Thank you Josh. I really do need to read Cather! She was just never on my radar until you put her there. Yes, I suppose that's right, that the market owes writers nothing - but then writers and readers do have something of an obligation to find forms of transmission that do not owe themselves entirely to the market. This famously is what…
Thank you Josh. I really do need to read Cather! She was just never on my radar until you put her there. Yes, I suppose that's right, that the market owes writers nothing - but then writers and readers do have something of an obligation to find forms of transmission that do not owe themselves entirely to the market. This famously is what universities represent - and bohemian culture as well. I think what's happened is that the post-war history of literature is of the publishing industry taking more and more power in terms of regulating cultural transmission and doing so at the expense of bohemians or of the coterie of taste-setting mandarins. At this point, though, the publishing industry just doesn't turn any real profits from literary fiction so is pretty much giving up on that (except for publicity-building exercises like My First Book) - and something that I would really like to see happen in my lifetime is for circles of writers to wrest power back from the publishing industry.
Circles of writers wresting power from industry has a sweet sound, indeed. I fear that we are too often envious of one another to mobilize very effectively. But Substack offers many exceptions to that rule. Now I'm curious what you think it would take to really wrest power away from the publishing monopolies? Perhaps you recall that I had a depressing conversation with a local bookstore owners sometime ago. I asked if he had a "local author" shelf, a fairly standard thing for most small shops like that. He gave me a big speech about how local author stuff, especially the self-published kind, isn't very good and doesn't sell well, and so he really just relies on whatever list comes out of Penguin to stock his shelves. Partly because he can just return whatever inventory doesn't sell. But it left me wondering why I was supporting him at all? For writers to effectively combat industry, they are going to need to have some other method of curation that ensures that what they produce is demonstrably superior. I'm here for that conversation. But it's a steep climb.
Thank you Josh. I really do need to read Cather! She was just never on my radar until you put her there. Yes, I suppose that's right, that the market owes writers nothing - but then writers and readers do have something of an obligation to find forms of transmission that do not owe themselves entirely to the market. This famously is what universities represent - and bohemian culture as well. I think what's happened is that the post-war history of literature is of the publishing industry taking more and more power in terms of regulating cultural transmission and doing so at the expense of bohemians or of the coterie of taste-setting mandarins. At this point, though, the publishing industry just doesn't turn any real profits from literary fiction so is pretty much giving up on that (except for publicity-building exercises like My First Book) - and something that I would really like to see happen in my lifetime is for circles of writers to wrest power back from the publishing industry.
Circles of writers wresting power from industry has a sweet sound, indeed. I fear that we are too often envious of one another to mobilize very effectively. But Substack offers many exceptions to that rule. Now I'm curious what you think it would take to really wrest power away from the publishing monopolies? Perhaps you recall that I had a depressing conversation with a local bookstore owners sometime ago. I asked if he had a "local author" shelf, a fairly standard thing for most small shops like that. He gave me a big speech about how local author stuff, especially the self-published kind, isn't very good and doesn't sell well, and so he really just relies on whatever list comes out of Penguin to stock his shelves. Partly because he can just return whatever inventory doesn't sell. But it left me wondering why I was supporting him at all? For writers to effectively combat industry, they are going to need to have some other method of curation that ensures that what they produce is demonstrably superior. I'm here for that conversation. But it's a steep climb.