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Paperbacks and TikTok
- tormeh 10mo agoAs someone who has a hard time putting down tiktok, I have to say: Yes, the platform and algorithm is addictive and predatory, but some of the content is really good. Lots of very funny sketches, in particular. I don't like dances and whatever, so I get none of that.
- ursAxZA 10mo agoIf you compare the viewership of Game of Thrones with the readership of the original novels, the gap is enormous — not because one is “better,” but because different media win different kinds of attention. Most people are never choosing between Being and Time and an HN thread. But if they were forced to choose, we already know which one would dominate sheer engagement. That doesn’t mean HN replaces philosophy — it just means that attention has its own economics. And any medium that captures attention will inevitably show qualities (good and bad) that heavyweight works simply can’t compete with.
- bossyTeacher 10mo ago>If you compare the viewership of Game of Thrones with the readership of the original novels The novels are unfinished though and I hardly believe they will be completed by him seeing how the penultimate novel has taken him over a decade to do about 75% of it and him being 77 already. I would never start a series I know it is unlikely to be completed.
- ronsor 10mo agoAt this rate, GRRM's novels will be finished by AI whether he likes it or not.
- shigawire 10mo agoSlap Brandon Sanderson in there and they'll be done in 2 years.
- nl 10mo agoGive him The Kingkiller Chronicle to finish first please!
- disgruntledphd2 10mo agoWhile Sanderson might be able to do Kingkiller, he wouldn't work for Game of Thrones. Steven Erikson, on the other hand...
- xarope 10mo agoI started A Game of Thrones in 1996, when I walked into a bookstore out of the cold in Toronto, and asked for a recommendation (I will always remember that day for several reasons, not just A Song of Fire and Ice!) 30 years later (give or take a week), I don't expect to ever see the end; I have a feeling GRRM has kind of lost interest/passion in the Song of Fire and Ice series, since he's started churning out other stuff like Dunk, but you know what, its ok.
- gcanyon 10mo agoI'll point out that I read Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, which started in 1983, is projected to run to 19 books with 17 done. Brust is 70, but he appears to be in reasonable shape, and the books have been pretty regular of late, so it looks like he'll finish. I also read the War Against the Chtorr series by David Gerrold. That also started in 1983, but the last published book, the 4th of 7, came out in 1993. Gerrold being 81, despite his claims for almost a decade that books 5 and 6 are near completion, I am confident I will not see the end of the series written by him :-(
- lazyasciiart 10mo ago> the books have been pretty regular of late, so it looks like he'll finish. That was true for GRRM twenty years ago, but not today.
- gcanyon 10mo agoLast I read was early 2025, Brust was saying that he had over half of the next-to-last book written, and as I said, he's been on a pretty regular schedule. Plus, he's not (only) telling a single story that has to come to some earth-shattering conclusion (as GRRM is). It would be nice if he pulled that off, but there is a lot going on in the background of his Dragaera that I expect he won't fully resolve: there are multiple types of death, multiple types of magic, Vlad is the reincarnation of an ancient Dragaeran, he's going to/has killed a god, the Jenoine are a mystery to resolve, and the whole planet has a science fictional foundation despite very clearly being fantasy in general. But maybe he will; I'm actually several books behind at this point -- I'm pretty much waiting for him to finish so I can (re) read the whole thing from start to finish.
- bossyTeacher 10mo agoI wish george martin took care of his health. Surprised to see Gerrold mentioned here! I read The Man Who Folded Himself a long time and it is the first fiction book I ever had the pleasure to read where all characters were the same person
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- bryanrasmussen 10mo agoI think GRRM is failing the first two obligations of the author: https://medium.com/luminasticity/obligations-of-the-author-0c2f396f111c https://medium.com/luminasticity/obligations-of-the-author-0... Finish what you start — When starting a work that has readers or viewers, complete it if it is financially rewarding to do so. You have unfortunately made an aesthetic promise to your readers in exchange for money. Suck it up. Keep Your Customers Informed — If you will not be able to do the first, inform people as soon as possible.
- ninalanyon 10mo agoI'm with Gaiman on this. No author has any obligation, ethical or otherwise, to provide further books in a series to the readers unless those readers are paying hard cash upfront for the missing books. And what on earth is is an 'aesthetic promise'?
- djeastm 10mo ago>unless those readers are paying hard cash upfront for the missing books. Back a few years ago plenty of people would have done this if it had been offered. Maybe that would've helped his writer's block.
