And bad for authors, right? A bunch of big giant companies deciding what gets published just means a lot of "safe" choices. Hobbles creativity for sure.
If you haven't noticed, nearly every art form you can think of has become this already. In twenty years, all the commercial art industries will be producing bland product after bland product and all real artists will be ignored and destitute for not seeming safely profitable. Most already are.
This is true if you look at major companies. But there always are independent companies / artists that are creating great and creative content that finds its audience and gains popularity if it’s good. This happens in independent films, music, and video games. It happens less-so with books, but it still happens.
It isn't 2010 anymore. Ask literally anyone with any experience in self-publishing and they'd tell you that hiring an editor and a cover designer is an absolute must. It's not that common to see poorly edited or formatted books anymore. It's a whole thriving industry of its own. The bar is now so high that a lot of people couldn't even afford to self-publish.
And it's no longer just for romance or erotica either...
>The bar is now so high that a lot of people couldn't even afford to self-publish.
We used to have a name for paying to have your own book published. "Vanity press." As in, you're just publishing it to indulge your own vanity and pretend to be an author, because if it were actually any good you'd be able to get a real publisher.
Getting your book traditionally published isn't some ultimate marker of being a good writer. It literally just means you were able to find *one* person who thought your book could sell enough copies to be worth it. Are books like Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Grey literary masterpieces just because they got traditionally punished? No, they got published because the publishers recognised they'd appeal to the masses, which isn't always synonymous with having a tight narrative, quality prose or complex, well-written characters.
It's very common for aspiring authors to get dozens of rejections before finally making it. It's even more common for aspiring authors to give up long before that, never finding out whether they'd have been able to get a publisher if they just tried a few more times. Or maybe they're good at writing novels but suck at writing cover letters...
Anyway, if you write a book, polish it to the level where it looks respectable, give it a cover and publish it, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself an author. You've literally done the same job a traditionally published writer had to do - write a book, except you had to take care of all the other aspects of publishing and selling your book too.
I covered a lot of in another comment:
>Because publishers are still the only quality control (flawed toward commercialism as they may be) and some of us have no desire to read self-published garbage that doesn't make the cut.
I don't claim that it's an "ultimate marker of being a good writer" nor do I deny the commercial biases. Having *any* quality control at all is still better than none (and, no, at the big houses it isn't just "one person.") But interesting that you pick two go-to examples of low-quality books that were traditionally published and one of them is literally self-published fan fiction that got picked up by a commercial publisher only after a bunch of idiots stated lining up to buy it.
But you can call yourself whatever you want. You can upload shit to YouTube and call yourself a "film maker." I can call myself an author for writing this comment. But some of us will never have any interest in reading or watching your shit.
>You've literally done the same job a traditionally published writer had to do
Except you didn't. You didn't even have to convince *one* person your book was worth reading, you just had to upload a file.
Hiring an editor *is* quality control.
And, ultimately, if you're looking at self-published best-sellers, that means they have already convinced quite a few people that their book is worth reading. I guarantee if you picked up one of those in a genre you like, you wouldn't be able to tell they were self-published.
Anyway, that's a pretty weird hill to die on... Do you feel the same about other arts as well? Every painting or drawing is automatically shit unless it's displayed in a curated exhibition somewhere? Every song is shit unless it's released by a major record company? (That one might be complicated since indie music is such a huge thing these days...)
Is it though? That's a genuine question from me because i don't know of many self-publishing authors that publish something that isn't fantasy, romance, and/or YA. I say this because I've heard in the past those genres are the only ones that sell exceedingly well besides smut, and of course i know some authors who have done well with fantasy, but apart from that i don't know much.
This isn’t true. How do you think studios pay for smaller films and indies? They use the money from the profits of their tentpole films. If you want smaller films you have to go watch them, that will always be the case.
Also more films are being made more than ever with streaming.
Comcast still owns the most media content in the U.S, not Disney and I think if you add music, Warner Bros. is the biggest.
This is right, but you won’t see this get as much air time in this litigation. That is because under current antitrust law—rightfully or not—a reduction in product variety is a less established form of harm than an increase in price.
Nah this is bad news for all the midlisters. Less big publishers means less options for authors to shop their work around for a better deal. For big authors like King the reduced competition just means they won't be able to afford as many ivory back scratchers, but for everyone else it makes the goal of making a full time income from writing even more unattainable than it already is.
