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The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

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Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#11

Post by idle_zealot »

BrenBarn wrote: post #5

This is not specific to publishing. The diagram tells the story: it's consolidation. Consolidation is bad. Giant companies are bad. In publishing as in other domains.

Correct. That's why even though the specific complaint from the article no longer applies, and small-volume books are easier than ever to publish, things are still shit, only in different ways. Consolidation in a market is just about the worst way to run anything; all the worst elements of a government agency and a profit-seeking business with none of the moderating factors of democracy or competition.

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#12

Post by moffkalast »

comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

People who don't see any issue with writing novels with LLMs probably correlate heavily with those that also don't see any issue using a botnet of them to promote it. So it's always the worst slop that ends up being pushed the most. We could call this "the Openclaw effect".

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#13

Post by righthand »

One medium where this isn’t really true is video games. Why hasn’t Steam or Itch fallen in this trap? Because they are honest stewards? Or because the software plane isn’t as large? Only news publishing and written word and movies. In fact movies even have a set number of prestige “risk” directors so they never have to reach too far out of the norm, see Yorgos Lanthimos.

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#14

Post by transcriptase »

comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

7500 books a day… what percentage are AI slop? Half the non-fiction and children’s books I see are clearly just free tier ChatGPT with poorly generated AI imagery.

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#15

Post by encrypted_bird »

BrenBarn wrote: post #5

This is not specific to publishing. The diagram tells the story: it's consolidation. Consolidation is bad. Giant companies are bad. In publishing as in other domains.

It's almost like competition is critical for a healthy marketplace! (Seriously, I _don't_ understand why this is such a hard concept for a lot of people to understand...)

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#16

Post by boznz »

comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

Influencers, and people with zero talent, but who have a public audience, are the new target for publishers, so expect a fuck-tonne more rubbish to be pushed by the usual channels and algorithms.

This is not a good time to be an indie author (I should know) writing the book is only the start of the journey, if you want people to now read it you have to fight a system dead set against your success. Word of mouth eventually gets you a few readers, or sales (thankfully) but there are plenty of really good indie authors out there, and you will never find them in the normal algorithms or book recommendation sites.

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#17

Post by nomdep »

PNewling wrote: post #10
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

Not that this is the perfect fix, but at least for sci-fi books you can usually look the Hugo Award winners[0] for ones that are solid. Not all of them are my cup of tea, but I have found that I definitely love some of the series that are found there. I'm sure there are other award types per genre that could help point you to some as well. Not that these can't be gamed, or sponsored or whatever, but at least it is a…

That was true until 10 or 15 years ago. They have been riddled with (accusations of) bias and fraud since then

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#18

Post by Spooky23 »

comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

Publishers served a really valuable purpose of curation and keeping good authors productive.

Now we have the double whammy of a consolidated publishing system pumping out whatever James Patterson’s assistants churn out and and a long tail of drivel, both AI and regular slop.

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#19

Post by boznz »

transcriptase wrote: post #14
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

Interesting history but what's going on now is so crazy as a reader. Amazon kindle publishes 7500 new books daily. There's no longer gatekeepers like in the article. About two years ago I was searching for a new sci-fi book to read - I routinely rotate genres. I did my research in goodreads and started reading a trilogy that was highly rated. Holy crap it was so bad a quit about halfway through the second book. I wen…

7500 books a day… what percentage are AI slop? Half the non-fiction and children’s books I see are clearly just free tier ChatGPT with poorly generated AI imagery.

true, but what percentage a ghost-written fodder?, what percentage are best-sellers milking their fan=base with derivatives of the same slop? It has always been the problem for the reader to sort out the good stuff from the rubbish, it has just gotten a hundred times harder as the bar for writing is now a lot lower. When I meet a new person who I get on with I ask them what are their favourite books and why, it has opened my eyes to some great books I would not otherwise have found, I really wish I had kept a proper book/reading diary so I could pass these on myself, hindsight it great!

Re: The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

#20

Post by like_any_other »

I deeply empathize with his complaint about book covers, but that's just what "design" is these days. This is Peter and Wendy, 1st edition: https://mflibra.com/products/1911-rare-peter-pan-first-editi...

This is a modern edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peter-Wendy-AmazonClassics-J-Barrie...

They could have just left it alone - "fired the design team". But no - they spent time and money to vandalize it. Look at the Museum of Modern Art (conveniently also in New York): https://museumsexplorer.com/museum-of-modern-art-moma-in-new...

https://loving-newyork.com/museum-of-modern-art-new-york/

The paintings in the most lauded modern art museum in the world are indistinguishable from those garish book covers. That's what gets recognition in the "art" world.

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