I didn't know about the discussion with Ursula K Le Guin. I'd love to read what's available (since I like the non-fiction writing of both of them).
Some of it was in articles but they also discussed on a stage no less:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5650396/marg...a-k-le-guin-debate-science-fiction-vs-realism As you can see, Atwood is simply taking an old position long debated among SFF writers. So she wasn't bad-mouthing. She was alter-mouthing. Which is part of Fung's whole developing culture thing.
And Walter is certainly allowed to do the same. He just did it really badly, it seemed to me.
"Commercial storytellers", though, sounds like a black-hole category. It has the potential to suck up everything.
I called it the kitchen sink category where he stuck everybody else. And that's the epitome of why the piece is essentially lazy. He had to keep the categories down so everybody else -- the general SFF readers -- went in one. He got the Sexy Beasts romance market completely wrong because he didn't care, just thought he needed to throw it in. Ditto with YA. And he just sort of danced around the rest. He should have probably just done a piece on authors he likes that he thought offered interesting progressive visions of potential futures.
A. Lynn said:
That to me sounds like today's modern tension of "self-pub" versus "traditional". I think it's going away in many regards, but there are still a lot of people saying: "Oh no I'm good enough to be traditionally published, so no self-pubbing for me!" - Wait a minute. What?
The supposed tension between self-pub and traditional partner publishing is mainly hype. It was partly Amazon's fault and now it's just another myth. Self-publishing existed long before e-books and publishers did the same thing with it then as they do now and with small presses -- they waited to see if anything caught a decent-sized audience and then offered reprint deals. Nearly all the authors who were not already hybrids who did well in self-pub got offered reprint deals and foreign pub deals -- Amanda Hocking, Hugh Howey, Mike Sullivan, etc. And some of them took them for a variety of reasons, including wanting more writing time, less publisher time, which sometimes gets them called traitors and sell-outs from the more militant part of the self-pub field.
When Amazon decided to launch the Kindle with e-books, they widened the already existing but fairly niche retail e-book market and they made a big fuss about self-pubbing authors, made it easy for them, offered them free marketing services, to get them and their friends to buy Kindles and build brand loyalty. And they were also pressuring publishers for marketing fees and trying to keep control of a near monopoly on e-books, so they used the publishers in the press to say, look we don't need them anymore (so publishers should give us more money.) So the press kept asking publishing folk about why they were useful and naturally you got a lot of defensive remarks about that. The media liked the narrative that self-pub authors and publishers were at war. And people enthusiastic about e-book self-pub and also selling services to self-pubbing authors tended to go for that narrative as well. Publishers were temporarily the dying dinosaurs who were out to get self-pub rebel authors and supposedly block them from the market. It's true that the flood of self-pub that followed was not entirely loved, as it threatened to overwhelm marketing algorithms, but as the bigger e-book market got established, self-pub remains another source of material for publishers. And the authors who seem to be doing best with it are hybrid authors who do some things with publishers and some things as self-pub.
But you will run into people who think that book publishing is either like school or like soap detergent sales. The ones who think it's like school believe the publishers are teachers who give the "good" books an A grade. In reality, it's all subjective and publishers reject lots of fine books because they can't afford to publish everybody. So books that can do very well in the market can do so in self-pub. Self-pub widens the market and anything that widens the market and gets more readers is a good thing. The ones who think it's like soap detergent see the publishers as cold money-grubbing formula peddlers who are trying to steal all the authors' money. And they tend to figure that all it takes to create a bestseller is marketing effort. But in reality, the self-pub market authors have the same pyramid sales graph as those working with publishers. And word of mouth rules the roost for fiction.
So they did "endcaps" to help spur impulse purchases? Kind of like how I see chips and sode "grouped together" at the grocery store, hoping the consumer will get a junk-food craving and purchase?
No, because the titles in the category market aren't junk food.
