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The problem with Le Guin's position is that it's so Manichean, a world composed of good guys and bad guys with no ambiguities. To her, it's either sell books l
by Booktrope 12y ago
The problem with Le Guin's position is that it's so Manichean, a world composed of good guys and bad guys with no ambiguities. To her, it's either sell books like deodorant or some ideal system where it's quality, not marketability, that makes books sell. This sounds good, but it's tripe. As you say, the Internet in general and Amazon in particular have opened up publishing -- Amazon getting huge credit because it not only allows freer publishing, but has set up a system that allows many thousands of new authors to actually connect with readers. Yet, Amazon is also a business focused on selling products at high volume with tight margins. These two goals aren't opposed, they're different aspects of a complex business. Amazon can be both a great contributor and profit-motivated, it's not that hard to see how.
Who defines quality, anyway? The tastemakers, like newspaper reviewers, who nobody much pays attention to anymore? Or Le Guin -- she seems to think she knows what's good. I imagine, what if John Kennedy O'Toole had the opportunity to self-publish A Confederacy of Dunces, instead of facing despair when all the traditional publishers turned him down. What if he'd been able to sell his work like toothpaste on Amazon, even if the tastemakers thought it wasn't worth publishing. To Le Guin, this would somehow violate the ideals the publishing world ought to aspire to. To me, I wish the opportunities offered by Amazon had been around back then.
- WalterBright 12y agoHerman Melville's "Moby Dick" was a complete failure when published in 1851, and was essentially forgotten. It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Later_reception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Later_reception
- jseliger 12y agoIt was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American literature. There's also an open question about the book's intrinsic merit versus the need at the time to "discover" American literature and find exemplary American texts of the sort that were needed to instil a sense of unity in a country of disparate immigrant groups. Menand discusses some of this in The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, which is an interesting and wonderful book. I wrote more about the book here: http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-university-2 http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-lo...
- WalterBright 12y agoHaving read the book myself, I'm confident it has a lot of intrinsic merit.
- Uhhrrr 12y agoYeah - I avoided it for a long time because of its reputation as a paperweight, but it's a great, multilayered, witty book. And it's unencumbered by copyright, so there's little reason not to give it a go.
- WalterBright 12y agoOne thing I like about Amazon is their large selection of classics like this, formatted for the Kindle, at $0.00.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoThank Project Gutenberg instead.
- WalterBright 12y agoP.G. deserves most of the credit, that's correct. But Amazon also deserves credit for integrating it into the Kindle system. They didn't have to do that, and they make no money off of it.
- judk 12y agoWell they sell kindles for it and they know most people will get bored of classic literature with aging dialect.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gadders 12y agoI think in all fields of artistic endeavour there is a tension between what is good and what is commercially successful. Sometimes the two overlap, but often they don't. And often I think some "bad" art tries to claim integrity because it is unsuccessful commercially.