- bryanrasmussen 10mo agofrom the phrase I would expect that "aesthetic promise" is similar to a monetary promise, except as applied to aesthetics instead of money. A promise that something will be given. from reading the article "aesthetic promise" seems to be "that particular bit of aesthetic satisfaction that you counted on when starting out on the series", in other words, one of the aesthetic promises of a continuing series of books is that there is a conclusion, so you read one book and the next, expecting that at some point they will all be put together into a whole. Rather like how readers of Dickens day started reading his serialized novels in their papers expecting that the novel would in fact have an ending.
- latexr 10mo ago> I would never start a series I know it is unlikely to be completed. As someone who can relate, I advise revisiting that stance. I discovered there is a lot of value to be gained from some unfinished works, and there are some finished works which would had best be left unfinished.
- qntmfred 10mo ago"soon, this whole structure will stop existing..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE68aF538e0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE68aF538e0
- thebiblelover7 10mo ago> Over one billion TikTok videos will be viewed today, and yet, you’re still here, reading a speculative essay about media economics. I don’t take that for granted. Well said. Articles like these bring a sort of relief to me from the constant chaos of short-form media and the like. Very refreshing.
- peruvian 10mo agoI don't know. There's definitely fewer serious novels of a certain kind being published, and movies that aren't special effect spectacles tend to flop or go straight to streaming (for now).
- colechristensen 10mo agoFilms got dramatically cheaper to produce and streaming gave them a platform to be easily distributed outside of the very exclusive cinema market. Now the problem is quality and production. Studios don't have to be very selective at all any more so median quality has gone way down. Streaming platforms have a ton of content and terrible discovery which means there are huge volumes of mid content and a few gems that unless they are popular are impossible to find. Publishing had a huge demographic change and is suffering from a different kind of bias than in decades past which has the same kind of diversity-limiting effect, just substituting different groups being promoted and left behind. Culturally all over media production there's also a problem with a difficult to make distinction – "trying to be diverse" vs "actual diversity" and the imbalance is pushing people into silos: politically, culturally, and in every other way.
- websiteapi 10mo agoI like Cal Newport and own all of his books, but this sort of commentary is ultimately just pretentious. Aristocrats back in the day had similar thoughts about peasants even being literate. I assure you, by sheer virtue of quantity, no matter what criteria you use YouTube/TikTok/Shorts/etc has a [set of videos] which demonstrates quality similar to any novel or literary work. It's true there's more garbage out there than ever before, but this is an artifact of democratization of creation and this is good imho. I also reject the premise that time to creation is an indication of quality.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 10mo agoTime alone doesn't equate to quality, but you can't deny that creating something really good doesn't take a long while.
- thebiblelover7 10mo agoI think you mean "creating something really good doesn't take a short time"
- hdjrudni 10mo agoCan't deny that it takes a long time... Pretty sure that's right.
- YurgenJurgensen 10mo agoThat reasoning doesn’t make any sense. Half a billion litres of Coca Cola are produced every single day, but the chance of a bottle of Coca Cola being made whose quality is similar to that of a good imperial stout is exactly zero, even though they’re both brown carbonated beverages. No amount of quantity can overcome a process intended to standardise for something other than quality. If the algorithm aggressively selects for mediocrity, mediocrity is what will be produced.
- websiteapi 10mo ago
- andai 10mo agoI found this article interesting but I'm not sure I understood the point. I think the main concern with short form video isn't taste or appetite, but just the ability to digest.[0] Though the effects on attention might be more acute than we think. A friend of mine found that he's able to read books just fine, if he just switches off his electronics first. Suddenly his brain comes back online... [0] See also: The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance [even when switched off] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
- ahmedfromtunis 10mo agoI don't use TikTok but spend some time on Instagram. Despite the format, I enjoy a lot of intellectually stimulating content (and, sometimes, conversations) on the platform. Sometimes a friend would show me their feed and I'd be shocked at how different the content they are presented by their version of the algorithm. There are a lot of people putting a lot of effort to create very interesting content and we should not belittle their work just to fein intellectual superiority. There's really nothing inherently wrong about the format.
- thundergolfer 10mo ago> There's really nothing inherently wrong about the format. "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the 'content' of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind...The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception." — Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media
- eleventen 10mo agoI feel like McLuhan is so thoroughly accepted as gospel now that it’s refreshing to see someone casually dismiss the idea out of hand like OC. I would love to see a serious exploration of the argument against McLuhan in 2025, just for fun.
