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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

#41

Post by cal_dent »

righthand wrote: post #13

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.

It's the same point though. Steam/Itch haven't fallen into the trap, which I think is because the friction and barriers tonentry in video games are less of an issue than other mediums.

But video games in general have fallen into that trap. There were certainly more variety in the mainstream/AAA scene in the 90s and 00s than there is now. No more major publisher really is in that mid tier wacky but interesting 6-7.5/10 game space anymore.

It goes back to the point that consolidation long term ends up being bad and the smaller/indie press is good for culture (and that is a big part of what Steam is, and I'd argue where the most interesting things in gaming have come from lately

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

righthand wrote: post #13

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.

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by hullo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #38
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.

This is a good example of something that sounds true but is actually not. Private equity put Borders out of business (famously). Barnes & Noble is now private but by all reports (still) doing fine. There are more independent bookstores today (in more towns) than ever before.

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

#44

Post by bombcar »

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 used to (years ago) find new sci-fi and other fiction by going to the library and looking inside at the cards and seeing which had been checked out the most, and grabbing one.

Unfortunately that's all digital now and so you kind of have to go by how worn the copy is.

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

#45

Post by mistrial9 »

hullo wrote: post #43
SoftTalker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a good example of something that sounds true but is actually not. Private equity put Borders out of business (famously). Barnes & Noble is now private but by all reports (still) doing fine. There are more independent bookstores today (in more towns) than ever before.

people give books away here in California with "tiny house" library stands. In a major college town, previously full of specialty and trade bookstores, now very empty.

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

#46

Post by ekianjo »

chuckadams wrote: post #23
Aurornis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 went back to goodreads and the rating since my last visit had dropped drastically. A bot campaign or something fooled me, I guess. Sites like Goodreads and Rotten Tomatoes are targeted by marketing firms. Every popular outlet that become a proxy for reviews gets…

> Nobody takes Product Hunt seriously now. That's putting it mildly. I'm not normally about doing this sort of thing, but I went out of my way to find and install an extension to block google results for producthunt and alternative.to specifically.

Was Product Hunt ever taken seriously by anyone? Since day1 it was an obvious target for influence hacking

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

#47

Post by onetokeoverthe »

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…

[dead]

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

#48

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

righthand wrote: post #13

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.

The article doesn't apply to Steam because Steam is a marketplace, not a publisher. Valve takes on no financial risk in accepting a new game into Steam.

And there has been a fair bit of consolidation going on among publishers. IIRC there are only about a dozen giant corporations left that finance AAA games and they have been losing appetite for risk over the past year, cancelling many games in development and shuttering many game studios.

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

#49

Post by zachbee »

One thing that people rarely discuss about book publishing is a change to US tax law in the late 70s that meant that publishers couldn't write down the value of unsold inventory, but could write off that inventory by destroying it.

That meant that poorly selling books were destroyed to realize a taxable loss, which killed the ability for books to slowly "pick up steam" over a year or two to eventually generate a profit for the publisher. If you didn't make a profit fast, the backlog got destroyed and the book lost its chance to make money.

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

#50

Post by Finnucane »

rznicolet wrote: post #34
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.

CBS/Viacom was trying to unload Simon & Schuster. PenguinRandomHouse wanted to buy, but it ended up selling to a private equity company. A rare instance where that was actually the better option.
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