![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
[Updated, see bottom.]
Howe’s Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
It’s about time we had another axiom. I was going to work on something else today but this just came up: a post on a blog humbly titled Working Toward the Betterment of Publishing. It’s about … (pause for groan) … Web 2.0, and solving the problems of the slushpile.
It’s so full of wrong-headed ideas, it’s funny. Not funny ha-ha, or even funny peculiar, but isn’t it funny just how wrong someone can be.
Read it if you want (no, Mr Scalzi, you’re not obligated). If not, here are the bullet points:
The author tries to counter all possible criticism in advance, and even demonstrates something approaching sarcasm by linking to my dissection of Web 2.0.
I’m posting a rebuttal here, because Mr(s?) Betterment of Publishing is an anonymous coward who doesn’t even allow comments. So Web 1.0.
Based on? No publisher’s market research project has ever asked their opinion. Seriously. Let’s move on.
Readers tell publishers what they want every time they buy a fscking book. The problem is not the market research, it’s the unpredictable connection between what has sold before and what will sell in two years’ time when today’s signings hit the shelves.
Market research sucks. People tell market researchers what they think they want to hear, and what they think won’t make them look like an asshole. Market research never maps to actual purchase behaviour. Just look at the money wasted by the fast food industry, marketing moderately healthy meals people said they wanted but don’t buy.
The advance is a fraction of the total cost of publishing a book. It’s a pittance paid to placate authors that something is happening during the long journey to publication. It’s the low-bid value of your silence. “Earning out” is unusual enough for established authors to joke “If a book earned out the advance, the advance wasn’t big enough.” A book only “fails” if it doesn’t sell enough copies to justify taking the risk on the next one.
This is why WTtBoP doesn’t have comments.
This idea is just so bad I can’t believe a human thought of it. Can you even imagine the uproar amongst the great unedited masses if agents used computer algorithms to screen the slushpile? How would you feel if your rejection slip read “806 instances of: Fragment. consider revising.” ?
Natural language processing is still a pipe dream, it’s several generations away from being ready for such a “mission-critical” deployment. Software cannot tell the difference between Faulkner and syntactically correct gibberish. How would you define the filters? How many spelling and grammar errors would be permitted? What about experimental fiction?
If you think this idea has any merit, type a few pages from your favourite books into MS Word and turn all the grammar rules on. Until SkyNet becomes self-aware, and starts buying all the e-books on Amazon, and you’re writing for the amusement of your artificially intelligent toaster, this idea is the worst kind of stupid.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say No real writer would ever let a computer determine the quality of their work.
Honestly, if you still give WTtBoP any credence after the last point, you might as well buy the land in Florida too. Let’s have a website where 1000-word samples of the slushpile are posted, and readers can vote on the best! Hey, people can even get behind their favourites, and create pre-release buzz!
Oh, and:
Never mind that we have a system like this in place (called “short fiction magazines”) that’s already foundering. Never mind that a large portion of the slushpile consists of paranoid egomaniacs who would sue/stalk anybody who ever posts a remotely similar story to theirs. Never mind .. oh, just make up your own reason why you wouldn’t want to participate.
These sites fail not because they “haven’t been tried by a major publisher or agent before”, but because there’s no incentive for ordinary readers to engage in this process. Why would they? Who wants to read unedited, unfiltered garbage? Who could possibly care enough about what gets published …
Un-fscking-published writers, that’s who. This solution only sounds attractive if you’re part of the problem.
Please, please, stop bitching about what you think is wrong with publishing. The problems are not going to get solved by a few shitty writers blogging about how it could all be fixed with the magic of programming.
You have three choices:
UPDATE: I have to entertain the small possibility that I’ve been had, by an apprentice of what an Australian comedian once called “non-laughist humour”. Surely, the author of the original post cannot truly believe in his argument, and that it was just “linkbait”, as the author claimed in a gutless, abusive email.
