Forum / literary marketplace exhalations

• 
  strannikov

  Jul 11, 05:01pm

  I am sure I know less than many about the very present state of publishing in the US. (So far in this presentation, I am inclusive of both online and print enterprise.) But as a reader, as a confirmed bibliophile, as the scribbler I remain, but also as a former copyeditor and proofreader in book publishing:

  I wonder about the state of cheap print publishing, pulp and paperback formats (although I've no formal opposition to comic book formats and production style for presenting fiction). I think of these specimens in terms of the former popularity of book clubs and generic magazine publishing (detective fiction and SF/fantasy) that I somehow think thrived from the 1920s to the end of the 1950s. Then I wonder why these subscription societies with intense interest in particular kinds of stories (FLASH, let's say) don't have a comparable PRINT manifestation in today's economy.

  We perhaps do not live in a poetic age when the stupefying diversions offered by television broadcast and cable and internet fare (not to ignore radio's and recorded music's enduring appeals) occupy so many peoples' attentions so much of the time. I cannot help but see our media landscape very much as a zero sum game for writers of fiction: fiction writing gets no appreciable attention in and from the dominant media no matter what format it's presented in, but online publishing seems only to attract interest in other online arenas.

  NPR is my exclusive broadcast news source, since I never watch television. In spite of whatever deserved reputation NPR enjoys for promoting authors and their works, NPR only covers fiction writers with work appearing in print: I've been writing flash myself for the better part of ten years now, and I still have not heard the first item about "online flash fiction" on any NPR news program (I do bypass all the NPR entertainment fare, however, so perhaps I am to blame for my own misperception).

  I don't know if print formats even in the least expensive units of pulp and ink have any more economic viability than online publishing. I do think, however, that having physical objects devoted to the presentation of contemporary fiction says something distinctive about someone's efforts. Having a physical object devoted to the presentation of contemporary fiction says that fiction matters enough that it merits physical presentation, not in the electronic format in a device that displays movies and music, and text with lots of advertisements interrupting text columns that are side-barred with further advertisements from head to foot of the text column.

  I have no cures, either, at least I can't think of any: I think our troubles as writers of fiction will persist until our work begins to resonate, but I think we are restrained from making deeper impact specifically by the lack of print outlets, all because of the importance I attach to as physical an object as a printed book or magazine. (Maybe my frustration consists also of not seeing how Print-On-Demand publishing is working for our publishers.)

  A tough business, as it's ever been: if the Internet outlives any of us, perhaps possibly maybe our work(s) will yet find their (presently distracted or oblivious) audiences.
  Let us keep our minds in hell without despair.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Jul 11, 05:42pm

  That last line!

• 
  Gary Hardaway

  Jul 12, 12:51pm

  Artists are a powerless elite.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jul 12, 04:44pm

  "I just made a mud pie."
  "It's very nice."
  "So, where my award? My recognition?"
  "I didn't ask you to make a mud pie."
  "Doesn't matter... you said it was nice."
  "So what? I was just being polite."
  "To hell with polite... I'll take a check, though."
  "Once again, no one asked you to make a..."
  "God did."
  "What?"
  "It was divine inspiration."
  "Oh, well... in that case, obedience to God is its own reward."
  "To hell with that. I want fifty bucks."
  "Why should I give you fifty bucks for a mud pie?"
  "We're beyond mud pies, man, I just invented armed robbery. This... is a gun."

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Jul 12, 05:40pm

  Ha!

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