world: self-publishing.

I can hear your cringe. “Self-publishing” is a polite euphemism for “vanity publishing,” which means 1) you are such a terrible writer you couldn’t persuade even the newest, poorest, most-desperate-to-prove-herself New York literary agent to shop your manuscript around, and therefore 2) you shelled out several thousand bucks to a parasitic scammer who feeds off fragile egos and probably has a brother in the bail bond business, with the result that 3) you can hold your own hardcover, yes, but with such unbelievably lousy cover art and an unforgivable font, not to mention the too-thick, stark-white, badly laid-out pages within, that only your mom and a handful of friends highly susceptible to guilt trips are going to buy it. But they sure aren’t gonna read it. (Well, maybe your mom will.)

The funny thing is, the samizdat’s endearing virtue was precisely its shoddy production quality…