It's probably just the Pareto principle at work. McDonald's is one of the biggest restaurants in the world, not exactly gourmet food. Every industry has its McDonald's.
I think people forget that you can enjoy multiple types. I will read the shittest romantasy I can find, yet I'll also read classics and books on philosophy and the environment. When you watch films, you don't make everything you watch a 4 hour director's cut or complex documentaries, sometimes you watch a sitcom. This is how i like to view it. :)
This was a very interesting take on the relationship between the world as we wish it were and the world as it is.
Sometimes, especially in the Western world, we tend to be - more or less willingly - blind to the dirty cogs that make our shiny toys work. I find weirdly satisfying the idea that Stepheny Meyer may be the reason why I was able to read Children of Time. A sort of koan.
really interesting. what stands out to me is that a group of intellectuals who think very deeply about what they read will never be able to determine what is worth reading. many working people, blue collar and white too, spend their days devoting all of their energy to working to survive and only have so much left to give to reading, even less so learning. a huge value of these pulpy books is that they keep people reading at all.
Thank you for posting this. I was dumbfounded when I read a study stating WHAT you read to your children is far less important than that you are simply reading to your child. Read what they like. Your child loves fantasy? Get them all the dragon books (book and bad, simply with appropriate subject matter and themes) at the library. Child loves animals, order all the animal books.
This transfers to adults as well. I really don’t think what you read matters. Are you reading? GOOD. We all have different taste, and that’s ok. Let’s all just read. I’m pretty sure you don’t like my taste in books (after all, the Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite) and I’m not sure I like yours. Does it matter? Nope. Let’s embrace our differences and read.
I agree and want to point out that as far as I know this has historically been the norm for publishers as well. I don't think we're special in having a lot of pulp books fund the more risky projects and am grateful for the publishers who are willing to take on the risky stuff.
I have to admit to enjoying the easy reads sometimes as well. They are particularly good as audiobooks for the long drives I take to deal with family issues -- I don't have to concentrate too hard on the book while I'm driving. Among pulp, I'm going to spend a little time defending romantasy. If you're reading pulp fantasy, much of it is set in worlds where women would have little agency of their own. The female characters are often largely dependent upon relationships with male characters for resources and mobility if they actually have any, and in those sorts of situations the relationships are going to be a much bigger focus. There are skilled fantasy authors who sidestep that sort of world creation successfully, but the bread-and-butter for publishers usually won't, and this gives a way for women to imagine themselves as part of the action. So...I wouldn't dismiss the romantasies more than I would dismiss books by someone like Brandon Sanderson.
I don’t think this is a new phenomenon in the publishing industry. A quick little dive into FB marketplace will reveal offers of large book collections comprised of never heard of titles from early to mid 20th century. Not a single “good” book among them. These “good” book publications have been fueled by sales of terrible, quick read, mindless books. While I am a proponent for reading quality books, I am also happy when I simply see people reading. Not only do I prefer that to the doom scroll existence for them, I know they are funding the interesting book I stumble across near the bottom of the shelf.
1. A corollary is that someone hates your favorite book. At this stage in life, I've actually taken that as encouragement: pleasing everyone is another kind of failure. It means you didn't do what you set out to do.
For instance: I loved Wind and Truth. I think it's one of the best things I've read in a long time that wasn't Brothers Karamazov, The Road, or Les Miserables. There's a couple of other things I'd put in front of it, mostly classics, philosophy, and weird fiction that fits nowhere. You hated it. Seems to me like it was written for me more than you and that's totally cool.
2. Sturgeon's Law is always relevant. I'll just quote the wiki because it summarizes it well in this case:
The first written reference to the adage is in the September 1957 issue of Venture:
And on that hangs Sturgeon’s revelation. It came to him that science fiction is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud. All things – cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles, people, and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like.
The adage appears again in the March 1958 issue of Venture, where Sturgeon wrote:
It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of S.F. is crud.
The Revelation
Ninety percent of everything is crud.
Corollary 1
The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.
Corollary 2
The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.
In the 1870 novel, Lothair, by Benjamin Disraeli, it is asserted that:
Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
A similar adage appears in Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed, published in 1890.
Four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake.
A 1946 essay Confessions of a Book Reviewer by George Orwell asserts about books:
In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be "This book is worthless ..."
In 2009, a paper published in The Lancet estimated that over 85% of health and medical research is wasted.
In 2013, philosopher Daniel Dennett championed Sturgeon's law as one of his seven tools for critical thinking.
90% of everything is crap. That is true, whether you are talking about physics, chemistry, evolutionary psychology, sociology, medicine – you name it – rock music, country western. 90% of everything is crap.
