3 ms·

This has been coming to my mind in the context of fiction writing. Today, the writer's gold standard is publication. In fact, many readers say they won't read

by dsign 3y ago

This has been coming to my mind in the context of fiction writing. Today, the writer's gold standard is publication. In fact, many readers say they won't read anything that hasn't been "published" by a publisher. But the incentive of a publisher is money and sales, which means they will search for things that sell in volume, or handicap the writer's work so that "it sells." And how the publisher guesses if something will sell? They will look for things that have sold in the past, they have no other way. And they will do it even if it crushes the bibliophile's soul of everybody at the editorial, because they got bills to pay. And it results in...more of the same. It's not art anymore, it's commercial fulfillment, and it's not enjoyed to the point of being remembered. There is one good thing about fiction writing though, it's called beta-reading. It's a thing authors do, but it's also a great opportunity for readers to contribute to a story, to make it more to their liking. If you ever are feeling hyper-critic of a piece of contemporary fiction, as an alternative to cancel-bombing the author because they produce "bad work" and have the daring of publishing it on their own, consider doing some beta-reading. Remember, Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was traditionally published and an amazing commercial success[^1]. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5IV9n223M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5IV9n223M

dcow 3y ago
This interesting (and I might personally add destructive) thing is happening in the romance genre where authors are going back and doctoring up all their prose from the 90s and 00s to address "consent issues" as the current cultural zeitgeist understands consent. It's not that I'm not okay with people's definition of consent changing and with writing new works to be acceptable under the new definition. And I even quite like well-integrated examples of affirmative consent in romantic literature, because a good author can weave it in ever so subtly and naturally when working with a blank slate. But this need to go back and "fix" the older works really kills me. If I could buy the older edition from the publisher that would be one thing, but in the age of digital publishing the new edition just clobbers the older ones, sometimes forcibly in your library or collection. I think there's value to being able to read literature from the 90s and understand what that time period was like, culturally. Or even works set historically back in previous centuries. I think it's important to be able to read old works and critique them, etc. I would even go as far as to say that it's okay to write modern works that lack strict adherence to affirmative consent so that they can be critiqued regardless (this might make them unpopular to the masses as pleasure reading, but it makes them interesting as social commentary). It really breaks the illusion for me when you're reading a scene from an older work and you encounter a section that was clearly doctored, or which just doesn't fit with the time period the story is set in. It's just not realistic in any way and I don't think it benefits the catalog of writing we have today to expect that authors go back and "fix" their work from 20 years ago that's suddenly become controversial by today's standards.
TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Publishing - actually all the arts - are two separate businesses. There's the entertainment side, which is basically market-driven - as in creating work for a market. If it's unsubtle and relatively crude, it lives here. It can be a very polished and professional kind of crude - superhero movies, the best pop productions, and so on - but it's not subtle, complicated, difficult, or understated. There's the cultural landmark side, which is about unusually powerful and fluent work that changes culture itself in some way. [1] Publishing pretends to be the latter but it's really the former. It's thrilled to make a lot of money from entertainment projects like Dan Brown, Fifty Shades, and the rest, while somehow maintaining the impression that the entire industry is Culturally Important. [1] This mostly means white well-educated upper middle class culture. But even so.
GoblinSlayer 3y ago
Unpublished works are the only ones that I reread. At first I was even mildly surprised by this.

by dsign 3y ago

dcow 3y ago

This interesting (and I might personally add destructive) thing is happening in the romance genre where authors are going back and doctoring up all their prose from the 90s and 00s to address "consent issues" as the current cultural zeitgeist understands consent. It's not that I'm not okay with people's definition of consent changing and with writing new works to be acceptable under the new definition. And I even quite like well-integrated examples of affirmative consent in romantic literature, because a good author can weave it in ever so subtly and naturally when working with a blank slate. But this need to go back and "fix" the older works really kills me. If I could buy the older edition from the publisher that would be one thing, but in the age of digital publishing the new edition just clobbers the older ones, sometimes forcibly in your library or collection. I think there's value to being able to read literature from the 90s and understand what that time period was like, culturally. Or even works set historically back in previous centuries. I think it's important to be able to read old works and critique them, etc. I would even go as far as to say that it's okay to write modern works that lack strict adherence to affirmative consent so that they can be critiqued regardless (this might make them unpopular to the masses as pleasure reading, but it makes them interesting as social commentary). It really breaks the illusion for me when you're reading a scene from an older work and you encounter a section that was clearly doctored, or which just doesn't fit with the time period the story is set in. It's just not realistic in any way and I don't think it benefits the catalog of writing we have today to expect that authors go back and "fix" their work from 20 years ago that's suddenly become controversial by today's standards.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

Publishing - actually all the arts - are two separate businesses. There's the entertainment side, which is basically market-driven - as in creating work for a market. If it's unsubtle and relatively crude, it lives here. It can be a very polished and professional kind of crude - superhero movies, the best pop productions, and so on - but it's not subtle, complicated, difficult, or understated. There's the cultural landmark side, which is about unusually powerful and fluent work that changes culture itself in some way. [1] Publishing pretends to be the latter but it's really the former. It's thrilled to make a lot of money from entertainment projects like Dan Brown, Fifty Shades, and the rest, while somehow maintaining the impression that the entire industry is Culturally Important. [1] This mostly means white well-educated upper middle class culture. But even so.

GoblinSlayer 3y ago

Unpublished works are the only ones that I reread. At first I was even mildly surprised by this.