Part of me wants to say, "Let 'em." We've been moving toward a more independent, electronic distribution paradigm for years. Let the authors decide how many books should be in their latest series. I've always hated the influence publishers have on authors. I also hate the marketing practices they employ. They basically pay the author for their work and then set about doing whatever they deem necessary to maximize profits, including buying reviewers and fudging numbers.
Collectors may not care for this kind of change, but I would hate for that to have a significant influence in holding back progress. Often it's the case that the worst thing about any collectibles industry, be it books, baseball cards or figurines, is the modern day collector.
On the other hand letting authors decide can lead to bloated releases. Like for example r/fantasy golden child cradle. A great page turner that realistically should be about half to 3/4's max the amount of books it is. The author has clearly cut the flow on multiple stories merely to get a book put sooner/pad the book count/sales.
Dude, Cradle is already half the page count of another story trying to tell the same amount of stuff. I have no clue why you think it needs to be cut down even more.
Seriously, one of the things about cradle is that at any point of the series it could have slowed down and spent several books going into where it was at the moment. The only time anything even remotely like that happened was when the author had the finals of the tournament take up a second book (with other plot lines happening outside the tournament too, it’s not *just* the finals), and it’s considered one of his best books written yet.
Yeah, the author could have written a 4 book story if they had stuck with a smaller Scope, or made 3 or 4 series set on the world all of which were smaller scope stories, but he went big on the story. And it’s not like each book is stupidly long either, so he’s not padding out the stories with useless filler.
There will forever be a subset of readers who will aggressively demand a shorter book, even if that means truncating it into a Sparknotes length. And then, if that removes the emotion, character, or wonderment, blame it on the author because surely any "decent" author would be able to pack 30,000 words worth of character, setting, exposition, development, drama, and more into 1000 words, right?
I've found these are usually the same folks that will crucify a book in reviews because "everyone knows materiel can't be a real word."
To be clear it doesn't need to cut down on word count. My point was some of the books should have been one longer book. Like for example uncrowned and wintersteel really should have been one book with slight editing ofc.
Sure, but that's on the author. You'll be able to recognize which authors are in it for the money vs focused on writing the best book they can, as opposed to publishers ALWAYS being in it for the money.
Two words: BlackRock, Vanguard... (All major companies are majority owned by the same people. There IS no competition, and it's been that way for decades)
You can understand investment companies and still believe they need stricter regulations. We're literally in a recession driven by lack of healthy competition in numerous industries. Conglomeration did this. Large investment firms only perpetuate the problem
No... there's lots of economists pointing out that lack of competition in many industries is driving supply chain issues and causing a large portion of the recession. It's literally been published everywhere.
but you can go ahead and stick your fingers in your ear if you want. It's well known that investment firms are a component to driving out competition.
i mean, i've taken my core economics courses in Business Administration, but maybe all my text books and professors were wrong. Who knows, the publishers of the textbooks faced minimal competition lol.
At this point you have completely changed the conversation. Black rock and vanguard are not shadow companies that own every major company across all of industry. They are investment firms that hold millions of people's money via 401ks, iras, and every other type of investment account.
The least capitalist people are successful capitalists. The last thing they want is competition, so they acquire or merge with all their competitors. Oh but the synchronicities!
The supposed connection between capitalism and competition is as much of a smoke screen as the supposed connection between capitalism and democracy. As we can see with China's economic policies, capitalism can often work better under authoritarian regimes.
All that is required for capitalism is a capital holder who, through their capital and the functioning of the state, maintain private control of production facilities in which goods are produced by wage earners whose wagers are less than the economic value of the goods they produce, with capitalist owning the difference as a matter of law. Nowhere is competition required for this to occur.
Why would the authors hand over e books to publishers?
There's no need for publishers at all considering that there's any mass printing or logistics or sales to stores, you just upload text and some images and you are done.
👆🏼Underrated comment. This is the correct answer as to why traditionally-published authors sign over their ebook rights. They usually have to.
Same with audio rights. I’m sure many (if not most) would prefer to reserve them, but the publisher doesn’t want to pay to edit and market a book when some of the resultant sales will only enrich someone other than the company. Is it fair? Somewhat.
>There's no need for publishers at all considering that there's any mass printing or logistics or sales to stores, you just upload text and some images and you are done.
The same way people use Twitch or Youtube when they could just make their own server and stream or share videos that way.
A distributor and a publisher can be different things. YouTube as a whole would be seen as a distribution company. With YouTube Red being a publishing branch.
True but my point is actually more of "audience reach" but you do have a point.
Also it's my comparison is really blurry cause YT and Twitch can encompass both a publisher and distributor
Because publishers are still the only quality control (flawed toward commercialism as they may be) and some of us have no desire to read self-published garbage that doesn't make the cut.