They are every sort of food, just like in general fiction. But they are a display that groups books that have a similar content element -- like all the authors use the color red (science fiction) and gave that an extra red display so that the people who enjoy red would get to see a lot of such titles together and easily browse. It's not all the red titles, just a lot of them. A category display and imprints make sense when you know you have a lot of readers who are willing to check out stories with red in them, whatever shade of red, however it's used, whether it's a lot of red or a little red, and they are willing to try red authors who are new and they've never heard of before. If publishers and booksellers feel that there are enough of those readers and that they consistently buy new stuff, they'll set up category markets. That's why it took horror a long time to have one because people would buy individual horror authors in huge numbers, but not enough of them seemed to be buying new horror writers consistently. But horror sort of had one because it was involved with SFF imprints and it had magazines and conventions to support it. And now a lot of bookstores have horror sections. So it's bookselling organization and that organization can greatly affect how people see genres.
You pretty much just described how Seth Godin applies marketing. Go find the "sneezers" of a Tribe; those rare "elite" gatekeepers who for some reason are "worthy" to say when something else is "worthy", and make them feel special for having "discovered" it.
They aren't gatekeepers. They're just readers. But they are readers who have beliefs about themselves based on what they like. So when you're hitting media venues that they might see, you say, this will be of interest to you because it is extra special. In fiction, word of mouth is what sells, not marketing gimmicks. So what you hope with that is that people who like to read what's considered deep fiction will try it if you market it as deep fiction and if they like it, spread word of mouth. But they don't only market to those people. While they tell people this is literary, they are also telling the sf media, this is hot SF. You sell grimdark to people who love dark, noir stuff, and just as epic fantasy elsewhere. And sometimes it's on base in terms of content and sometimes it is not.
Now there are people who are considered useful -- reviewers who have built up a fanbase that trusts their reviews, authors willing to help get word out about other authors (a SFF tradition certainly,) people involved in bookselling, librarians, etc. These people are given ARC's in hopes that if they like it, they will talk about it and spread word of mouth (hand-selling for booksellers.) Because some people do listen to their recs. But they aren't gatekeepers -- they aren't in control of anything, they can't keep anybody out. Most fiction readers never read reviews or articles about books, don't notice ads, barely know something is bestselling. They buy books based on recommendations from friends and family (word of mouth,) or because they like the look or the sound of the book as a gamble. This is why fiction readers are marketing resistant, but bookstore displays (and bookselling website displays,) can be effective in drawing in browsers. This is what the category sections are -- displays to draw in browsers.
And this is why I eventually just get flustered and ask "Was the book good or not? I don't care what genre that Brin's "Uplift" novels are, I just think it's funny to see a dolphin smarting off to a human, and exploring the sun, okay?"
Which makes it a science fiction novel. It doesn't have to be complicated. And again, "good' is subjective. I can no more tell you that you will find a book "good" than I can tell you what you will find pretty, or valuable or worth your time. That's up to you. But I can say, I liked this book or found it interesting because of X, and that's word of mouth. If
I know you like SF stories particularly, then I can say that Brin's Uplift stories I found to be really good, so since you like SF, you might want to try them. And that is also word of mouth. It's a matter of trying to help people find and connect with stories that they are most likely to be interested in and might like.
True. It's kind of interesting that they are treated so differently, isn't it? Why the different treatment?
Because that's what readers focus on and group them by over time. For science fiction, the science-base is the defining element, so what sort of science it is comes into play. That occasionally gets cross-referenced with setting, especially if the sub-category is also a lit movement such as cyberpunk and steampunk. Suspense fiction is sub-grouped by type of suspense, and then can be cross-grouped by setting. Romance uses both setting and type of romantic content. Westerns pretty much had the same setting, so they grouped by type of plot (suspense essentially,) very loosely. Historical fiction is setting as the element, so then it depends on again type of plot. Contemporary fiction also is setting -- and yet that will end up being historical over time.
So setting is very much involved. Some people do not like to read about the past (historical,) or the present day (contemporary) or the future, or other worlds -- or that's all they want to read. Most science fiction stories are set in the future, either near or far, so setting is of less import than type of science involved.
So to sum up your thoughts; Walter is a Tumblerette? I keep seeing this kind of spastic elitism all over the internet.
Well he can't be, because that's a gender slur used on teenage girls.
