{"id":4281,"date":"2009-11-27T17:38:14","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T17:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/11\/27\/spoken-like-somebody-whos-neve\/"},"modified":"2009-11-27T17:38:14","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T17:38:14","slug":"spoken-like-somebody-whos-neve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/11\/27\/spoken-like-somebody-whos-neve\/","title":{"rendered":"Spoken Like Somebody Who’s Never Read Slush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Windows is pleading to be allowed to install updates, so I’m going through closing browser tabs that I opened foolishly thinking I might write about them. In that list is yet another blog post on how electronic books will kill traditional publishing<\/a>. This one is fundamentally an economic argument, claiming that it will soon be more profitable for authors to self-publish on the Kindle than to go through a traditional publisher. I’m a little dubious about this, but it’s at least an attempt at a quantitative foundation, rather than the usual boundless techno-optimism.<\/p>\n

The first comment to the post has the essential rejoinder to this, which is that publishing is not just about making physical books, but also about selecting and improving books through the editing process. What elevates this to post-worthy is the author’s response to this, which is generally pretty reasonable, but does include this:<\/p>\n

\n

I remain skeptical that the role of the publisher as a gatekeeper is essential. Personally, I’ve never looked at who the publisher is; I make my decisions purely by Amazon reviews and word-of-mouth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This kind of misses the point. The claim isn’t that there’s a big difference in quality between books published by Simon and Schuster vs. books published by Penguin or Bantam or the imprint of your choice. The claim is that there’s a big difference between books published by any established traditional publisher, and the millions of books that they choose not<\/em> to publish. Saying “I go by Amazon reviews and word-of-mouth” is not an answer to this claim, because the books being reviewed at Amazon and discussed on blogs have already passed the publication test<\/em>. Somebody has deemed them worthy of publication, so the gatekeeping function has already been performed.<\/p>\n

While there is publisher-to-publisher variation– in SF, for example, I’m significantly more likely to try a new author published by Tor than one published by Baen– it’s tiny compared to the variation between the stuff that gets published, and the vast mountains of crap that doesn’t make it into print in the first place. If you haven’t read slush– the unpublished, unsolicited manuscripts that publishers get by the thousands– it’s hard to appreciate just how essential the gatekeeping function is.<\/p>\n

The best example I’ve heard of this for the fiction side of things was that if you want to appreciate what editors and publishers do, you should go to fanfiction.net<\/a> and pick ten works completely at random and read them, or as much of them as you can stand. Then do that every day for a month.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what the non-fiction equivalent of that is, though there ought to be one. “Choose ten blogspot blogs at random and read them” probably comes close. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Windows is pleading to be allowed to install updates, so I’m going through closing browser tabs that I opened foolishly thinking I might write about them. In that list is yet another blog post on how electronic books will kill traditional publishing. This one is fundamentally an economic argument, claiming that it will soon be… Continue reading Spoken Like Somebody Who’s Never Read Slush<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18,37,75,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-society","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}