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What Snoop Dogg’s Success Says About the Book Industry
- mttjj 6y agoWhy was the title changed to a single line from the article? Isn’t that in violation of the HN guidelines for submission?
- krageon 6y agoThe original title is terrible, in which case it's sometimes changed to something more descriptive.
- jgwil2 6y agoThe new title is also terrible. It takes one fact mentioned in an article about broad trends in publishing and elevates it to the main thrust, which it really isn't. Would have been better to leave the original title and let people who actually read it decide what to discuss.
- krageon 6y agoIf you have a suggestion for a better more descriptive title, perhaps you could share it so that it could be improved. I don't agree with your suggestion that making it more vague would be an improvement, but I can see why you'd feel the way you do. No reason why that can't be turned into a better title.
- jgwil2 6y agoFollow the guidelines and use the original title unless there's good reason not to. I don't consider vagueness to be a good reason. The problem with the title that I was commenting on (it has since changed) is that almost everyone was reacting to the title alone without reading the article at all. If a vague title forces people to read TFA before they comment, all the better.
- Bootvis 6y ago“And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules. Welcome to HN, Miss Turner!”
- BelenusMordred 6y agoFull article: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2021/04/18/books/book-sales-publishing-pandemic-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2021/04/18/books/book-sal... I honestly don't see why this is much of a problem? Does the book industry truly need hypebeasts to survive? 4% of your market buying the same paperback in some mass hysteria moment is not sustainable, that's just not how physical books work. Diversity in literature is a good thing, people reading different things is a good thing.
- kasey_junk 6y agoThe book industry (much like many content industries) has always been hit driven. The issue this article is bringing up is the way they diversified that a little and found new hits was via old fashioned on the ground bookstores. We now have pretty empirical proof that the algorithm driven sales via online and big retail sales channels make the industry more hit driven and less diverse. The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback? After a 20 year decline the stores had stabilized in recent years but the pandemic wrecked them. Too soon to tell but I’m pessimistic for their future, which makes me worry about publishing long term.
- pessimizer 6y ago> The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback? No. The tax break went on for too long, and that online bookstore became a global near-monopoly on all physical items the size of a coffee table or smaller. Before that, traditional bookstores had already been slammed by grocery-store sized bestseller warehouse chains - the more than a decade long state subsidy to internet retailers actually killed those.
- bennysomething 6y agoAny stats to back that up?
- greenie_beans 6y ago
- runj__ 6y agoHasn't this always been the case? 1000 copies sold is seen as pretty ok for a first time author. It's kind of the same as with musical artists.
- PeterisP 6y agoNo, historically most of these books would simply not be published; the publisher would make a run only if they believe they can sell a larger quantity - and they had more means (more control over distribution and marketing) to ensure that they sell most of what they printed even if it turned out to be not so popular.
- funkattack 6y agoThat is called the long tail, right?
- tasubotadas 6y agoIt's the same with actors, artists, painters, atheletes... you name it.
- fighterpilot 6y agoRight. It's a property of winner-take-all pursuits where the maximum scale is at the unit of the individual and the product can be replicated for low marginal cost. It's especially magnified when it's a common passion pursuit since that increases the supply of people doing it. It's a recipe for an extremely large long-tail.
- apples_oranges 6y agoSo are they are very bad at picking winners? What about the Top 5% of publishers, what's their hit rate I wonder?
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoLong tail: if you want a nice intro of the topic, "fooled by randomness" is a fun read.
- nemo44x 6y agoI think Nassim Taleb does a good job talking about this in his books. In essence, more and more of things that exist in the world follow a power series distribution where as this wasn’t the case in the past. We today live in the world of “Extremistan” where it’s winner take most. In fact I think he uses book sales as an example of this today.
- ekianjo 6y agoYup. He explains this well in Black Swan.
- intergalplan 6y agoThat's globalization and, in the "intellectual property" area: 1) the ability to record & duplicate things in the first place—being able to play the piano tolerably well is worth basically nothing now, socially or commercially, which wasn't the case before radio & recorded music became common, for example, and 2) ever-decreasing costs of duplication. Vonnegut treated of this in more than one of his books. He seemed to regard the effect as likely more socially destructive than it was net-beneficial.
- nemo44x 6y agoYeah “Player Piano” was a good read. I don’t think I really 100% got it when I was 15 but it rings true today still. Might reread it - building a collection of novels for my son in case I die early. And that’s one (as well as “Breakfast of Champions” and “Slaughterhouse 5”) from KV he should read.
- wisty 6y agoAssuming some kind of long tail, then this just means they're giving slightly more risky authors a chance just in case any becomes the next JK or whatever. Is this a bad thing? I'm sure most authors would rather their work was published, even if it only sold a few thousand.
- Aachen 6y agoAgreed. I also wonder if we underestimate or undervalue when thousands of people pay for and read your material. (Many of those books won't sell close to 5k copies, but that's the bar the article set.)
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoI think a lot of the hand-wringing about this forgets that books are very cheap to produce. A single annual bonus for a FAANG software developer could easily cover the full upfront cost of several books, including a decent sized advance for the author (not GRRM or JK Rowling obviously, but a normal author). A book that sells 5k copies probably isn't making money, but it also isn't losing a large amount unless they gave the author an unusually large advance.
- airhead969 6y agoPower law distribution of popularity, attention, wealth, and success. There are many important, insightful, landmark works that languish in obscurity. How many people read Chalmers Johnson or Bartolomé de las Casas? Heck, how many people even read all six volumes of Edward Gibbon's anymore? Popularity doesn't really matter unless you're trying to eek out a living with copy. I wouldn't count on becoming rich, or even comfortable, as a writer unless you're a public figure or celebrity already, or know one.