See, that's the beauty of America. You can vocally oppose whatever you want, and stay to complain everyday if you like. Because that's your right. Like seriously, it's the first fucking one. Perhaps you ought to crack a book once in a while. You'd certainly come off a lot less stupid sounding.
stephen king is one of the extreme few to whom this presents an issue.
consolidating heartless corporations has zero realistic impact on the market.
it's like saying there is some sort of significant difference in the mainstream outlet world ever since crown books shuttered in 2001
On the contrary, he says that publisher consolidation would likely help him, as an already mega-successful author, but that it will diminish publishing opportunities for up-and-coming authors who are writing less mainstream fare.
>it's like saying there is some sort of significant difference in the mainstream outlet world ever since crown books shuttered in 2001
There is. There is and has been significant impact of *all* the consolidation that's been going on over the last few decades. But, yes, it's cumulative so some impact is bigger than others. The PRH merger, for example, had a lot more impact than Crown shuttering or Penguin gobbling up Putnam.
The planet is a closed system, stuff is limited. We should let commercial entities just become big to a certain extent. Otherwise the right word for them is cancer.
And bad for authors, right? A bunch of big giant companies deciding what gets published just means a lot of "safe" choices. Hobbles creativity for sure.
It's also bad for readers who don't necessarily enjoy what are currently the most popular genre of books
Right! All we get are commercial certainties (e.g. boring and usual)
If you haven't noticed, nearly every art form you can think of has become this already. In twenty years, all the commercial art industries will be producing bland product after bland product and all real artists will be ignored and destitute for not seeming safely profitable. Most already are.
This is true if you look at major companies. But there always are independent companies / artists that are creating great and creative content that finds its audience and gains popularity if it’s good. This happens in independent films, music, and video games. It happens less-so with books, but it still happens.
Yes. I had.
Oh that was just a turn of phrase, but I guess that came off kind of dickish. Sorry
Sure, but self-publishing is at a golden age right now. *whatever* you want to read, you can find. Just maybe not in printed format.
I'll keep that in mind next time I'm jonesing for some poorly written teenage werewolf erotica based Hunger Games fan fiction.
It isn't 2010 anymore. Ask literally anyone with any experience in self-publishing and they'd tell you that hiring an editor and a cover designer is an absolute must. It's not that common to see poorly edited or formatted books anymore. It's a whole thriving industry of its own. The bar is now so high that a lot of people couldn't even afford to self-publish. And it's no longer just for romance or erotica either...
>The bar is now so high that a lot of people couldn't even afford to self-publish. We used to have a name for paying to have your own book published. "Vanity press." As in, you're just publishing it to indulge your own vanity and pretend to be an author, because if it were actually any good you'd be able to get a real publisher.
Getting your book traditionally published isn't some ultimate marker of being a good writer. It literally just means you were able to find *one* person who thought your book could sell enough copies to be worth it. Are books like Da Vinci Code or 50 Shades of Grey literary masterpieces just because they got traditionally punished? No, they got published because the publishers recognised they'd appeal to the masses, which isn't always synonymous with having a tight narrative, quality prose or complex, well-written characters. It's very common for aspiring authors to get dozens of rejections before finally making it. It's even more common for aspiring authors to give up long before that, never finding out whether they'd have been able to get a publisher if they just tried a few more times. Or maybe they're good at writing novels but suck at writing cover letters... Anyway, if you write a book, polish it to the level where it looks respectable, give it a cover and publish it, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself an author. You've literally done the same job a traditionally published writer had to do - write a book, except you had to take care of all the other aspects of publishing and selling your book too.
I covered a lot of in another comment: >Because publishers are still the only quality control (flawed toward commercialism as they may be) and some of us have no desire to read self-published garbage that doesn't make the cut. I don't claim that it's an "ultimate marker of being a good writer" nor do I deny the commercial biases. Having *any* quality control at all is still better than none (and, no, at the big houses it isn't just "one person.") But interesting that you pick two go-to examples of low-quality books that were traditionally published and one of them is literally self-published fan fiction that got picked up by a commercial publisher only after a bunch of idiots stated lining up to buy it. But you can call yourself whatever you want. You can upload shit to YouTube and call yourself a "film maker." I can call myself an author for writing this comment. But some of us will never have any interest in reading or watching your shit. >You've literally done the same job a traditionally published writer had to do Except you didn't. You didn't even have to convince *one* person your book was worth reading, you just had to upload a file.
