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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

#71

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

Sounds true because (at least in some cases) it is. All the books I've bought in the past 20 years have been online, mostly from Amazon. When I was a kid my town had at least six bookstores that I can remember. Barnes and Noble and Borders came and they were fantastic but caused all the locals to close up within a decade. Then Borders closed and a few years later Barnes and Noble was gone. I go there today and there aren't any bookstores. Nobody thinks a bookstore in a small town is a viable business in the Amazon era, so none have been opened.

Big cities I'm sure still have some, they have enough population to support them even if most people don't patronize them.

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

#72

Post by SoftTalker »

JackFr wrote: post #51
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.

Barnes and Noble put local bookstores out of business by doing a better job at being a bookstore.

Yes, as Walmart put local retailers out of business by doing a better job of being a department store.

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

#73

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

righthand wrote: post #70
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shutter…

But even if Microsoft buys out all the major studios, and Nintendo and Sony, there would still be a healthy counter-culture indie market, which is what the article discusses as a solution to the crisis in the other mediums. So again what makes video games special that it can nurture a healthy market across many (locked-in even) platforms? Arguably it might be the many available distribution channels (miniclip.com vs…

Indie games are almost always self-financed, the equivalent of an book author supporting themselves during the writing of the book and self-publishing, so the article doesn't apply to them either. I'd also wager that more people play games than read books and the volume of new games isn't as high (another post in this thread mentions 7.5k new books come out per day on Amazon per day versus 19k new games on Steam in all of 2025) so discoverability is less of an issue for indie games than for self-published books.

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

#74

Post by rincebrain »

SoftTalker wrote: post #71
hullo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds true because (at least in some cases) it is. All the books I've bought in the past 20 years have been online, mostly from Amazon. When I was a kid my town had at least six bookstores that I can remember. Barnes and Noble and Borders came and they were fantastic but caused all the locals to close up within a decade. Then Borders closed and a few years later Barnes and Noble was gone. I go there today and there…

I'm always surprised when I see B&N stores.

I see a fair number of them, scattered around, not even in ultra-populated areas, but the last 3 or 4 times I've stopped in to try and buy things for e.g. holiday gifts, they've had none of the things I was looking for in stock, and they always seem empty.

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

#75

Post by righthand »

frm88 wrote: post #65
righthand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about finding indie authors on traditional recommendation systems such as Gnod?[0] The less utilized and forgotten parts of the internet are probably a good set of places to push. [0] https://www.gnod.com/

I'm always on the hunt for good reads (hah). I just tried gnod with K. J. Parker, Ishiguro and Iain M. Banks. The recommendations were Alighieri (Dante), Cervantes, some more 17th century authors and Tom Holt, who is K. J. Parker and the last rec was K. J. Parker. Complete fail.

My initial interpretation was that it was user contributed. But it seems like a rather defunct operation now and nothing informing of some type of curation going on. Even the discussion board is closed. My bad.

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

#76

Post by righthand »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #73
righthand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even if Microsoft buys out all the major studios, and Nintendo and Sony, there would still be a healthy counter-culture indie market, which is what the article discusses as a solution to the crisis in the other mediums. So again what makes video games special that it can nurture a healthy market across many (locked-in even) platforms? Arguably it might be the many available distribution channels (miniclip.com vs…

Indie games are almost always self-financed, the equivalent of an book author supporting themselves during the writing of the book and self-publishing, so the article doesn't apply to them either. I'd also wager that more people play games than read books and the volume of new games isn't as high (another post in this thread mentions 7.5k new books come out per day on Amazon per day versus 19k new games on Steam in a…

Yes I think volume is more telling than analyzing the consolidation angle.

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

#77

Post by frm88 »

righthand wrote: post #75
frm88 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always on the hunt for good reads (hah). I just tried gnod with K. J. Parker, Ishiguro and Iain M. Banks. The recommendations were Alighieri (Dante), Cervantes, some more 17th century authors and Tom Holt, who is K. J. Parker and the last rec was K. J. Parker. Complete fail.

My initial interpretation was that it was user contributed. But it seems like a rather defunct operation now and nothing informing of some type of curation going on. Even the discussion board is closed. My bad.

All good, it's not your fault. It would have been absolutely great if it worked.

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

#78

Post by megmogandog »

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

Wow, I hadn't heard about the fraud in 2024, which I looked up in response to your comment. That's troubling to say the least.

Bias, though, is going to be inevitable and the Hugos are going to represent the taste of the Worldcon voters. It seems like overall there's been a happy confluence for awhile now between their taste and general sf taste.

I've discovered three of my favorite contemporary sf authors through recent Hugos: Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, and Tamsyn Muir. I've read other recent nominees where I was unmoved or even questioned their inclusion.

I've also read a decent selection of historical winners, by no means exhaustive or even the majority, and the worst was without a doubt Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer.

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

#79

Post by schlauerfox »

mistrial9 wrote: post #45
hullo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a community called "Little Free Library" or imitators. they're all over my nighboorhood. https://littlefreelibrary.org/

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

#80

Post by groby_b »

like_any_other wrote: post #37
groby_b wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I mean, let's take the easy lay-up - why Mondrian's "Composition No. II, with Red and Blue" actually is a very important painting: (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79816 from your list)

- It's a major transition point in abstract art, moving from painting that still have an echo of representation to the purely abstract. You might not like it, it's still an important part of art history. It's talking (with fairly sophisticated language, if you're able to listen) about art in and of itself. About the removal of nuance in favor of structure. About the use of white space.

- It influenced and shaped modern architecture, via Bauhaus and "International Style" skyscrapers. That painting (and Mondrian's approach) shaped every major modern downtown, to some extent.

- It's the precursor of the entire field of graphic design.

Again, you may not like it. Art has always been in the eye of the beholder. You may dislike what it says. But it does say a lot, clearly and in a well thought-out way.

It says even more if you see it in the context of his earlier tree paintings. For folks who care, a rough sequence:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening;_Red_Tree

- https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-gray-tree.jsp

- https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-flowering-apple-tree.jsp

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

(Most art gains if you see it in the larger context of the artist's work. Most modern art exhibitions fail to make that clear)

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