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

[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.