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Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

newrepublic.com

11–20 of 45 posts

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#11
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

They can lie, but that lie will remain in the books that have gone into circulation. A lie on the internet can be reversed or erased after it has been consumed by millions of human eye balls.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#12
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

Indeed, I became aware of various conspiracy theories and woo through books and newspapers in the 90s

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#13
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

From what I've heard through self-publishing media, nowadays, traditional publishing isn't even particularly disposed towards pushing back on things like these. They might even be all for publishing works based on outright lies if there's an existing customer base with open wallets.

Supposedly traditional publishing has become more and more conservative (not necessarily politically) with the risks they take on things they publish, so they'd be less likely to push back against widely-held ideas that are outright wrong. They'll really only publish authors with an established following or works that have a large base of interested consumers.

Edit: I just wanted to add that since I've heard these things so much, going to a bookstore like Barnes & Noble feels super weird. The books look nice, but they're all expensive and I have no sense that the selection has been curated for genuine quality or informational content. It's just what happens to being published now.

I greatly prefer the experience of going to thrift stores like Goodwill where the selection is chaotic, there's no real expectation of curation aside from maybe broad categories, and the books are gloriously cheap. You can find great stuff there!

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#14

[flagged]

Going back to the late 90s I've been able to consistently buy books I want from my local B&N. I got most of the programming books I used to build my skills that led to my career there. My young adult kids buy books there now. They keep great hours and it's a pleasant experience. I recently went on a whim, at 8pm on a weekday, and found the best novel I've read in years. What am I missing?

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#15
post #11
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

They can lie, but that lie will remain in the books that have gone into circulation. A lie on the internet can be reversed or erased after it has been consumed by millions of human eye balls.

We generally consider it a good thing that written falsehoods can be amended to instead say the truth. That's what we do with book errata and editions too.

The bigger issue is the attempt to rewrite history as if the falsehood was never there, which is in my opinion a much bigger lie. As I see it, this can be handled by third party archives and by us as a society actually attaching repercussions to such outright lying.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#16
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

I spent years as a freelance proofreader and copyeditor. One of the reasons I don't so much any more is I was getting too many political books, books where the authors were not so interested in facts or logic--or even internal consistency. Most of these books were 'conservative' but this was not exclusively a right-wing issue. Ideology requires glossing over the complexity of the real world. It's draining to read this stuff, with limited ability to make corrections.

Hell, now I work for a uni press, and I'm seeing this in our own list more and more--writers are giving up on deep analysis.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#17

[flagged]

Going back to the late 90s I've been able to consistently buy books I want from my local B&N. I got most of the programming books I used to build my skills that led to my career there. My young adult kids buy books there now. They keep great hours and it's a pleasant experience. I recently went on a whim, at 8pm on a weekday, and found the best novel I've read in years. What am I missing?

What’s the novel :)

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a title algorithm, it's a character limit.

There isn't a technical reason why titles have to be that short, memory isn't in that short supply despite the RAM shortages. A function, therefore an algorithm, is deciding to truncate the title for some reason.

Which you find to be the reasonable explanation over just OP editorializing the title with their own hands because...?

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#19

[flagged]

I love Tattered Cover but to be fair the folks that bought it in 2020 ran it into the ground. It was barely limping along, you'd go in and because of their debt issues they weren't stocking the shelves so you'd be pressed to find what you were there for.

Re: Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction

#20
post #7

> Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance. Do they believe someone cannot lie because it’s written down in a paperback? Authors lie in books and books do nothing to help someone who “embraces” ignorance

The author clearly means professional publishers, who have editors and fact-checkers. Self-published books already lack trust. The reply also misses several other points the author makes, which I find ironic because it kind of goes into the direction the author bemoans: The author wrote a longer article to lay out his thoughts and it sure took him time to write and any reader time to read and digest and here is a quick oneliner as a rebuttal that took no time and effort and is superficial.
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