TTFeb: Three thoughts on the publishing industry

[superborb]

chestnut_pod  prompted: Thoughts/opinions/knowledge on The Publishing Industry. (/Industries.) Whatever that looks like -- ebook pricing? abominable translation practices? fact-checking in non-fic? changes in YA style over the last 20 years? Chinese specific as received in the Anglosphere? literally anything

I thought a bit, and I don't have any entire post length thoughts, but I DO have three bullet point thoughts.

1. Isn't the entire phenomenon of webnovels so interesting? (I'm only passingly familiar with the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese varieties.) You could argue they draw influence from the serial novel, but it's also a response to a niche for lighter fare (e.g. cell phone novels) opened up by the possibility of micro-transactions funding authors. English webnovels don't have the same market share; Kindle Vella does not seem to be super popular AFAICT. Is it the normalizing of sending small amounts of money? (But we do have ko-fis and Patreons?) Or is it something about how readers in English envision themselves? Less of a taste for a bazillion word length novels? The niche being filled with easily discoverable fanfic already?

2. I was never quite sure what the distinction between YA and MG (middle grade) was, and I kind of fell into a reflex of thinking that if I liked a book intended for a teen, it must be MG. Of course formally, MG is for a younger audience than YA, but the way that these categories have kind of solidified into particular tropes is so odd. Why did that happen? Is it because of the 'one book sells well, then everyone follows' phenomenon of a genre in WAY too close contact? Is it the genre-ification, where before books might be more nebulously for children or teens? (Or am I just too old now--)

3. I don't like that authors have to do all this marketing on twitter and can't help but feel that it's a result of not enough support from the publishers. (See also: not enough editorial support from publishers, especially for debut authors.) I honestly typically want a BIG separation between the author and the work, so I can evaluate the work on its strengths only. Exceptions exist, but mostly when there are other works to read in conversation with that work. Of course, I can find reading author blogs fun and interesting, and obviously, I have friends who are authors, but the overall balance has tilted too far into requiring authors to be influencers IMO.

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Comments

[halfcactus]

1: I always associated Wattpad as the one that tried to fill that market in the Anglosphere. I’m also fascinated with how webtoons have caught on, specially formatted to be read on mobile devices.

3: Yeah it feels like authors have to be super present and friendly on Twitter, and I find it stressful. I generally think very negatively of social media being required in non-social media work. I’m also uncomfortable not having sufficient distance, I feel more obligated not to say something too incendiary in case they see. 😂 (But the last one is just a me thing haha)

[superborb]

But AFAIK, Wattpad hasn't monetized successfully, right?

Webtoons are interesting for similar reasons, but I just do most of my reading... not on mobile lol. (Except for a brief period when I was reading ebooks, but didn't have an ebook reader.)

Yuppppp I don't even like it when authors are on goodreads and in the reviews of their books. It's a fan space!

[skygiants]

tbh more and more I'm seeing conversations in professional spaces about the fact that having authors be extremely friendly and personable on Twitter/Instagram/whatever ... doesn't actually necessarily sell any more books than if one isn't on social media at all; it creates the illusion of popularity/relevancy without necessarily anything real to back it up. I suspect (or at least hope) that the backlash against that whole practice is going to come to a head in the not too distant future!

[superborb]

I see a lot of chatter about how authors hate it, so I hope it stops being a thing!

[cortue]

Oof yeah, the expectation of having to have opinions on twitter as a very public person seems awful, especially if you just want to be left alone to write! I don't see that as much since I spend very little time there. I run into it more when authors have to promote their books on Goodreads, which I do not like even if it's not their fault. I want to be able to write a review for someone else who might read the book without feeling like I'm sending a bad review directly in front of the author's eyes.

[superborb]

YEAH, I feel like Goodreads ought to be a fan space. But also, I don't like rating books, so I'm just not there unless no one's reviewed it on DW / a google indexed blog, and my opinion about it shouldn't count lol.

[cortue]

That's fair. I like it for following people who read the sorts of books I might be interested in to keep track of what's coming out that I might like. I suppose now that I'm on dreamwidth I could branch out further and consider subscribing to people's personal book blogs as well, if I ever get the hang of rss feeds.

[superborb]

I love RSS feeds! And I prefer the RSS reader I use (inoreader-- not as good as the late google reader, but v similar in styling) over DW's interface, to the point where I wish I could somehow export my reading page to an RSS feed...

[cortue]

Cheers! I'll check that one out first.

[momijizukamori]

I had a moment of 'wait I thought we had that' but it turns out my brain was shoving together some very old (eventually abandoned) attempts at 'view your LJ friendslist on your reading page' plus the fact that you can view individual journals via RSS. Apparently LJ had a style that output RSS-compliant XHTML, and you could in theory rewrite that style and then subscribe to that, but you'd only get public entries because RSS can only handle HTTP Basic auth which is old and terrible.

[superborb]

Yep, the problem is always the flocked stuff, bc a lot of the RSS readers will support a 'what has changed on this page' kind of thing even if there isn't a real RSS feed on the page.

