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Mainstream? What mainstream?
Apr. 6th, 2009 09:28 pmCNN.com headline: More authors turn to Web and print-on-demand publishing.
The article seems to focus on how a few authors have managed to attract enough attention through POD to get some mainstream success, but that to me is missing the point. Still, the article highlights that the two authors that they profile both received a cold reception from the traditional print industry and was told that their books would not appeal to a wide audience.
I used to believe that the advantage of internet-based publishing and marketing was that it allowed marginal authors to reach marginal audiences, but I'm starting to rethink what I think of as marginal and mainstream. I feel like in the eyes of the publishing industry, there is a narrow pool of people, a subset of the general population, that they think of as "readers", and they study how to reach out to these people and capture their attention (and money). And yet when there's a blockbuster phenomenon, it's generally a book that captures the imagination of people outside this group.
You see these phrases a lot in reference to such books: "I'm not much of a reader...", "My kids were never really into books before..."... taking that into consideration, I don't think the world divides as neatly into "readers" and "non-readers" as all that. People... most people... will read if you give them something that appeals to them, but the "mainstream" publishing industry doesn't seem all that bothered about doing that if you're not one of the people already pigeonholed as a reader.
I mean, there's the oft-repeated assertion that it's hard to get people to read on the internet, which is ridiculous when compared to the fact that the internet is made largely out of words.
People read, is the bottom line.
To put it simply, I no longer believe that the traditional publishing industry does appeal to the mainstream, except by accident... I don't think they know how to.
I have an idea for a post brewing, inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yuki_onna's post about the importance of representation in fiction, about the benefits to authors of representing mostly-overlooked groups in their stories and worlds... and really, that all kind of dovetails together with this, with publishers rejecting a work as being outside "the mainstream" and then being surprised at their appeal. "The mainstream" they're talking about is much like the so-called "Moral Majority" in America: a lot smaller than its name implies.
They say there's not much money to be had in writing, but I believe there is honestly a killing to be made in reaching outside what's being called "the mainstream", whether it's by writing more inclusively or more daringly or more experimentally. Many people who aren't "readers" simply don't have anything in front of them that they'd care to read.
The article seems to focus on how a few authors have managed to attract enough attention through POD to get some mainstream success, but that to me is missing the point. Still, the article highlights that the two authors that they profile both received a cold reception from the traditional print industry and was told that their books would not appeal to a wide audience.
I used to believe that the advantage of internet-based publishing and marketing was that it allowed marginal authors to reach marginal audiences, but I'm starting to rethink what I think of as marginal and mainstream. I feel like in the eyes of the publishing industry, there is a narrow pool of people, a subset of the general population, that they think of as "readers", and they study how to reach out to these people and capture their attention (and money). And yet when there's a blockbuster phenomenon, it's generally a book that captures the imagination of people outside this group.
You see these phrases a lot in reference to such books: "I'm not much of a reader...", "My kids were never really into books before..."... taking that into consideration, I don't think the world divides as neatly into "readers" and "non-readers" as all that. People... most people... will read if you give them something that appeals to them, but the "mainstream" publishing industry doesn't seem all that bothered about doing that if you're not one of the people already pigeonholed as a reader.
I mean, there's the oft-repeated assertion that it's hard to get people to read on the internet, which is ridiculous when compared to the fact that the internet is made largely out of words.
People read, is the bottom line.
To put it simply, I no longer believe that the traditional publishing industry does appeal to the mainstream, except by accident... I don't think they know how to.
I have an idea for a post brewing, inspired by
yuki_onna's post about the importance of representation in fiction, about the benefits to authors of representing mostly-overlooked groups in their stories and worlds... and really, that all kind of dovetails together with this, with publishers rejecting a work as being outside "the mainstream" and then being surprised at their appeal. "The mainstream" they're talking about is much like the so-called "Moral Majority" in America: a lot smaller than its name implies.They say there's not much money to be had in writing, but I believe there is honestly a killing to be made in reaching outside what's being called "the mainstream", whether it's by writing more inclusively or more daringly or more experimentally. Many people who aren't "readers" simply don't have anything in front of them that they'd care to read.