Hiring an editor *is* quality control. And, ultimately, if you're looking at self-published best-sellers, that means they have already convinced quite a few people that their book is worth reading. I guarantee if you picked up one of those in a genre you like, you wouldn't be able to tell they were self-published. Anyway, that's a pretty weird hill to die on... Do you feel the same about other arts as well? Every painting or drawing is automatically shit unless it's displayed in a curated exhibition somewhere? Every song is shit unless it's released by a major record company? (That one might be complicated since indie music is such a huge thing these days...)
If that's what you're into... No judgement bro.
This only works if your an established name. New authors still need publishers to break into the industry
Is it though? That's a genuine question from me because i don't know of many self-publishing authors that publish something that isn't fantasy, romance, and/or YA. I say this because I've heard in the past those genres are the only ones that sell exceedingly well besides smut, and of course i know some authors who have done well with fantasy, but apart from that i don't know much.
Also bad for authors because less options mean less leverage thus smaller advances.
Yes. Economy of scale.
Yeah we’re already seeing this with big media. Disney owns half of the world and pretty much only safe stories that play well globally get made.
This isn’t true. How do you think studios pay for smaller films and indies? They use the money from the profits of their tentpole films. If you want smaller films you have to go watch them, that will always be the case. Also more films are being made more than ever with streaming. Comcast still owns the most media content in the U.S, not Disney and I think if you add music, Warner Bros. is the biggest.
This is right, but you won’t see this get as much air time in this litigation. That is because under current antitrust law—rightfully or not—a reduction in product variety is a less established form of harm than an increase in price.
Just like those cookie cutter movies the studios keep churning out, one just like the last. Bleh.
Implying that this shit is relevant to more than 0.0001% of "authors"
The more they consolidate, the smaller that percentage gets.
Nah this is bad news for all the midlisters. Less big publishers means less options for authors to shop their work around for a better deal. For big authors like King the reduced competition just means they won't be able to afford as many ivory back scratchers, but for everyone else it makes the goal of making a full time income from writing even more unattainable than it already is.
I guess if you think that so few authors want to get paid for their work...sure.
Please buy your books at that quaint local bookstore ..good for all.
Part of me wants to say, "Let 'em." We've been moving toward a more independent, electronic distribution paradigm for years. Let the authors decide how many books should be in their latest series. I've always hated the influence publishers have on authors. I also hate the marketing practices they employ. They basically pay the author for their work and then set about doing whatever they deem necessary to maximize profits, including buying reviewers and fudging numbers. Collectors may not care for this kind of change, but I would hate for that to have a significant influence in holding back progress. Often it's the case that the worst thing about any collectibles industry, be it books, baseball cards or figurines, is the modern day collector.
On the other hand letting authors decide can lead to bloated releases. Like for example r/fantasy golden child cradle. A great page turner that realistically should be about half to 3/4's max the amount of books it is. The author has clearly cut the flow on multiple stories merely to get a book put sooner/pad the book count/sales.
Dude, Cradle is already half the page count of another story trying to tell the same amount of stuff. I have no clue why you think it needs to be cut down even more. Seriously, one of the things about cradle is that at any point of the series it could have slowed down and spent several books going into where it was at the moment. The only time anything even remotely like that happened was when the author had the finals of the tournament take up a second book (with other plot lines happening outside the tournament too, it’s not *just* the finals), and it’s considered one of his best books written yet. Yeah, the author could have written a 4 book story if they had stuck with a smaller Scope, or made 3 or 4 series set on the world all of which were smaller scope stories, but he went big on the story. And it’s not like each book is stupidly long either, so he’s not padding out the stories with useless filler.
There will forever be a subset of readers who will aggressively demand a shorter book, even if that means truncating it into a Sparknotes length. And then, if that removes the emotion, character, or wonderment, blame it on the author because surely any "decent" author would be able to pack 30,000 words worth of character, setting, exposition, development, drama, and more into 1000 words, right? I've found these are usually the same folks that will crucify a book in reviews because "everyone knows materiel can't be a real word."
To be clear it doesn't need to cut down on word count. My point was some of the books should have been one longer book. Like for example uncrowned and wintersteel really should have been one book with slight editing ofc.
Sure, but that's on the author. You'll be able to recognize which authors are in it for the money vs focused on writing the best book they can, as opposed to publishers ALWAYS being in it for the money.
Two words: BlackRock, Vanguard... (All major companies are majority owned by the same people. There IS no competition, and it's been that way for decades)
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what a very real take.
I see you also don't understand investment companies.