See, the whole notion of a Web 2.0 solution hinges on the (unrewarded) efforts of ordinary web users, giving of their time to read and make comment on the thousands of slushdwellers, towards the “betterment of publishing”. Yet the author doesn’t even allow commenting on their own blog, because they’re afraid of what they refer to as “retard farming“.
Is there anything of substance left in their post to defend?
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I don’t allow comments for two reasons.
1. In the words of Warren Ellis, it encourages “retard farming.”
2. It encourages people like yourself to post rebuttals on their own blogs, thus increasing my visibility.
Thank you for the rest of your rebuttal. I’ll allow the readers to decide for themselves who is right.
With all due respect, you’re nuts.
You’d think this site would be a ‘tard magnet, but my commenters have, almost without exception, been thoughtful, insightful, and generous with their time and opinions. The comments facility allows them to quickly add ideas to the mix, ideas that may not make sense out of context on their own blog.
If your site grows retards, maybe it’s because your ideas are fertilizer.
BTW, MS Word flags 5 spelling and 4 grammar errors in your 1200 word post. Guess it should be rejected, huh?
I read a betterment worker’s post yesterday, too. Like you, Sean, I found a few holes in his / her argument, but calling aBw a moron is a tad harsh in my opinion.
Healthy speculation is a good thing. No one claims that the current publishing business model is as good as it could be, so brainstorming “better” practices doesn’t hurt anyone.
Perhaps aBw should have made it more clear that their post was a thought experiment, and nothing more. (It *was* a thought experiment, right aBw?)
Personally, I’d love to hear J.A. Konrath’s opinion on this. He’s pretty damn insightful.
Although I agree with you, Sean, that too many crap writers are a bigger problem than the slushpile, I do think the publishing industry should make some changes. I’m just not sure what those should be. As usual, in the end, the market will figure it out.
Keep up the funny posts!
Of course, if we automate the reading of the slushpile, the same technology could be used to automate the writing of the slushpile. And then this blog’s destiny would be fulfilled.
Anyone who quotes Warren Ellis, for any reason whatsoever, loses any credibility they may have had beforehand. I should know: it’s my goddamned quote on the back of one of his Transmetropolitan collections, and I want access to practical time travel solely to beat the shit out of my former self before he/I wrote the column that contained that quote. Ellis is like Robert Anton Wilson or Bruce Sterling: they’re catnip to the college-age geeks who think they’re learning something because the work kindasorta refers to other things currently in their worldview, but when you grow up and discover that there’s not a whole lot of there there in their works, they’ve already managed to get a whole new generation of sycophants.
Sean -
With all due respect, your information is wrong. However, because you asked, I went back to my original source (cited in my post) and found the supporting information about market research. I hate doing research for lazy bloggers, but you did me such a favor by pushing readers in my direction that I figured you deserved a little extra effort. Second paragraph down, emphasis mine.
In that regard, HarperCollins is generating market research (a first in an industry long notorious for not even considering it) to target on-line ads and potential customers. “Publishers had never looked at who the consumer is,” Friedman says. “I would say our consumer is men and women, birth to death, educated to uneducated!” Now they’re identifying potential readers through a series of E-newsletters, keeping them interested with newly interactive websites, and analyzing how readers hear and go about finding particular books.
You might want to seriously consider doing actual research before you start foaming at the mouth. It’ll give you some credibility and maybe it’ll make me think that you calling me nuts is an insult that I should take seriously.
Jeremy -
Everything I write is a thought experiment. I’m trying to prompt discussion about what could be done to make things better. Pretending that everything is fine in the publishing industry is for people as deluded as writers who think that publishing a single novel will automatically make them rich and famous.
*reads*
*decides*
Yep, you’re… there. OR something.