[chestnut_pod]

Thank you ˆ_ˆ

Webnovels are fascinating! Especially since the webcomic definitely has an audience in the Anglosphere, even very long ones. But plain written texts, not so much.

I also vacillate between "am I an old geezer grouch" and "this is all capitalism's fault" when it comes to YA. Good stuff is still out there!! Somewhere…

You are SO right about authors on social media, and that's such a great point that it's all to pad out the marketing budgets :/. Such a shame, and honestly, I wish authors would Be Quiet except for their writing. It's so much easier to enjoy that writing when you don't have to think about their participation in Twitter SNAFU #268271 last April. I appreciate Kristin Cashore's writing blog, and KJ Charles' book reviews, and neither of those are wading into the fray. Great job! (On the other hand, not all blogs are created equal, either.)

[superborb]

I think there /are/ long original fics on AO3 and Wattpad and such... just not monetized in the same way.

GOSH I do too! I thought it was maybe just me aging out, since I didn't read very many books during grad school, and it was a sudden change to go from liking YA to not... but I like some MG still.

Right, like, I do not need to know that Author X has Bad Takes on Topic Y, this isn't helpful to anyone?? OTOH, I find it amusing that I enjoy Scalzi's blog but not really his books. They're different forms of writing!

[lirazel]

I also enjoy Scalzi's blog but care nothing about his published writing!

[superborb]

I'm not alone!! :fireelmo:

[lirazel]

Honestly, all writers who want to have a presence on the internet should just go back to blogs. Write about writing, maybe about media they've enjoyed lately, leave everything else alone. This would be ideal.

[adevyish]

I was reading origfic on Quizilla at least a year before I ever heard of FFN, so there has to be a market? I think it might just generally be better built-in support for microtransactions in those economies; if you look at in-app purchases, average per person spending is way higher in East Asia than anywhere else. It could also be tied to the dominance of Wechat/Line/Kakao as payment processors.

I’ve seen Western web publications try to do payment per-article rather than subscription, but there’s a minimum you have to put into any system to avoid onerous CC fees so you need a lot of traction or else you have a few dollars lying around in some payment system you’re never going to use again.

[superborb]

Yeah, the EASY microtransactions must be a big thing. I think some credit cards have some kind of minimum fee too? So it scales badly.

Though I guess JJWXC has a system where you buy in chunks at a time and then distribute, so it can't /all/ be microtransaction payment issues.

[(Anonymous)]

That’s what I mean by having to put a minimum in — I had to put ~$10 into Line just to buy a $1 sticker set? But I didn’t mind because I’m confident in Line lasting long enough and having a constant stream of new cute stickers for me to spend the other $9. Otoh I put $10 into some online publication’s per-article payment system (some e-wallet startup), have spent about $2, and there aren’t any other new articles by them I feel like paying for yet and I don’t know anyone else using that e-wallet. So the money’s just lying around in that system and I have to hope the e-wallet startup doesn’t get aquiclosed.

[adevyish]

ah oops I forgot to log in 😔

[superborb]

Ahh I see, I see. Still, thinking about it more, it might be onerous to the companies to manage those 'credit' systems, but it can't be that difficult a bar to cross technologically if they really wanted. So maybe it's just they don't expect an audience to want to make those small purchases...?

[lirazel]

1. I have also found this interesting and wondered about it. Maaaaaybe there's so much free fanfiction written in English that people don't even need webnovels? Maybe?

2. But the way that these categories have kind of solidified into particular tropes is so odd. Why did that happen?

SUCH A GOOD QUESTION

3. Totally agreed.

[superborb]

But I know that those other languages have active fic communities too!! Unless truly, the centralization of AO3 makes it easier to find fic and most of those communities don't have as centralized fic locations? I know lofter is a HUGE PAIN to find fic on.

[lirazel]

Yeah, I was thinking about the centrality of AO3: fic for just about any fandom you want, easily accessible instead of having to be searched out as it was just a decade ago. But it could have nothing to do with that at all!

[shati]

Twitter makes me so stressed on behalf of authors!! And on behalf of me, I don't want strangers seeing me talk about their work.

[superborb]

RIGHT, like, please keep the fourth wall in place!!!

[dragongirlg]

Not much to add, just here nodding along to every point you made. And I feel so stressed out on behalf of the authors on Twitter! Just like everything else, there's so much that gets misconstrued and escalated. Plus, running a social media account and maintaining a brand is like another full time job which I bet they're not getting paid for.

[superborb]

Yeah, it's definitely unpaid publicity work!

[momijizukamori]

Thinking about it, the only really major pay-per-segment serialized fiction thing I can think of in English is serialized comics (versus standalone, all-in-one-go graphic novels), and I know sales of those in general have been on the continual decline - the top selling issues these days are like a quarter of the number of sales for top issues 20-30 years ago. Stuff like Webtoons or Viz's English Shounen Jump are maybe staring to catch on, but a lot of those typically go free after a certain period of time. So I guess maybe we're just too used to our serialized shit being free these days.

[superborb]

Oh, that's an interesting point! I guess there was a period of time when you could pay by the episode / CD for shows too, but that is pretty far in the past at this point.