The Bald Eagles of the Book World
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Debut bestsellers..
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a60924704/debut-fiction-challenges/
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Interesting. I did not realize the below point, but it is good to see.
In 2004, there were at least 648 million books sold in the United States, and in 2013, 620 million; last year, there were at least 767,360,000 books sold—a significant increase.
But, for the heart of the article, I dont know.
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A lot of crazy shit came out during this:
https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Penguin-Random-Acquisition-Schuster/dp/194858655XSuch as:
- 50 authors are currently holding up the entire publishing industry. That's it. The whole fucking thing runs on 50 authors.
- No one wants or even needs to take a risk on a breakout novel anymore. Hedge your bets with celebrity authors and those with a big TikTok following. Publishers demand a baked in audience.
- Nothing new is coming out of traditional publishing. Nothing. They've lost interest in taking a chance on fresh writing and they no longer know how to.
We've not yet hit peak absurdity in the theory of reflexivity, but we will soon and it'll be very interesting.
Personally, I think as soon as Medium, Ghost, Substack or Patreon figure out POD or digital publishing, traditional publishers will fall.
Please love yourself.
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So... There's talent out there. Why doesn't a major create a small brand for new authors?
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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A lot of crazy shit came out during this:
https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Penguin-Random-Acquisition-Schuster/dp/194858655XSuch as:
- 50 authors are currently holding up the entire publishing industry. That's it. The whole fucking thing runs on 50 authors.
- No one wants or even needs to take a risk on a breakout novel anymore. Hedge your bets with celebrity authors and those with a big TikTok following. Publishers demand a baked in audience.
- Nothing new is coming out of traditional publishing. Nothing. They've lost interest in taking a chance on fresh writing and they no longer know how to.
We've not yet hit peak absurdity in the theory of reflexivity, but we will soon and it'll be very interesting.
Personally, I think as soon as Medium, Ghost, Substack or Patreon figure out POD or digital publishing, traditional publishers will fall.
@Aqua-Letifer wrote:
We've not yet hit peak absurdity in the theory of reflexivity, but we will soon and it'll be very interesting.
What do you think that will look like in the book publishing world?
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@Aqua-Letifer wrote:
We've not yet hit peak absurdity in the theory of reflexivity, but we will soon and it'll be very interesting.
What do you think that will look like in the book publishing world?
@Axtremus said in The Bald Eagles of the Book World:
@Aqua-Letifer wrote:
We've not yet hit peak absurdity in the theory of reflexivity, but we will soon and it'll be very interesting.
What do you think that will look like in the book publishing world?
What, peak absurdity? Basically bookstores and publishers will be peddling shit people go on TikTok to mock instead of promote. It's already started to happen.
But books will be just fine after we get through that nonsense. We like to think of books as fiction novels printed on paper, but that's far from standard. Before books as we like to think about them today, we had dime novels, triple-deckers, serialized novels and chapbooks. Fiction novels printed on paper might be in decline thanks to the lack of imagination of the publishing industry, but that doesn't mean books are in danger.
Today we have audiobooks, ebooks, and serialized stories in the form of newsletters, podcasts and apps, not to mention the fact that technology allows us to bring back older formats. Storytelling with words is definitely going to have some kind of a future, it's just probably not going to be ushered in at Barnes & Noble.
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@Jolly said in The Bald Eagles of the Book World:
So... There's talent out there. Why doesn't a major create a small brand for new authors?
Personally, I think it's the data disease and coveting numbers more than storytelling.
The biggest movie production companies, music labels and book publishers are relatively old. The American cycle of business is usually something like this: there was probably a real, bona fide entrepreneur who founded these companies at some point, but over time the creative thinking that built the company moves on to new uncharted waters and leaves behind the efficiency experts.
These efficiency experts are great at optimizing systems but they're terrible at helping those systems evolve, because they hate risk more than anything else, which is what built the business in the first place.
The internet has sold them on the false promise that data is a risk workaround. Businesses now have access to information their founders would have considered science fiction. Surely all this data can tell us how to evolve a business, right?
Relying on data destroyed Borders. And put Barnes & Noble in a death spiral. The only thing that pulled them out was replacing their leadership with an actual lover of books who had a track record reviving UK stores.
Publishers haven't yet learned their lesson, and they're still being led by data. The idea isn't to foster new talent, it's to minimize the risk involved when deciding to spend money on publishing. And so celebrities and those with a massive social media following are slam dunks—they already have a built-in audience.
They've basically lost their taste for the risk of developing unproven talent, which is particularly ridiculous considering how little it costs them.
That's okay though, because there are still plenty of writers out there, and they're finding other venues.