- a4isms 6y agoToo eek out a living is to be a character actor specializing in expressions of surprise. To eke out a living is to supplement with great effort for only incremental gains. To kee out a living is to release an Indian Tamil-language techno-thriller.
- misiti3780 6y agoGibbon might not be the best example, his writing style is very hard to read because most of his books were written in the 16th century. I agree with you in spirit though. Most people are reading shit.
- rsynnott 6y agoIt's also, er, mostly _wrong_. Gibbon might be an interesting thing for someone to read, but it shouldn't be taken at all seriously as history.
- greenwich26 6y agoThe most famous Edward Gibbon published his main work on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, and the writing style is famously conversational and informal, especially in the extensive footnotes. It's not at all difficult to read. Though it certainly is long.
- zabzonk 6y ago18th Century. It's completely readable, as are many other works written at the same time, such as Boswell's Life of Johnson. As for the 16th (and early 17th) century - Shakespeare?
- tediousdemise 6y agoAnd 98% of the books sold were never opened!
- mark_l_watson 6y agoAnd why is this a problem? I write niche books on topics that really interest me, and if I write a book that a few thousand people buy [1], and perhaps fifty readers engage with me via email, social media, or a phone call, then I am totally satisfied. [1] I recently made all of my recent books free downloads at my personal web site https://markwatson.com https://markwatson.com so the situation is now even better: a huge number of downloads, and increased engagement with readers.
- amelius 6y agoI think most writers want an income they can live off.
- panzagl 6y agoI am a big fan of 'C++ Power Paradigms', although it does make me kind of insufferable when talking to people who bring up 'recent advances in AI'. Thanks for writing it all those years ago, it opened my eyes to there being more to programming than reversing linked lists and figuring out widget layout errors.
- mark_l_watson 6y agoCool, thanks!
- T-A 6y agoThe article's focus is fiction. Writing a good novel (not pulp) can easily take years. Royalties on a few thousand copies sold are not reasonable or sustainable compensation for that kind of effort.
- jgwil2 6y agoArticle does not provide older numbers for comparison but implies that this represents an acceleration of earlier trends: > Unlike the serendipitous sense of discovery that comes with browsing a bookstore, people tend to search by author or subject matter when they shop online, limiting the titles they see. Often, they see whatever a search or algorithm delivers, or find themselves steered toward titles that retailers push because they are already selling well. As a result, many of the new books that were released in 2020 languished, as panicked retailers focused on brand-name authors and readers gravitated toward the most popular titles.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoI believe the music industry is about the same, or close. That said, the music industry (afaik) no longer offers mega-advances, etc. How does the book industry do so? That said, if you're a sure bet (e.g., former POTUS) why not self-publish and keep more for yourself / foundation?
- criddell 6y agoPublishers insisting on DRM for ebooks means that once I buy into one ecosystem (Amazon's Kindle is the biggest), then that's where I'll probably stay. The publishers are giving away an enormous amount of power by requiring DRM.
- kop316 6y ago"Books about [...] practical, domestic tasks like cooking were were in high demand and drove nonfiction sales. Nonfiction titles for kids grew more than 23 percent as parents turned to books to educate their homebound children." I mean...I'm not surprised? The pandemic forced a lot of folks to stay home so I would imagine they would be interesting in learning new domestic tasks, such as cooking. And if a lot of kids were forced to be remote learning as well, that seems like a logical extension that parents would get involved too. In the cookbook world, it seems that nearly everyone has a cookbook, so seeing a general cookbook (i.e. it has a lot of different recipes to try) with a couple of well known people (Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewert) would seem like a safe bet to purchase. That being said....I would honestly pass on “From Crook to Cook”. I got it as a holiday present, and I tried a couple of recipes. A lot of the recipes were very off the mark for how to do things, which honestly surprised me considering it was written with Martha Stewert. The one that sticks out to me is a cimmamon bun recipe I tried in it. One of the (many) problems was the recipe only called for one rise, and IIRC it was after you already shaped the buns in the pan. They did not have a first rise (before shaping) then a proofing stage (after shaping), which I just added because I knew to do that. I had to modify the recipe in several ways and by the end it just was a different recipe. (if you are interested in baking, I highly suggest https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes . I have their cookbook, and it is a fantastic resource).
- ivanbakel 6y agoDid you try the recipes as presented? I can understand that an introductory cookbook shortcuts recipes for the sake of simplicity; and I wouldn't find it fair to recommend a more advanced resource unless the intro recipes give results so bad that they're offputting.
- kop316 6y ago> Did you try the recipes as presented? I can understand that an introductory cookbook shortcuts recipes for the sake of simplicity. Unfortunately, in the case of the cinnamon bun one, I would argue that is not a shortcut that should not be taken. The reason you have a first rise is to allow for the yeast to "multiply", so when you proof it, you get a light, ariy dough. If you skip that step, the cinnamin buns would come out dense and unevenly proofed since there is simply not enough yeast evenly distributed to make a proper rise. I recall making a different dish out of it and following their recipe, and it was just okay. In the end, I simply think there are better introductory cookbooks out there. One that I would recommend oddly enough is Blue Apron's cookbook. I found it used and decided to get it, and they have a lot of pretty good recipes, and they have a lot of "lessons" on how to improve your cooking technique. Maybe it was because I had low expectations for it, but I was impressed with how well it was put together. I have a few of their recipes that I have bookmarked that I rotate into my schedule.
- panzagl 6y agoSo basically when people who don't read are forced to read because of lockdowns, they pick books written by people they've heard of? I don't see how that necessarily signals a long term trend- do people really believe that long term reading habits will change because you read a celebrity cookbook during lockdown?
- joshgoldman 6y agoSurprised people here even know who snoop dog is!