As I was reading Chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody, I was struck at how Shirky’s description of the power law applies to authors who self-publish—since there is NO barrier now to do so:
Any system described by a power law, where mean, median, and mode are so different, has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average. … The other surprise of such systems is that as they get larger, the imbalance between few and the many gets larger, not smaller. As we get more weblogs, or more MySpace pages, or more YouTube videos, the gap between the material that gets the most attention and merely average attention will grow, as will the gap between average and median. … You cannot understand Wikipedia (or indeed any large social system) by looking at any one user or even a small group and assuming they are representative of the whole. … We’re used to being able to extract useful averages from small samples and to reason about the whole system based on those averages. … Instead, you have to change your focus, to concentrate not on the individual users but on the behavior of the collective. … The power law helps explain the difference between the many small but tightly integrated clusters of friends using weblogs and the handful of the most famous and best-trafficked weblogs.
And—I’d say—the most famous and best-selling independently published books (think: J.A. Konrath).
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
Yeah, I guess if you self publish an ebook on Amazon or something, there really isn't any barriers. No one to disapprove it, you don't have to wait for it to get published, it won't cost you anything, etc….
Right — many writers are just now realizing there are no longer gatekeepers to publishing. As Shirky says, “Publishing is the new literacy.”
So the problem becomes filtering. Elsewhere, Shirky comments: “Mass amateurization has created a filtering problem vastly larger than we had with traditional media, so much larger, in fact, that many of the old solutions are simply broken. … Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move. Filter-then-publish, whatever its advantages, rested on a scarcity of media that is a thing of the past.”
But, in the end, whatever happens, writers/authors will experience that power law effect — of struggling to get beyond average.
If there are no gatekeepers, why are so many people in this so-called business so utterly paranoid about the need for filtering. Why need filtering because…
Oh, please.
The paternalism in publishing knows no bounds. We need filtering because the gatekeepers need jobs.
It's ALL about the marketing. Fiddledeedee. No one wants to talk about POWER. It's forbidden. It's not nice.
Behind every whining plea for more gatekeepers, the issue of power struts and frets another hour upon the stage.
There are still gatekeepers. They've just been marginalized. For now. But don't think for a minute they are going to go quietly or without a fight. The irony is that they are getting a taste of their own bitter medicine. They have “filtered” ideas for decades. They hate the idea of voice. Especially one that does not belong to them or politely subscribe to the rhetoric or rituals of publishing.
The tragedy is that this so-called revolution has everyone focused on marketing. Forest. Trees. We don't need them to marginalize our ideas (I did not say marketing ideas) when we do such a good job of that ourselves. “Filtering” is code for they'll take care of you and protect you from the confusing chaos. You poor little thing. Pats on the head. Daddy knows best.
The dog and pony show has always been evolving. The only amazing thing about it is that no one sees a culture war even when the thing is in their face.
Back to the text, Shirky says:
“… publishing and broadcasting cost money. Any cost creates some sort of barrier, and the high cost of most traditional media creates high barriers. … Simply to remain viable, anyone producing traditional media has to decide what to produce and what not to … it forces every publisher or producer to filter the material in advance. … Though the filtering of the good from the mediocre starts as an economic imperative, the public enjoys the value of the filtering as well … The old ways of filtering were neither universal nor ideal; they were simply good for the technology of the day, and reasonably effective.”
I really recommend reading the book. It goes into far more depth than can be discussed here, and touches on issues of power related to people who have historically been in the professional class of either gatekeeping or journalism.
Extra credit reading: Interview with Clay Shirky in Barnes & Noble Review:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Interview…
I agree. They kept diversity to a minimum. To wit: gay publishing. The people in it have struggled for years. The mainstream gatekeepers have traditionally maintained that this “material” wasn't commercial because the public didn't want it. So people went out there and published it themselves and sold to a community. Then and only then did mainstream publishing want a piece of it. Even today, “We have enough gay books,” is the whining refrain. It pretends not to be homophobic but it is homophobic and often it's humanphobic. I have read the book. It's a damn good read. I just don't think the public is well-served by nineteenth-century social dynamics. It is spoon-fed. By a professional aristocracy whose relationship to power is based in a network of economic status quo. The best and the brightest from Harvard and Yale are not going into publishing. Predominately male and predominately white and predominately straight. And predominately wealthy. Their networking is with one another. Publishing just apes the paradigm because it, too, is a culture. With institutional values. Whose focus is to perpetuate itself.
This does not serve the public. It keeps the public in its place. Which isn't anywhere near the top of the hierarchy. The hierarchy is scrambling. Eventually, they'll own the animal. Like they always do. Transparency isn't exactly on the agenda. Anymore than it's on the agenda of OTC future's trading on Wall Street where no one can understand those contracts either. The problem with this book is that we need more of them so that a real dialogue could happen from a diversity of POVs. I wouldn't hold my breath.
In a way, Jane, this is not news, although I always enjoy hearing your thoughts and ideas. It's always been 10% of the people who do 90% of the work and excel. With self-publishing 90% of the people will still think they can stick a family photo on a cover, write trite, unedited stream of consciousness, and will then wonder why they didn't make the money Konrath has. Konrath works HARD. He studies the market, he puts in his time and he pays his dues–that's why he's in the top 10%.
The survival strategy of the bamboo the pandas eat is to rarely form seeds, but when they DO, the place is knee-deep in them and the seed-eaters are bursting with them. They cannot keep up! Something like that is happening with print media and info.
But if rats had algorithms, could they pick out the seeds they want to eat? Could we go somewhere and punch in: 1) geology 2) western US 3) non-academic 4) photos 5) maps 6) written at a high school reading level 7) written since 2005 8) printed in the USA 8) praised by the best geologist in the US 9) 200 pages long 10) written by a woman — and then expect to get a book?
It used to be that I could walk into Powells in Portland and say something like the list above and the “curator” of the appropriate section would walk me over to where the right book was shelved. He/she was a walking algorithm.
I write a very eclectic blog, mixing local observations with Blackfeet history with religious comment with reviews and so on. What if someone could say to me, “I would like a 200 page book with your best movie reviews in it. PDF is okay.” I could do that overnight. If you wanted hard-bound, you'd have to wait for Espresso or Lulu.
So what if the new future is EXTREME custom books and the role of the writer was to self-identify his/writing as to the subject, style, loftiness, illustrations, etc. in enough quantity and detail, indexed carefully enough, to summon up a custom volume as wanted?
Prairie Mary
Rosemary, you've nailed it. Not news for the smart ones. 😉
I think that's close to what we'll get. I like how it's forecast in this post:
http://www.highspotinc.com/blog/2010/06/the-3-f…