Publishers only want to make money. They don't care about the content (or quality) of the book as long as it sells. Having subjected myself to some awful "bestsellers" in the pursuit of a good read.
Readers, however, are a different matter. They want a great story regardless of who wrote it. (or what their predilections are!) Paysha - your turn in the spotlight, please.
The fiduciary duty of a profit-making company's boardroom (no matter what size) is to make money. The rest is either execution, legal and compliance matters, or window dressing. I'm fine with it, as that's the business of business.
On the other hand, if you treat authors as assets to be squeezed, or, with any B2C presence, treating readers as mailboxes to be filled, or purses to be emptied, then you won't create long-term relationships. Self-published authors, as business owners themselves, know this more than most.
As for Paysha, her time will come, one way or another. I'm really not keen on my head being disconnected from my body.
Someday, we'll get ourselves adjusted better to living in a multicultural society--and world.
Though I enjoy reading different perspectives, I wouldn't want to chain authors to only writing about their race, culture, or gender. One of my former colleagues is Black but wasn't raised in the US. He was an army brat and grew up on military bases in Germany. As an English teacher, he used to lament about the fact that he wanted to read more Black authors who wrote about something other than being Black. If he'd ever written a book, the publishers would have had a terrible time with him.
But he also illustrates that there are different kinds of Black experience, as there are variations in all groups. If you grow up in Beverly Hills, as my students did, with a doctor and a lawyer for parents (or something like that), your experience will be radically different than if you grow up in Watts. But that's another nuance publishing sometimes misses.
Hi Bill. Thanks so much for taking time to read the piece and cite your colleague's experience. I do hope you are proved right on humanity's progress to multiculturalism, even if history and current world events are proving the opposite.
Similar comments apply to all the artforms and culture etc. - we have a few big commercial corporations deliberately churning out lowest common denominator stuff but then we have the alternative/small businesses/small press/indie record labels etc. which try to retain some element of integrity.
If I was to put my conspiracy theorist hat on (I wear it a lot, as people have doubtless noticed) I'd say these attacks on culture, or rather 'attempt to control culture' are indeed a mechanism of social control. The bad guys know that a human being's personal identity is in large part an adherence to a cultural identity. Thus, he who shapes the cultural identity (through narrative/historical narrative) also controls the people, and the people's opinions. (In Britain, this has certainly never stopped since 1066 - we still have the same social/cultural group in charge - which explains the abusive way they treat the British people - who still keep voting for them! It's like Robin of Loxley voting for the Sherriff of Nottingham! - maybe there's a satirical story in there somewhere, kind of like Ivanhoe).
And, if we're going to get topical about it, their 'voting habits'. If we were to actually examine the so-called issues the mainstream are focusing people's attention on, like 'immigration', 'gender identity' and suchlike, we realise these are not particularly important at all and have less impact than people have been led to believe. And yet the cultural narrative has been created to make people focus on them - thus turning them into petty little fascists. It's ironic, after all, that the so-called Labour Party (with the likes of the author known as JK Rowling) think that caring about children's welfare means a section 28 style prohibition on educating children about gender identity, but not about ending the 2-child benefit cap.
And yet, quite possibly because of the incessant control over the 'cultural narrative', the vast majority of the British voting public are going to vote to continue these horrors next Thursday.
Such is the real power of stories. This was the kind of thing I was partly getting at when I wrote about narrative theory and subversion.
Thus, yes - it is incumbent on us writers to challenge that narrative and create our own, more human/humane one.
Tragically, though, I very much fear only a minority will ever read it, because the majority have been rendered beyond redemption and rescue. Doesn't mean we should ever stop, though.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Evie. You do seem to be wearing your hat more these days.... 🤔 Maybe once the 2024 multi-election frenzy has died down (BBC could be mistaken for NBC for how much it covers the US) you'll be able to give your brain a rest and/or something else to cogitate over.
I certainly hope so. A lot of that hat-wearing is out of frustration at watching the world get worse, not better, and most people not understanding the simple reason why, namely the people they tolerate in positions of power who, to me at least, are so obviously bad guys who simply don't care about anyone but themselves. So it's not so much a conspiracy theory as a psychological observation. Still, I do have to watch myself sometimes. Like I've been procrastinating about reading that guest article in the lunar awards about lunar exploration, since having studied the subject I'm now firmly in the sceptical camp when it comes to moon landings. But given I have been in love of space exploration and the possibility of a beautiful and exciting future since my childhood (I pilfered my father's Asimov collection) the idea that this has been denied us makes me personally angry. We should be so much further ahead than we are by now. Anyhow, that's another thing to write stories about. If it isn't going to be done in this world, then I shall create worlds in which it is done... And then not reincarnate again until it happens. Just in time to be on that ship bound for Centauri.
I forgot to say I really like your poem. I've done a fair few myself with 'military' imagery and you can get really powerful stuff with it. Very, very good!
Publishers only want to make money. They don't care about the content (or quality) of the book as long as it sells. Having subjected myself to some awful "bestsellers" in the pursuit of a good read.
Readers, however, are a different matter. They want a great story regardless of who wrote it. (or what their predilections are!) Paysha - your turn in the spotlight, please.