I completely, 100% disagree with you, betterment, that computers can do the job of the slushpile. Have you run a spellcheck lately? It can do only two or three things usefully… correct spelling, catch double words, and help you with capitalization, but even then, it needs to have it’s electronic hands held, and wait for input from the user. Computers just aren’t that smart. And don’t even get me started on grammar checkers. The slushpile isn’t about technical perfection. There isn’t a computer in the world that can tell the difference between good writing and bad writing.
That alone tells me that you don’t understand just how computers work; computers are idiots… they need humans to teach them how not to be.
Don’t be a coward, and allow commenting. There’s no point in having a blog if you’re not going to allow comments. I don’t read blogs for their insightful information. Do you really think I read this one because I think Sean Linsday is so awesome that he deserves to be read every day? Hardley. I read because I can’t wait to see the idiots who respond to his common sense and logic… something that fails most authors. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun to read without that.
Let me see…. A so-called “thought experiment” that doesn’t allow comments. I believe the rest of the world calls that “masturbation.”
Engaging in discussion about masturbation on someone else’s blog is called “Usenet.” Take the Web 2.0 “thought experiment” to Usenet. Have fun. Let us know how many orifices are violated in the process.
Heather -
I appreciate your input. I agree 100% with you that computers cannot do the job of the slushpile.
Interestingly, I don’t believe that I said that computers should entirely take over the job of the slushpile. *checks* Nope. I said that the a host of online readers should be invited to do the job of the slushpile readers.
I can understand your confusion, though. Early in my post, I did mention that computers can do simple things, like check for spelling errors and so forth. But that only works for really basic problems, not situations where the author has used loose instead of lose (for example). That’s not really the point of the post, but there you go. People like an idea and they run with it. What are you going to do?
And honestly, why should I bother allowing comments on my posts? People like Sean make better commenters, which has the net effect of spreading the ideas around more effectively. You call it cowardice, I call it pragmatism.
Betterment, I think you’re on to something here, but you’re just one man. To dismantle the entrenched institutions of society you need an army of dedicated followers. Maybe these guys can help.
As a reader, I don’t give a flying fsck about whether the system is fair to writers.
I want a book that entertains, enlightens, etc. And I don’t see how publishers farming out the slush pile to readers (for free, no less) helps me find good stuff to read. Why on earth would I want to wade through piles and piles of crap on the off chance I’d stumble across the 2% of the pile that was serviceable? And even THAT probably needs editing.
Betterment Worker’s argument fails because the perceived problem only affects writers judged unworthy of publication. It makes no mention of how it will improve the experience for readers. Reading is my favorite form of recreation, but BW’s idea sounds like work.
“Programming is easier than writing fiction, believe me.”
From someone who’s done both, thank you thank you thank you.
Sean, you are awesome!
Phphphp. I got as far as I am also an amateur novelist, which means that I have been paying attention to the publishing industry for nearly a decade in the sidebar.
Anything so easily translatable to I’ve been writing for ten years and haven’t managed to get published, not even once sets its own standards of credibility.
Betterment and Meika, the 101 Reasons twins. At least you’re reaching your core audience, Seanie. Now all you have to do is persuade them to stop
FWIW, there are quite a few examples of “unedited and unfiltered” making a significant enough splash to esnure some kind of success for their creators. For now, it’s been limited to film, music, non-fiction, and (oddly) comics, but I honestly don’t think that fiction can be that far behind.
Now, granted, using too many buzzwords like “Web 2.0″ is probably a violation of some axiom or law or other pithy, cynical observation disguised as the very fundamental truths on which this very universe was conceived, designed, and constructed. But then, that is the sort of thing this blog is founded on, so what the hell?
But aside from the smug abuse of the latest in media catchphrases, there is certainly no harm in suggesting alternatives to the way Things Are Done. In case you hadn’t noticed, both the motion picture and recording industries are trying very hard to find another tune to hop to right now, because they’ve realized (belatedly) that this intertubes thingy is changing the way things are done. Maybe publishing will change, last of all and at the sage direction of the Powers, but I don’t doubt that it will change.
