All the news that’s fit to print?
As a progressive, I’m reluctant to attack that so-called bastion of liberal Northeast thought, but the NY Times is starting to piss me off. So, launch the torpedoes! Every newspaper in the world has an editorial slant that permeates their news reporting, especially ones in totalitarian states or theocracies where the press is part of the government. Even not printing certain news items is an editorial slant, so the NY Times, in violation of its famous motto, is doubly culpable. It biases the news it deems “fit to print” and considers some news involving opposing viewpoints not “fit to print” because these newsworthy items will negatively affect its livelihood.
I’m referring to how the Times is reporting on the Hachette v. Amazon controversy. Every article I’ve seen (last Monday’s is but one example) is completely biased. But I’m not going to call for a boycott of the Times or even cancel my subscription. I simply feel sorry for the venerable dinosaurs of the publishing industry who feel so threatened by the digital revolution in publishing. Their days are numbered, no matter what they do (although they seem to on a tear to hasten their demise). The last article was about Amazon’s email to KDP Select authors and publishers (mostly indies who are completely ignored by the Times) where they used the paperback book as a model for how new technology can revitalize publishing. That’s a valid point; the Times irrelevant rebuttal: Amazon quoted Orwell out of context. Huh? Do I care?
No. Orwell’s pigs in Animal Farm also said that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Amazon was nice enough not to use that quote, but I will. Here the pigs are the authors that signed onto Preston’s call for a protest against Amazon, their names appearing in a two-page ad in the Times. (Who paid for that? The Big Five; or Patterson, Preston, and other one-percenters in the authors’ community; or the NY Times?) These pigs, while being led by greedy porkers like Patterson and Preston, aren’t inherently evil, of course. They’re authors, after all, and all authors are the good guys, right? I can’t equate them to Lenin or Trotsky either in their activism (that would be terribly unfair to those Russians, who were, at the least, a lot more bold and revolutionary than any of these authors). No, their sad problem is that most of them have enjoyed publishing success–large or small–over many years working within the traditional publishing paradigm. They want to maintain the status quo that obviously has favored them up to now. They feel threatened. I hope readers looked at that list of names. I did. I feel sorry for all of them.
There are many reasons to feel sorry for them, but I feel sorry for them most of all for being duped by traditional publishing, a bloated, outmoded, and unfair business model—unfair because it exploits authors in order to finance its bloat. Trad-pubbed author royalties are small compared to indie royalties paid by Amazon; trad-pubbed contracts contain egregious legal traps that overly protect the publisher and his bloated bureaucracy at the expense of the author; and traditional publishers and sycophants who feed them manuscripts for the most part don’t give a rat’s ass about promoting new voices, new stories, or anything else that traditional bookstores and book barns won’t know where to shelve. Many of those authors signing Preston’s letter have sat comfortably within the dark, moldy halls of the industry’s Draculas and championed the status quo, allowing themselves to become formulaic at best and outright boring at worst, in their rush to avoid change.
But change is here. Not only is the digital revolution in publishing a change, but what indie authors do with these new tools is changing. Better than Orwell, I’d quote Dylan: “The times are a-changin’….” That’s the news that’s “fit to print,” NY Times editors! By becoming the mouthpiece of the Big Five and traditional publishing, you’re hastening your own ride into irrelevancy’s sunset. I see my in-depth news on the internet now. It comes to me automatically. My first cups of coffee are still accompanied by the Times, I’ll admit. I’m a bit old-fashioned. But now I just scan your damn paper, knowing you’re biased, but also knowing that all that news and much more will be available on the internet at any time of the day. (And I don’t even read your Book Review anymore! If I had birds, it would be in the bottom of their cage.)
In Friday’s post, I spoke about dinosaurs (aka traditional publishing) v. mammals (aka indie publishing). I focused on how all this controversy hurts readers more than authors. This was Amazon’s point in their email. I felt it was mostly wasted, by the way. Amazon’s target should have been readers like you. Just like Preston’s call to arms was directed at an already biased and captive audience of authors, so was Amazon’s—KDP Select’s writers wouldn’t be there if traditional publishing had anything to offer them. That said, the readers, that silent majority of consumers but the same people that both indie and traditional publishing want to reach, are ill-served when the NY Times in its biased reporting effectively encourages an authors v. authors conflict. If indie wins, readers will lose out on reading works from the remaining few authors in Preston’s camp who are still original writers; if trad-pubbing wins, readers will lose out on new and original authors coming up through the ranks, authors who are more in touch with their readers than any trad-pubber hiding behind the Big Five’s bloated bureaucracy ever is.
In fact, if the NY Times were doing its job honestly, it would analyze that bloated bureaucracy. I’d even call it an expose, because too many consumers don’t realize how badly traditional publishing treats authors. First, the bloat explains why new and original authors get such a bum rap from traditional publishers. Their agents have become gatekeepers that open the gates to the Big Five’s stables only to those safe warhorses (they define “safe” for the agents, of course), or those with connections to them (Stephen King and his family; Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter; and so forth).
Second, it keeps perpetuating the myth that their services—editing, book production, and PR and marketing—are really worth it when signing with them. Not true. Unless you’re a warhorse (Preston’s signees represent this class well, of course), you have to have a well edited MS even before an agent will touch it (God forbid they actually have to read through a few gaffes!), so that’s on the author. Once you get past the gatekeeper, a publishing house might sic a content editor on you—there goes your voice and originality, because that editor will try to mold your book into what his firm believes will sell.
PR and marketing? Forget it. A publishing house’s marketers at best run biased polls of the marketplace and feed that info to the editors, thus completing a vicious circle of mediocrity. You, the author, on the other hand, are expected to already have a website. After the book is released, you’re also in charge of your book’s PR and marketing too (again, unless you’re one of Preston’s group of old warhorses). And, if you fail in generating sufficient numbers of readers, don’t expect another contract—and pay back the money we lost from your advance, of course.
Third, most big publishers, whether conglomerates like Hachette, or a smaller publishing house, are located in NYC (hmm, that’s where the Times is too—maybe that’s not a coincidence?). I love NYC. The Big Apple is indeed the crossroads of the world. But, for authors and readers, it’s all too often more like that lonely crossroads in California where Jimmy Dean met his death than the central hub of the Universe. Many of my stories take place in the tri-state area, but I live here. As a reader, though, I’m also interested in more esoteric places.
I recently read two books where the locales were Australia and New Zealand, respectively. If you hate airline travel now, travel with books—it’s very rewarding. I explore other places as an author too. My new book this year, Aristocrats and Assassins, hops all over Europe, along with a short side trip to Beijing. My next book, Muddlin’ Through, has the protagonist running around a lot in Colombia, a country I’m familiar with, but most readers aren’t (I didn’t Google my info either—I lived there!). And much of Sing a Samba Galactica takes place on a planet that orbits the star 82 Eridani, far away from NYC.
No, NYC isn’t the center of the Universe. But the publishing establishment is as much steeped in NYC’s prejudices as Wall Street’s big banks, hedge funds, and insurance companies. As such, the people who run the publishing companies and their agents go through life with blinders on, happy in their belief that they know what’s right for readers. Readers, though, have the nasty habit of telling them where to stick it. With the Harry Potter series to Fifty Shades, and with every indie author or small imprint author who has made it big (whatever your metric of “big” is—be assured it’s as least as good as the NY Times’ Book Review metrics), readers go their own way and independently latch onto books that big publishers and their agents let fall through the cracks. With their myopic views and corporate arrogance, they think they can dictate to readers what they should read. It’s not surprising to me when readers give them the finger. Readers rule! The NY Times better not forget this either….
In libris libertas….