The fiduciary duty of a profit-making company's boardroom (no matter what size) is to make money. The rest is either execution, legal and compliance matters, or window dressing. I'm fine with it, as that's the business of business.
On the other hand, if you treat authors as assets to be squeezed, or, with any B2C presence, treating readers as mailboxes to be filled, or purses to be emptied, then you won't create long-term relationships. Self-published authors, as business owners themselves, know this more than most.
As for Paysha, her time will come, one way or another. I'm really not keen on my head being disconnected from my body.
As long as we are in accord. I seem to have mislaid my whetstone...
Of course. I seem to have found my running shoes...
Beautiful. I remember attending 2 separate events, one with Isabel Allende and one with Elif Shafak, and they both expressed the same concern.
Limiting what an individual can write about has some dangerous precedents.
Bravo.
Thank you. A hidden danger is self-censoring, from fear of what may be said. The 'Bravo' can then be a call to be brave!
Someday, we'll get ourselves adjusted better to living in a multicultural society--and world.
Though I enjoy reading different perspectives, I wouldn't want to chain authors to only writing about their race, culture, or gender. One of my former colleagues is Black but wasn't raised in the US. He was an army brat and grew up on military bases in Germany. As an English teacher, he used to lament about the fact that he wanted to read more Black authors who wrote about something other than being Black. If he'd ever written a book, the publishers would have had a terrible time with him.
But he also illustrates that there are different kinds of Black experience, as there are variations in all groups. If you grow up in Beverly Hills, as my students did, with a doctor and a lawyer for parents (or something like that), your experience will be radically different than if you grow up in Watts. But that's another nuance publishing sometimes misses.
Hi Bill. Thanks so much for taking time to read the piece and cite your colleague's experience. I do hope you are proved right on humanity's progress to multiculturalism, even if history and current world events are proving the opposite.
Very thoughtful piece well written.
Similar comments apply to all the artforms and culture etc. - we have a few big commercial corporations deliberately churning out lowest common denominator stuff but then we have the alternative/small businesses/small press/indie record labels etc. which try to retain some element of integrity.
If I was to put my conspiracy theorist hat on (I wear it a lot, as people have doubtless noticed) I'd say these attacks on culture, or rather 'attempt to control culture' are indeed a mechanism of social control. The bad guys know that a human being's personal identity is in large part an adherence to a cultural identity. Thus, he who shapes the cultural identity (through narrative/historical narrative) also controls the people, and the people's opinions. (In Britain, this has certainly never stopped since 1066 - we still have the same social/cultural group in charge - which explains the abusive way they treat the British people - who still keep voting for them! It's like Robin of Loxley voting for the Sherriff of Nottingham! - maybe there's a satirical story in there somewhere, kind of like Ivanhoe).
And, if we're going to get topical about it, their 'voting habits'. If we were to actually examine the so-called issues the mainstream are focusing people's attention on, like 'immigration', 'gender identity' and suchlike, we realise these are not particularly important at all and have less impact than people have been led to believe. And yet the cultural narrative has been created to make people focus on them - thus turning them into petty little fascists. It's ironic, after all, that the so-called Labour Party (with the likes of the author known as JK Rowling) think that caring about children's welfare means a section 28 style prohibition on educating children about gender identity, but not about ending the 2-child benefit cap.
And yet, quite possibly because of the incessant control over the 'cultural narrative', the vast majority of the British voting public are going to vote to continue these horrors next Thursday.
Such is the real power of stories. This was the kind of thing I was partly getting at when I wrote about narrative theory and subversion.
Thus, yes - it is incumbent on us writers to challenge that narrative and create our own, more human/humane one.
Tragically, though, I very much fear only a minority will ever read it, because the majority have been rendered beyond redemption and rescue. Doesn't mean we should ever stop, though.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Evie. You do seem to be wearing your hat more these days.... 🤔 Maybe once the 2024 multi-election frenzy has died down (BBC could be mistaken for NBC for how much it covers the US) you'll be able to give your brain a rest and/or something else to cogitate over.
I certainly hope so. A lot of that hat-wearing is out of frustration at watching the world get worse, not better, and most people not understanding the simple reason why, namely the people they tolerate in positions of power who, to me at least, are so obviously bad guys who simply don't care about anyone but themselves. So it's not so much a conspiracy theory as a psychological observation. Still, I do have to watch myself sometimes. Like I've been procrastinating about reading that guest article in the lunar awards about lunar exploration, since having studied the subject I'm now firmly in the sceptical camp when it comes to moon landings. But given I have been in love of space exploration and the possibility of a beautiful and exciting future since my childhood (I pilfered my father's Asimov collection) the idea that this has been denied us makes me personally angry. We should be so much further ahead than we are by now. Anyhow, that's another thing to write stories about. If it isn't going to be done in this world, then I shall create worlds in which it is done... And then not reincarnate again until it happens. Just in time to be on that ship bound for Centauri.
Your mind appears to be poured from a mould suspiciously similar to mine. Not sure if this is worrying, a conspiracy or coincidence. 🤷🏻♂️
worrying, conspiracy, or coincidence - this shall have to be pondered.
Combos of these permitted. 😶🌫️
I was thinking of combos actually.
I forgot to say I really like your poem. I've done a fair few myself with 'military' imagery and you can get really powerful stuff with it. Very, very good!