Letting people decide for themselves what is interesting and entertaining and useful of the “unedited and unfiltered” masses, while offensive to a certain sense of sophistication and refinement, is one of the waves of the future, like as not. And, again, I doubt very much that fiction publishing is exempt.
Jeremy, I didn’t call aBw a “moron”. I called him/her “Anonymous coward”, “wrongheaded”, “nuts”, and one of their ideas “the worst kind of stupid”. Since s/he won’t allow comments on their site, but is quite happy to take advantage of my hospitality to berate me, I’ll add “mealy mouthed”.
Now we see the backpedalling.
aBw, your comment “I agree 100% with you that computers cannot do the job of the slushpile”, above, doesn’t mesh with:
Weeding out the basic flaws – spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization – are tasks so easy that a computer could do it…. Tens of thousands of people across the planet are employed to perform a task that a computer could do far faster and more efficiently.
This is absolutely wrong, and trying to back out of owning the remark doesn’t make it less stupid. A writer who loves words would never think this is a good idea.
If you argue that publishers should do market research, and your substantiation is a quote that they are already doing market research, what are you contributing? Most of that quote refers to new methods being used to connect existing readers with existing product, which is marketing.
How about you describe exactly what kind of market research would yield more useful information than the last fify years of actual sales numbers, and how a publisher could apply this to a new book by a new author?
I have never said there are no problems in publishing, but an unpublished writer recycling old and unworkable ideas doesn’t contribute to any productive discussion.
I’ve updated the post, to reflect a fallacy I missed before, and an email I received from aBw in which they admit this was an exercise in “linkbait”.
Sorry for wasting everyone’s time with this hypocritical fscktard.
Well, the jackass didn’t get any hits from me.
Here’s the thing about hits…
They’re useless.
Any decent web designer will tell you that hits are meaningless. It just means someone opens your site. I look at hundreds of sites in a given week… doesn’t mean I go back, have any affect on them, buy something from them, whatever. considering my rounds often come from http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com – this isn’t a good thing.
Hits mean people look at your site. It doesn’t mean you’re “reaching” them. It doesn’t mean that you’re changing anything, or spreading your message. Just means random joe-blow computer user clicked on a link.
Hits mean something when you get buyers on an e-commerce site, etc.
Any type of automated slush reader is doomed until technology can deal with the English language.
When you can get a computer to understand the following sentence, then we will have true artificial intelligence:
Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana.
The sad thing is that publishing DOES work. Books that people want to pay money for get published. Any opinion on quality is irrelevent.
I think Mr. Betterment is a slush-puppy who is envious of the big dogs.
Going back over this, I had something tickling the back of my brain that kept telling me “I’ve read this before”. Actually, I’d read something awfully close: Phil Kaplan’s book F’d Companies listed more than a few dead dotcoms that burned through millions of dollars doing the same thing. Companies trying to sell models and actors to producers, companies trying to get people to read through prospecti, and companies that in general broke the cardinal rule: instead of asking “What can my site do for you?”, they asked “How can I get you to do my work for me?” It’s no surprise that they’re all dead, or that people keep reviving that basic idea of “But it’s different…because it’s on the Web.”
Unfortunately, I don’t see it changing, either: so long as you continue to have people in love with technology, you’ll always have people figuring that they’ll bypass the human element of any transaction. What’s funny is that these people are almost otherwise viciously libertarian, which suggests that they’re all for freedom from oppression from humans, but have no problems with becoming slaves to a database.
Back when I was working as a web developer, then programmer, Fucked Company was an island of sanity. Whenever a project was going badly, I would tell myself I was still luckier than the 6000 employees of SomeBigCompany who were laid of the week before Christmas, or the 150 staff of IdiotStartup who turned up to work to find the building locked and the signage gone. How I laughed.
It’s a programmer’s mentality to reinvent the wheel, to boldly go and fail again where everyone has failed before. It’s akin to the belief of 99.9% of writers that they’re in the 0.1%.