- thundergolfer 10mo agoThe crux of the post is this: > A closer look reveals that by vastly increasing the market for the published word, paperbacks also vastly increased the opportunities to make a living writing serious books We can grant that this is true and yet it doesn't seem to provide encouragement. The equivalent today would be slop TikTok demand vastly increasing the opportunity for "serious" TikToks, whatever those may be. A 'serious TikTok' is not a film. To think a film and a TikTok are alike is to make an elementary mistake in media analysis. I can buy that we're going to get an explosion in fantastic short-form content. I'd say that the _Almost Friday TV_ group, who started a few years ago, are an example. But this remains terrible news for predecessor mediums, who will suffer diminished demand and a general decline in the competency of audiences to enjoy those mediums ("great writers need great readers").
- Playboi_Carti 10mo agoTikTok in China has videos on the for-you page exceeding 20, 30 minutes. In the US they've been promoting 1-4 minute long videos for a while already
- vlark 10mo agoUnfortunately, the mass market paperback, the format that began with Pocket Books that Newport references, has seen its last: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/99293-last-call-for-mass-market-paperbacks.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p... Paperbacks will now only be sold in the larger trade paperback format.
- phantasmish 10mo agoOne really appreciates the “pocket” label of this format if one wears suits, sport coats, or blazer jackets, or almost any of several styles of coat that fall under the category of “overcoat”: these books really were pocket size! For those pockets, that is. The thicker ones are pushing it, but the ones closer to 250 pages fit neatly in a blazer pocket. Thicker ones are fine in the cavernous pockets of many overcoats (though, hell, so are trade-size books) (Phones work better in a jacket, too—I think we made a mistake running away from that clothing style, they’re like wearable purses that also make you look nicer. Sure suits are kinda wasteful with the way the jackets get downgraded if the pants are destroyed, but odd jackets we should have held on to!)
- esseph 10mo agoVery much ready for the east coast in particular to move away from the suit nonsense.
- phantasmish 10mo agoYeah suits are kinda ass. Again, the need to have trousers so closely matched they can pretty much only come from the same batch as the cloth in the jacket. Sucks. Looks nice, but man that blows. Jackets are dope, though. Get some summer-weight ones and even in that season you don’t have to use trouser/jeans pockets. So nice.
- esseph 10mo agoYou want to use your pants pockets less. I want more pants pockets :)
- nextworddev 10mo agook this is a pretty stupid take from an otherwise smart guy. tikok/YT shorts/IG reels is many orders of magnitude higher supply of slop than Simon Schuster paperbacks
- textlapse 10mo agoThere is a big difference between paperbacks and TikTokification: Paperbacks required authors to spend the same amount of time/effort to create content with a vastly expanded market and distribution mechanism. TikTok and Insta created N creators to M consumers where N is nearly the same as M. Making the distribution channels bigger but effortless to create content doesn’t magically equate quality paperbacks with short form hummingbird-attention videos.
- cwmoore 10mo agoNot sure about your N = M TikTok isn’t much bigger than open mics?
- tsunamifury 10mo agoThis is… not even remotely true or even descriptive of the nature of TikTok.
- JoeDaDude 10mo agoAnd yet, penny dreadful editions and pulp magazines that existed before pocket books... did they have the same effect? Or did they only produce pocket book writers?
- Ericson2314 10mo agoyeah, the story felt fishy without mentioning those.
- JSR_FDED 10mo agoSo good to see someone communicate his thoughts in a way that is clearly not AI generated.
- biophysboy 10mo agoIt has sort of surprised me how few teasers/trailers there are in short-form video. Seems like an obvious fit. I'd prefer it over the mediocre mobile games and dick pill ads they sling at me now.
- cwmoore 10mo agoThat headline resonates with me, echoed even. Then I saw it was by Cal Newport. Then I thought, when I have adequate attention I’ll read the article through, but I’m on the last 30 pages of a book and on my phone too.
- __rito__ 10mo agoThere is a fundamental difference in consuming short form content, and reading a book- no matter how trashy the book is. When reading for long hours, or for a short time over days and weeks- it teaches you to concentrate, to have some kind of discipline. It helps you focus and develop empathy. Reading is fundamentally different for the reader, and it makes them do other things well. Reading trash trains you to graduate to serious books- this is true for many. But consuming TikTok readies you for more TikTok. More Shorts and Reels and Snaps. Wathing short form stuff damages one's ability to do other things as well. And from the creators' perspective, I think trying to keep up with short form media for engagement's sake actually impedes their ability to create more serious stuff. I don't totally miss his point, though. When smartphones and "internet places" spread as media, those already ready for serious stuff will graduate to those. And yes, these places will have a small role to play. But they are definitely more negative than positive.
