A hundred years ago I started noticing the death of the publishing industry. It wasn’t a sudden thing either. Buying books was always a crap shoot - there were always utter stinkers that made it onto the best seller lists. They won industry awards, accolades and recognition too. It was always a fact of life… if ya bought enough books, you were bound to get the odd stinker that would be better used in the outhouse as TP!
I notice patterns and began to see that if a book was penned by a woman… it was almost assuredly a stinker. If the characters were blacks… it was going to be a stinker. If the book was written by any of the approved DEI flunkies and perverts - it was a stinker. And slowly but surely formerly ‘safe authors’ began penning dreck too. The ratio of uninspired fake and gay novels to original thought provoking ones basically inverted. Instead of getting the odd stinker, you were getting lucky to get a good one.
The answer was supposed to be “indie publishers”. The power of the computer gave average bums the ability to write and publish their own novels right from the kitchen table. Only… it didn’t really work out that way.
Instead of getting trash offered up by queers, BIPOCs and shitty liberal women… we got trash published by bums like Vox Day, Peter Grant and Sarah Hoyt. They weren’t the only ones, nor were they necessarily the worst. One author DID arise from the indie movement - WL Emery. WL is not a ‘writer’ - he is a story teller. There is a huge difference between the two.
I got his books and short stories off Amazon and highly recommend them. There may be other great indie authors that are just as good but none better! 👍
But… the indie movement may have deleted the gate keeping and monopolies of the old publishing houses and their cultural fascism, but it could not seem to be able to resurrect the story tellers, who mostly seem to have gone the way of the buffalo.
Hollywood is now having the exact same problem - they’re producing flop after flop after flop… and their tone deaf producers and execs just can’t seem to figure out why.
It seems things are as desperate in the film industry as they are in publishing … and toward the end of this vid, The Critical Drinker proposes the same indie approach to the failure of the film industry.
Can it succeed? I’ve seen all kinds of horrible “fan films” on OyTube and some of them will make your skin crawl because the authors and producers are as loathsome and awful as the guys currently running Hollyweird.
I really hope it works out.
I like Peter Grant's novels!
ReplyDeletePart of the problem I have is that I’m old enough to have been around when the last story tellers were still alive and writing.
DeleteIn today’s arts and entertainment… beggars cannot be choosers. Against the sea of mediocrity, fake and gay poseurs and (hork, spit) content creators… you can easily do a helluva lot worse than Pete, Vox and Sarah. But none of them are fit to shine the shoes of a Heinlein/Bradbury/Circhton/Forsyth/Ludlum/etc.
Filthy, I think your rose tinted glasses are fogged over. Heinlein was a grade A pervert and although he could weave a decent story in his early years, his later works weren't even fit for the porn industry. Bradbury was near the beginning of the sci-fi era and that's the only real reason he gets any attention.
DeleteCrichton was very good, but some of the more modern sci-fi and fantasy authors out there are still pretty decent as long as you stay out of the mainstream.
But then again I never have time to read anymore. I just sit for hours and watch fricking u-tube vidyas all day. Funny how that works. Maybe I need to put the phone down once in a while.
Heinlein was a libertarian too, wasn't he? And yeah - he went off the deep end in his later years. But even then the publishing industry was in trouble. They should have politely put him out to pasture but the guy's name alone was enough to sell books... and they literally had no one to replace him. Say what you want, most of the indie hacks today are just doing derivative works based on his bigger works like Starship Troopers.
DeleteI think part of my problem too is that I read all this stuff as an adolescent and to a kid - a lot of it was mind blowing stuff.
And I hear ya about OyTube...
Bradbury broke science fiction with the Martain Chronicles. It was so bloody bizarre that it was actually fun to read and try and get your head around. All that came after him and tried to follow in his footsteps were just bizarre people without any real talent.
Yeah, the kid angle is interesting. Some of the stuff I loved as a kid, well I re-read it as an adult and OMG was it stupid. Not all of it, but yeah to a much older person it barely held my interest.
DeleteMT Lane’s Murder of Crowes is pretty good story telling.
ReplyDeleteMost of the publishing houses require a certain amount of DEI or they won't publish you, I'm even starting to see DEI crap in technical books. If I see a land acknowledgement or a statement of debasing yourself for being white, I refuse to include it in our corporate library as I know its going to be trash.
ReplyDeleteOf course the same tribe owns Hollywood as owns 95% of the publishing houses, but your not supposed to notice that.
Exile1981
I wonder if that isn’t beginning to change, E? Seems like nowadays that tribe is getting impossible to ignore…
DeleteCan it succeed? Consider one's options:
ReplyDelete- Soil your trousers and do nothing while the established system further rots into stagnant paralysis, or
- Dive into the wilderness where you at least have the option to try *something*, where success is held at the whimsy of a slightly more approachable mob of clowns.
For the end user, the point of such an established entertainment system is to filter out the sewage so that you don't have to waste all of your time doing it yourself. If the user base is having to do the drudge work that system is supposed to handle, it is obviously broken (perhaps beyond repair), and users will either find another working system, build their own, or stop interacting with the process entirely.
The whole rotten edifice is too bloated, too stagnant, and too inflexible to right itself. The question is perhaps not "Can it succeed?", but rather "Which one will?"
Good points. The markets always win.
DeleteThank you for your kind words. Now I'm going to have to get back to work.
ReplyDeleteProbably half of the publishing houses in business today won't give your work a second look if you're a straight white male over thirty. I gather that such people have an incurable case of toxic masculinity - whatever that is. That leaves the other half.
When your work goes to a publisher, it lands in the slush pile. This is incoming potential profit, unsolicited, from people we don't know. Eventually your work gets picked up by an underpaid wanna-be editor and given the once over. Mind you, the editor in question is likely female or identifies as such, is an English major with a bachelors or masters degree from a check-your-privilege Eastern university who has never been more than fifty yards from a flush toilet in her entire life, never slept outside, never gone hungry due to being broke, never... you get the picture. So this harridan is going to read something that most people reading this blog would enjoy, and what? Submit another form rejection letter to the author.
Once in a while, generally with newer publishing houses or magazines, you luck out and a real editor reads your work. Rejection letters from these places tend to be politely honest, as in "We liked the story, but don't have room for it in this issue. Please submit it again in six months." or "It's a good story, but not what we're looking for. You might try (someone else)"
Okay, back to playing the keyboard blues.
WL Emery
Yes!!! And be quick about that next novel too!!! :)
DeleteThank you for mentioning WL Emery. I looked and found he has a new book I haven't read yet. It is on my Kindle now.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I hope you enjoy it.
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