Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist

honest-broker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 83 posts

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

#31

Post by groby_b »

like_any_other wrote: post #20

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…

If they are "indistinguishable" from those book covers, I strongly suggest visiting an optometrist.

You may not enjoy modern art, and that's fine - but most of it runs circles around modern book covers. The latter are optimized to grab attention, without any artistic merit. They're the equivalent of shouting loudly.

Modern art may be the equivalent of speaking in esperanto or lojban to you, but at least it's still trying to say something.

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

#32

Post by droidjj »

> "Writers win the Pulitzer Prize and sell just [a] few hundred copies."

For anyone else who was intrigued by this statement: The essay links to another Medium essay[0] which links to a book critic's blog[1] which links to a 2014 article from Publisher's Weekly[2]. That article reports, e.g., that in the week after winning the Pulitzer for general nonfiction, "Tom's River by Dan Fagin, went from 10 copies to 162 copies sold (6,266 copies sold to date) on BookScan." The poetry winner that year had sold 353 copies at the time the article was published. It came out about six months earlier.

So perhaps for some poetry books, an author could win a Pulitzer and "sell just a few hundred copies." But that seems like it would be rare.

Anyway, these aren't great numbers, but maybe not as abysmal as the author makes it sound.

[0] https://aaronschnoor.medium.com/does-winning-a-pulitzer-priz...

[1] https://malwarwickonbooks.com/how-much-is-a-pulitzer-prize-w...

[2] https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/a...

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

#33

Post by rznicolet »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
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…

> I'd try to find a gatekeeper to filter newer stuff for me but everything seems corrupt Word of mouth is the best way to do this, among friends who read similar things to you. Even if you're recommended something you end up not liking, it's not because they're malicious, their tastes are just not the same as yours - and after awhile, you learn to adapt. Friend A recommends a space opera? Great, you have very similar…

Yeah... for new stuff, I follow authors I already like on social media and see what they recommend from other folks (and why). I've had a miss or two, but that's generally a good start.

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

#34

Post by rznicolet »

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.

And, with publishers, you can get both monopoly _and_ monopsony problems. The latter is, I believe, one reason the attempt to consolidate from Big Five to Big Four failed -- I'm forgetting which two publishers were trying to merge, but angry authors talking about having difficulty selling books, and reduced pay for them, was a key argument.

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

#35

Post by conception »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #15
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...)

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair

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

#36

Post by exmadscientist »

nomdep wrote: post #17
PNewling wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Hugo and Nebula winners (and shortlists, do not forget those) aren't perfect, but they're almost always worth a look. Pretending that they're total garbage is doing yourself a disservice.

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

#37

Post by like_any_other »

groby_b wrote: post #31
like_any_other wrote: post #20

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…

If they are "indistinguishable" from those book covers, I strongly suggest visiting an optometrist. You may not enjoy modern art, and that's fine - but most of it runs circles around modern book covers. The latter are optimized to grab attention, without any artistic merit. They're the equivalent of shouting loudly. Modern art may be the equivalent of speaking in esperanto or lojban to you, but at least it's still tr…

No, luminism and romanticism are the equivalent of esperanto or lojban. Modern art is pre-verbal vocalizations, after it had deconstructed language because having syntax and pronunciation are unoriginal and "academic", and fooled itself that higher language is no longer worth exploring. What is it trying to say - how severely language can be mutilated while still sparking some semblance of an idea in a sufficiently imaginative listener? Glorified Rorschach blots. I'll let MoMA make my case for me:

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79892

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/101471

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81527

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/35054

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79816

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/35548

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80712

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/32293

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/232

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

#38

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

Bookstores themselves are a good example. Borders and Barnes & Noble put all the local bookstores out of business. Then Amazon put them out of business. Now most towns don't have a bookstore at all.

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

#39

Post by jaggederest »

rznicolet wrote: post #28

As somebody whose first book came out last month from a (very) small indie press... yeah. In trad publishing, once you've got an agent (not an insignificant step), you only have a handful of shots at the Big Five publishers with your manuscript. If they don't want it? It's small press or self-pub, and good luck getting your book above the sea of mediocrity. The novel I've got out is urban fantasy, but what I _really_…

Please post your books here, rough draft / advance copies welcome, I'd love to read more things from the tiny subset of people who contribute to interesting topics like this on HN

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

#40

Post by qsera »

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…

What I am surprised is the fact that people expect everything to be an exception to Goodhart's law, by default.
Post reply on HN