I like this post a lot, but have a few quibbles and comments. I'm so glad it's not just me who thinks Murderbot isn't nearly as good as the hype. Sanderson I think is fine for shorter books but I don't find him fun enough or good enough to want to read his doorstoppers, and John Scalzi used to be a lot more fun when he was doing Heinlein fanfics instead of ponderous, smug political allegories. I really, really wish I knew what sales were, though. Scalzi claims he's made Tor and himself over a 3.5 million dollars since 2015, and...I dunno. I am skeptical.
As for a nice youtuber writing and book and then selling it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhIaeQMdJcU. Jill Bearup has about 550k subs, and sold about 42k books her first year novellezing her youtube metafictional romance/fantasy/historical fiction comedy series. I don't know if that kind of number can be replicated for nonfiction or not, but we do have some pretty solid numbers there at least!
I was a bit worried when I saw the post heading towards the "No one buys books" viral post - I think that post is helpful, but incredibly poorly reasoned. The context of the information was publishers providing numbers and spin to make it seem like they're doing REALLY poorly so they could further consolidate their monopoly. So while I think the numbers are likely somewhat helpful, they are deliberately selected to paint a specific picture for a legal case. Several other posts I think do a much better job of analyzing the data. But still. It was nice to get some actual numbers for sure.
Still, in general I think that people who value more than just fun and popularity in reading should be grateful for the fun and popular books for making all the experiments possible! And keep promoting the books you love so more people can find them fun and they become more popular!
(also I should mention that I really like popular fun books - I read and reread a lot of Star Wars novels, particularly those from the 90s when I was a kid, and I think Charles Stross is a writer with great ideas who drowns them in a lot of fashionable but pretty gross stuff.)
I think two topics are unduly combined. One is an entire discussion on taste: one's taste needn't be judged negatively and looked down upon, so forth. And the business of trying to get published by big house publishers is an important game that is likely rarified for select comparatively few established name authors. I don't begrudge the success of the authors you're not too fond of. It's like hopping onto a book tube to becry their love of, say, big blockbuster Twilight. It's what moves and inspires people. And Stross up there is not often known but is an awesome niche to dive into. I wish the discussion was demarcated. I don't know how one or the other topic applies to me personally. And I'm not moved to make publishing "better" as I imagine many readers here aren't there yet. And I'll appreciate a novel re-imagining of The Illiad! And The Illiad and The Odyssey loom large and cool today, even if it's from seeing the movie Troy or the miniseries of The Odyssey or the new iteration of the latter! There IS a crisis in Big House monopoly publishing and the tastes of big magazines on say top 100 books are seemingly homogenized and too standard, however you interpret that. But it seemed an undue dig at some authors who've made their name fantastically and entertained readers significantly.
Re: “For now, publishing functions in a way that lets editors take risks. Because the gushers are so big, money can go toward riskier bets: small authors, authors without big YouTube channels, weird novels.”
Uhhuh. Did you time-travel twenty-five years into the past to write this post? To that mythical time before Amazon, pre-consolidation, pre-publishing industry crunch?
One or two of those books at the start, you posit, are actually good. That doesn’t look like good writers benefiting from the sales of bad writers, blessings be upon them. It doesn’t look like “gushers” letting editors “take risks.” It looks like a lot of bad books crowding good books out. It looks like an entire industry scared shitless over shrinking profit margins.
Who’s the one you’d guess is worth buying? Charles Stross? Yeah, me too. I read him for the first time just this past year. I heard of him for the first time just this past year. I was looking for a book just like his novel Accelerando in bookstores for five years and never saw it, even though it had been published a decade earlier. But I saw plenty of Murderbot in those five years.
Once upon a time, you didn’t have to have a YouTube following of hundreds of thousands to have a shot with an agent or an editor. You didn’t have to have a following at all. It sure didn’t hurt if you were popular or an iconoclast, but you could be a complete unknown who simply wrote good books. It was possible. It happened: publishers built followings for authors.
Now you’re saying good writers should just be grateful for all the bad writers that make oodles of money so that one of us, once in a while, can publish a book for the mere pleasure of seeing it in print, not to make anything like — it is to laugh! — a living as an author?!
"Advances" seem rather like a funny concept to me; it doesn't function like a signing bonus at a corporation. Are "advances" a necessary part of the game? Is that the only way you can attract an agent?
Well, I can imagine if there were no advances, you'd still have agents — they'd probably restructure their fees, though. But advances actually make writing books – which take research, time, travel, etc. – possible!
It's probably just the Pareto principle at work. McDonald's is one of the biggest restaurants in the world, not exactly gourmet food. Every industry has its McDonald's.
Yes, but in this case the McDonald's subsidizes the steakhouse!
So... Ray Kroc's life?
