Drowning in a sea of slush?
Laura Miller over at Salon.com posts an intriguing article about the reader’s perspective in this new world of self-publishing and social marketing. Definitely worthy of a read: When anyone can be a published author.
This article is dead on in some aspects, and somewhat cynical in others. As a reader who’s had a taste of the slush in proofing books for friends and critiquing works on the peer review websites, I can tell you, slush is very real. There is A LOT of crap out there not worth reading.
However, as a reader, I look forward to how books will be marketed and made available in the brave new world of Kindle’s, Facebook, and the Internet. Instead of focusing on the demise of the traditional publishing model with its unsustainable economic model, and all of the problems that may bring (loss of jobs in the publishing industry, more but not necessarily better content in the marketplace, the demise of the bookstores, etc.) I look forward to the emergence of new, independent outlets which will market and distribute content specifically for my tastes.
Sure, the bookstore and the NYT best seller list will continue to be outlets managed by the traditional industry, but there are/will be new outlets that serve specific areas of interest more effectively than the categories in the bookstore or on the NYT best seller list ever did.
For example, I’m a huge fan of science fiction, so I subscribe to InterGalactic Medicine Show, Orson Scott Card’s website. It has stories that I couldn’t get anywhere else: some are original submissions, some died along the way in the traditional publishing path, some are now out of print, but all are chosen by a group of editors who align perfectly with my desires. For a sci-fi geek like me, it’s nirvana.
I’ll conjecture that specialized outlets exist or will shortly for all of the possible niches and that these outlets will provide the reader with effective filtering and recommendations. There is no need to worry about drowning in a sea of slush, because the new gatekeepers are here already. All a reader has to do is to find them by using Google, posting in the appropriate Facebook group, forums, or blog sites, and picking the ones that suit their tastes.
It doesn’t matter how the authors get on these new outlets, either by knowing the blogger, running a Facebook ad campaign, or winning a writing contest somewhere. What does matter is that they have passed through some type of vetting, albeit non-traditional, and have picked up enough ‘credibility’ along the way to make it. The outlets are highly incentivized to give their audience the very best content, and will screen content accordingly, or risk losing their audience to competitors.
So in short, ultra-hyper-nichification, taste-makers, crowd-sourcing, and the rise of mavens will bubble up content much more effectively than the NYT best seller list ever did. As authors find that it takes a much smaller audience to be successful because of the new economics of e-publishing and the ability to ‘find their audience’ in these new channels, my hope is that more and higher quality content is created, vetted, and made available to the world writ large.
That is a world that I can live with, and thoroughly enjoy.