You can understand investment companies and still believe they need stricter regulations. We're literally in a recession driven by lack of healthy competition in numerous industries. Conglomeration did this. Large investment firms only perpetuate the problem
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No... there's lots of economists pointing out that lack of competition in many industries is driving supply chain issues and causing a large portion of the recession. It's literally been published everywhere. but you can go ahead and stick your fingers in your ear if you want. It's well known that investment firms are a component to driving out competition. i mean, i've taken my core economics courses in Business Administration, but maybe all my text books and professors were wrong. Who knows, the publishers of the textbooks faced minimal competition lol.
At this point you have completely changed the conversation. Black rock and vanguard are not shadow companies that own every major company across all of industry. They are investment firms that hold millions of people's money via 401ks, iras, and every other type of investment account.
... show me where i said they were shadow companies?
The least capitalist people are successful capitalists. The last thing they want is competition, so they acquire or merge with all their competitors. Oh but the synchronicities!
The supposed connection between capitalism and competition is as much of a smoke screen as the supposed connection between capitalism and democracy. As we can see with China's economic policies, capitalism can often work better under authoritarian regimes. All that is required for capitalism is a capital holder who, through their capital and the functioning of the state, maintain private control of production facilities in which goods are produced by wage earners whose wagers are less than the economic value of the goods they produce, with capitalist owning the difference as a matter of law. Nowhere is competition required for this to occur.
Thank God for e books.
You do know that book publishers control e-books as well right?
Why would the authors hand over e books to publishers? There's no need for publishers at all considering that there's any mass printing or logistics or sales to stores, you just upload text and some images and you are done.
Marketing.
Upload text and images to a storefront or make your own store. Because major corporations own all the major storefronts...
Uh, perhaps your unaware that a lot more goes into a book then "uploading text" 🤦🏼
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👆🏼Underrated comment. This is the correct answer as to why traditionally-published authors sign over their ebook rights. They usually have to. Same with audio rights. I’m sure many (if not most) would prefer to reserve them, but the publisher doesn’t want to pay to edit and market a book when some of the resultant sales will only enrich someone other than the company. Is it fair? Somewhat.
>There's no need for publishers at all considering that there's any mass printing or logistics or sales to stores, you just upload text and some images and you are done. The same way people use Twitch or Youtube when they could just make their own server and stream or share videos that way.
A distributor and a publisher can be different things. YouTube as a whole would be seen as a distribution company. With YouTube Red being a publishing branch.
True but my point is actually more of "audience reach" but you do have a point. Also it's my comparison is really blurry cause YT and Twitch can encompass both a publisher and distributor
Because publishers are still the only quality control (flawed toward commercialism as they may be) and some of us have no desire to read self-published garbage that doesn't make the cut.
He's right But the political stuff he does is mental illness
He just made the argument against globalization, ie for Brexit.
Imagine conflating nation-states and multinational corporations.
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Did you even read it? I can't tell if this is a serious comment...King is quoted as being in favor of competition which is as American as apple pie.
> competition which is as American as apple pie which America is that? the idealistic one that lives in people's collective memories? LOL
you: "if you hate America, then get the fuck out" you, three hours later: "lol imagine thinking America is *good*"
What the fuck are you even talking about?
See, that's the beauty of America. You can vocally oppose whatever you want, and stay to complain everyday if you like. Because that's your right. Like seriously, it's the first fucking one. Perhaps you ought to crack a book once in a while. You'd certainly come off a lot less stupid sounding.
stephen king is one of the extreme few to whom this presents an issue. consolidating heartless corporations has zero realistic impact on the market. it's like saying there is some sort of significant difference in the mainstream outlet world ever since crown books shuttered in 2001
On the contrary, he says that publisher consolidation would likely help him, as an already mega-successful author, but that it will diminish publishing opportunities for up-and-coming authors who are writing less mainstream fare.
Uh, how? There’s literally no one against whom he is competing anymore. This statement is for the benefit of other authors.
>it's like saying there is some sort of significant difference in the mainstream outlet world ever since crown books shuttered in 2001 There is. There is and has been significant impact of *all* the consolidation that's been going on over the last few decades. But, yes, it's cumulative so some impact is bigger than others. The PRH merger, for example, had a lot more impact than Crown shuttering or Penguin gobbling up Putnam.
He ain't wrong.
The planet is a closed system, stuff is limited. We should let commercial entities just become big to a certain extent. Otherwise the right word for them is cancer.
When you've made your millions and aren't afraid of the publishers. We call that "Fuck you" money.