Good point. I agree that unfortunately that is the case.
I think people forget that you can enjoy multiple types. I will read the shittest romantasy I can find, yet I'll also read classics and books on philosophy and the environment. When you watch films, you don't make everything you watch a 4 hour director's cut or complex documentaries, sometimes you watch a sitcom. This is how i like to view it. :)
This was a very interesting take on the relationship between the world as we wish it were and the world as it is.
Sometimes, especially in the Western world, we tend to be - more or less willingly - blind to the dirty cogs that make our shiny toys work. I find weirdly satisfying the idea that Stepheny Meyer may be the reason why I was able to read Children of Time. A sort of koan.
really interesting. what stands out to me is that a group of intellectuals who think very deeply about what they read will never be able to determine what is worth reading. many working people, blue collar and white too, spend their days devoting all of their energy to working to survive and only have so much left to give to reading, even less so learning. a huge value of these pulpy books is that they keep people reading at all.
Thank you for posting this. I was dumbfounded when I read a study stating WHAT you read to your children is far less important than that you are simply reading to your child. Read what they like. Your child loves fantasy? Get them all the dragon books (book and bad, simply with appropriate subject matter and themes) at the library. Child loves animals, order all the animal books.
This transfers to adults as well. I really don’t think what you read matters. Are you reading? GOOD. We all have different taste, and that’s ok. Let’s all just read. I’m pretty sure you don’t like my taste in books (after all, the Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite) and I’m not sure I like yours. Does it matter? Nope. Let’s embrace our differences and read.
I agree and want to point out that as far as I know this has historically been the norm for publishers as well. I don't think we're special in having a lot of pulp books fund the more risky projects and am grateful for the publishers who are willing to take on the risky stuff.
I have to admit to enjoying the easy reads sometimes as well. They are particularly good as audiobooks for the long drives I take to deal with family issues -- I don't have to concentrate too hard on the book while I'm driving. Among pulp, I'm going to spend a little time defending romantasy. If you're reading pulp fantasy, much of it is set in worlds where women would have little agency of their own. The female characters are often largely dependent upon relationships with male characters for resources and mobility if they actually have any, and in those sorts of situations the relationships are going to be a much bigger focus. There are skilled fantasy authors who sidestep that sort of world creation successfully, but the bread-and-butter for publishers usually won't, and this gives a way for women to imagine themselves as part of the action. So...I wouldn't dismiss the romantasies more than I would dismiss books by someone like Brandon Sanderson.
I don’t think this is a new phenomenon in the publishing industry. A quick little dive into FB marketplace will reveal offers of large book collections comprised of never heard of titles from early to mid 20th century. Not a single “good” book among them. These “good” book publications have been fueled by sales of terrible, quick read, mindless books. While I am a proponent for reading quality books, I am also happy when I simply see people reading. Not only do I prefer that to the doom scroll existence for them, I know they are funding the interesting book I stumble across near the bottom of the shelf.
Yes!
In your first paragraph, I think you mean to say “sorting through them” vs. the “sorted through them” that you have in the article.
1. A corollary is that someone hates your favorite book. At this stage in life, I've actually taken that as encouragement: pleasing everyone is another kind of failure. It means you didn't do what you set out to do.
For instance: I loved Wind and Truth. I think it's one of the best things I've read in a long time that wasn't Brothers Karamazov, The Road, or Les Miserables. There's a couple of other things I'd put in front of it, mostly classics, philosophy, and weird fiction that fits nowhere. You hated it. Seems to me like it was written for me more than you and that's totally cool.
2. Sturgeon's Law is always relevant. I'll just quote the wiki because it summarizes it well in this case:
The first written reference to the adage is in the September 1957 issue of Venture:
And on that hangs Sturgeon’s revelation. It came to him that science fiction is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud. All things – cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles, people, and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like.
The adage appears again in the March 1958 issue of Venture, where Sturgeon wrote:
It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of S.F. is crud.
The Revelation
Ninety percent of everything is crud.
Corollary 1
The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.
Corollary 2
The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.
In the 1870 novel, Lothair, by Benjamin Disraeli, it is asserted that:
Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
A similar adage appears in Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed, published in 1890.
Four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake.
A 1946 essay Confessions of a Book Reviewer by George Orwell asserts about books:
In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be "This book is worthless ..."
In 2009, a paper published in The Lancet estimated that over 85% of health and medical research is wasted.
In 2013, philosopher Daniel Dennett championed Sturgeon's law as one of his seven tools for critical thinking.
90% of everything is crap. That is true, whether you are talking about physics, chemistry, evolutionary psychology, sociology, medicine – you name it – rock music, country western. 90% of everything is crap.