- theragra 10mo agoI don't see how TikTok readies you for more TikTok. You can safely combine it with YouTube longs and movies/documentaries. I set a limit to avoid too much TikTok. And also TikTok often shows me 3-10 minute educational content, which I consider pretty well made. Dan McClellan talks about bible, form example. Or Jason Pargin on different topics. Brittney Hartley on nihilism and atheism.
- MacroStrategy 10mo agoGenuine classics never disappear, whether it's been 1,000 or 2,000 years (like the Greek philosophers we still read). If something vanishes because of a technological shift, it suggests its value was likely fleeting to begin with. What truly matters tends to survive.
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo agoI find a lot of these articles that compare worries about social media to worries about TV, or worries about comic books, or in this case worried about trashy novels on mass market paperbacks incredibly frustrating. They miss the fundamental issue with social media that was never true before. The answer is data. No other media before ever had so much information about every individual that consumed it. No media before could tailor their content at an individual level. About the most you could tailor your content to was a zip code. This is the problem with TikTok. It’s not that the quality of content is low. It’s that TikTok knows exactly what you like and when you like it, and can give you the exact content to scratch that itch at the time. There are several problems with this. - It sucks up all your time. - You’re never uncomfortable and/or consuming content that isn’t what you already want at the time. That means you are rarely exposed to anything that isn’t releasing dopamine all the time and it means you’re rarely challenged.
- TranquilMarmot 10mo ago> you are rarely exposed to anything that isn’t releasing dopamine all the time and it means you’re rarely challenged This makes me question whether you've tried to use TikTok for an extended period of time - say, 30 minutes a day for a month or so. I liken it more to a skinner box. It will constantly show you low dopamine videos (+ ads) in between "hits" of content that are actually relevant to your interests to keep you hooked. You keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling past what is basically garbage to find the next "good" video. Sometimes you get many "good" videos in a row! As far as not being challenged, I'm not sure about that. TikTok is always trying to learn more about you and your interests and hobbies and what videos keep you watching for longer. This means that it also frequently shows you videos outside of your "bubble" as a test to see if you're also interested in other topics. Over the past ~3 years, I have had a ton of engaging conversations with others and discovered SO MANY books, games, TV shows, movies, and hobbies because of what is basically an "everything recommendation engine". Most of the books I read this year (well over 100) were recommended by people on TikTok and were novels that I otherwise would have never even given a second glance. I have very mixed feelings about TikTok. On one hand, it has led me to so many things I wouldn't have found otherwise (in a way that Reddit, HN, Bluesky, and other communities have failed). But it is also a depressing time suck that can get you to waste hours of your time on garbage and nonsense. Like most things in life, you get out what you put in.
- noduerme 10mo agoI appreciate the optimism, and it's definitely worth noting that this isn't the first or last time that the intellectual elite had freaked out about the lowering of standards for the garbage the proles are imbibing. But the hinge of this article is that cheaper access to mass popular fiction opened up a new market for great unknown writers. This was true because the medium in paperback encouraged, rather than undermined, the reader's interest in reading. You pick up a paperback in the train station before heading home... your attention span at least stays the same, or maybe gets longer as you learn to enjoy long form fiction. The paperback business model is still based on keeping your attention fixed on a something for a long time (you know, like "Stranger Things"). Media like TikTok are designed to turn you into a vegetable with an attention span approaching zero. So I don't think these are equivalent. The paperback vs hardback is more like Netflix vs cinema. Tiktok / short form video is like newsreels in Roger Rabbit, where the 'toons make the content.
- tucnak 10mo agoThe whole blogpost could be condensed to a single paragraph pointing out the analogy, and that's it.
- bongripper 10mo ago[dead]
- sneelakantan 10mo agoAttention like other objects of value is bound by laws. Quality <-> Quantity axis High quality -> You can attend to a few things with high degree of complexity. Low quality -> You can attend to a lot of easy stuff. EOD - Dopamine regulation now is based on how you train your attention. So the problem is more sinister than the "time sink". What you don't use, you lose. So once we spend enough time in low quality, it takes a lot of effort to get back to higher levels.