I like this post a lot, but have a few quibbles and comments. I'm so glad it's not just me who thinks Murderbot isn't nearly as good as the hype. Sanderson I think is fine for shorter books but I don't find him fun enough or good enough to want to read his doorstoppers, and John Scalzi used to be a lot more fun when he was doing Heinlein fanfics instead of ponderous, smug political allegories. I really, really wish I knew what sales were, though. Scalzi claims he's made Tor and himself over a 3.5 million dollars since 2015, and...I dunno. I am skeptical.
As for a nice youtuber writing and book and then selling it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhIaeQMdJcU. Jill Bearup has about 550k subs, and sold about 42k books her first year novellezing her youtube metafictional romance/fantasy/historical fiction comedy series. I don't know if that kind of number can be replicated for nonfiction or not, but we do have some pretty solid numbers there at least!
I was a bit worried when I saw the post heading towards the "No one buys books" viral post - I think that post is helpful, but incredibly poorly reasoned. The context of the information was publishers providing numbers and spin to make it seem like they're doing REALLY poorly so they could further consolidate their monopoly. So while I think the numbers are likely somewhat helpful, they are deliberately selected to paint a specific picture for a legal case. Several other posts I think do a much better job of analyzing the data. But still. It was nice to get some actual numbers for sure.
Still, in general I think that people who value more than just fun and popularity in reading should be grateful for the fun and popular books for making all the experiments possible! And keep promoting the books you love so more people can find them fun and they become more popular!
(also I should mention that I really like popular fun books - I read and reread a lot of Star Wars novels, particularly those from the 90s when I was a kid, and I think Charles Stross is a writer with great ideas who drowns them in a lot of fashionable but pretty gross stuff.)
I think two topics are unduly combined. One is an entire discussion on taste: one's taste needn't be judged negatively and looked down upon, so forth. And the business of trying to get published by big house publishers is an important game that is likely rarified for select comparatively few established name authors. I don't begrudge the success of the authors you're not too fond of. It's like hopping onto a book tube to becry their love of, say, big blockbuster Twilight. It's what moves and inspires people. And Stross up there is not often known but is an awesome niche to dive into. I wish the discussion was demarcated. I don't know how one or the other topic applies to me personally. And I'm not moved to make publishing "better" as I imagine many readers here aren't there yet. And I'll appreciate a novel re-imagining of The Illiad! And The Illiad and The Odyssey loom large and cool today, even if it's from seeing the movie Troy or the miniseries of The Odyssey or the new iteration of the latter! There IS a crisis in Big House monopoly publishing and the tastes of big magazines on say top 100 books are seemingly homogenized and too standard, however you interpret that. But it seemed an undue dig at some authors who've made their name fantastically and entertained readers significantly.
The Power Law at work. As with practically all scalable endeavors.
I am now determined to get a “very nice, sorta good” advance of $99,500
Thank you for making the effort to share these sobering realities of the publishing business; I was unaware!
Re: “For now, publishing functions in a way that lets editors take risks. Because the gushers are so big, money can go toward riskier bets: small authors, authors without big YouTube channels, weird novels.”
Uhhuh. Did you time-travel twenty-five years into the past to write this post? To that mythical time before Amazon, pre-consolidation, pre-publishing industry crunch?
One or two of those books at the start, you posit, are actually good. That doesn’t look like good writers benefiting from the sales of bad writers, blessings be upon them. It doesn’t look like “gushers” letting editors “take risks.” It looks like a lot of bad books crowding good books out. It looks like an entire industry scared shitless over shrinking profit margins.
Who’s the one you’d guess is worth buying? Charles Stross? Yeah, me too. I read him for the first time just this past year. I heard of him for the first time just this past year. I was looking for a book just like his novel Accelerando in bookstores for five years and never saw it, even though it had been published a decade earlier. But I saw plenty of Murderbot in those five years.
Once upon a time, you didn’t have to have a YouTube following of hundreds of thousands to have a shot with an agent or an editor. You didn’t have to have a following at all. It sure didn’t hurt if you were popular or an iconoclast, but you could be a complete unknown who simply wrote good books. It was possible. It happened: publishers built followings for authors.
Now you’re saying good writers should just be grateful for all the bad writers that make oodles of money so that one of us, once in a while, can publish a book for the mere pleasure of seeing it in print, not to make anything like — it is to laugh! — a living as an author?!
BARF.
"Advances" seem rather like a funny concept to me; it doesn't function like a signing bonus at a corporation. Are "advances" a necessary part of the game? Is that the only way you can attract an agent?
Well, I can imagine if there were no advances, you'd still have agents — they'd probably restructure their fees, though. But advances actually make writing books – which take research, time, travel, etc. – possible!