Walter is a journalist and columnist, and he covers arts and books and is pretty knowledgeable about SFF. And most of the time I have no objection to him. But that doesn't mean he's above the occasional mass generalization or click-bait approach. I seem to remember he did one on how giant books like Martin's Song were crowding out attention for all other SFF, which was silly and wrong.
It's also important to remember that a lot of the sporadic elitism one might encounter wasn't really intended as elitism and geek policing. Often they think they are addressing the elitism of others. But it still ends up that way. Take over-arching generalizations about the genres and their history with a huge grain of salt. There's little truth to them and they usually try to use a very narrow sector of the market or small group of authors to make their case.
Apparently the author has to be a marketable commodity as much as their words, if I understand correctly. Right?
If it's non-fiction, yes. If it's fiction authors, absolutely no. Fiction readers don't give a crap about fiction authors except as sources of goodies. They are marketing resistant. They don't care if the books they read are fashionable or not. They don't care if the fiction author is good-looking or not. They don't care if you have a Ph.D. or a gold medal in X-games. If you are a celebrity actor, then fans of your celebrity might also buy a book you write. But regular fiction readers have no interest. They like characters, not authors. They rely on word of mouth. And they get mightily annoyed when fiction authors come talking at them unasked. We've frequently had to explain to fiction authors coming on here and just trying to promote that they're driving potential readers away by doing that.
Non-fiction, on the other hand, is information. So the author is then important as the source of the information. So the author's credentials, ability to speak well about the topic of their book, being attractive and thus considered more credible on the information, etc., that all can help non-fiction authors, though not as much as it does people selling other products. But fiction is a marketing nightmare because the customer is only impressed by stories they like, and the customers are the main source of getting word out about the books. So it's mostly a matter of getting the fiction books in front of their eyeballs, not the authors.
was the old "hard SF epics" of the 70's including Zelazny (hey; there's tech elements in Amber!), Brin, Drake, Pournelle, Niven, and I could go on. From the Man-Kzin wars, to the Mote in Gods Eye (oh, so good!); Uplift Chronicles; the Culture series by Ian Banks. All of these are "Hard SF" and I'm not a cranky old man by any means.
No, they mostly aren't hard SF.
Zelazny was not. Brin is considered hard SF for some stuff, not others. Drake is not hard SF. Pournelle did some hard SF and some not. Niven did hard SF, but also capitalized off of the New Wave. But generally he's considered hard SF. Banks is not considered hard SF. Banks is space opera. But there are quite a lot of interesting hard SF writers -- Peter Watts, James Cambias, some of Alastair Reynolds, Andy Weir, some of Linda Nagata, Liu Cixin, and Greg Egan and Greg Bear are still producing etc.
But if I understand what you said, Walter seems to feel that everybody should stay in their own "lane" as it were,
It's more that he feels there are authors who aren't very well versed in the history of the genres, who write a SF or fantasy novel that uses elements, plot ideas, etc. that are fairly familiar to the SFF field, but get a lot of acclaim for it as if they were doing something really new, original, transcendent, etc., while authors being published in the category market who have done the same thing don't get the bon mots. Cronin was essentially a mid-list writer of contemporary drama, and had won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Then he wrote The Passage -- a sprawling post-apoc vampire/zombie SF novel. And he got a huge deal with Ballantine Books for it because they liked it and won the book auction, and it was published in general fiction with them and cross-marketed to category readers and media through Del Rey. Word of mouth spread, authors like Stephen King liked it, etc. And they could get some media attention for it because he did get the big advance and there was movie interest even before the book was out. So of course the media brayed about how this was a book that broke the mold of SF and zombies, etc., and since Walter doesn't like the book much I guess, he resented this in comparison to other authors more involved in the category market, and calls authors like Cronin tourists -- visitors, not really dedicated SFF authors.
The problem is that he's responding to exclusionary elitism about writing and genre with a counter exclusionary gate-keeping attempt, not only of authors but of readers who do like those books. There is not a "tribe" of readers who wait with baited breath for a "literary" author to venture into writing a SF or fantasy novel (in part because literary authors do it all the time,) and mainly just want to read those books. There are readers who don't read a lot of SFF and may when they do go for books like Life of Pi or Haruki Murakami, but they are still part of SFF fandom as much as anybody else. And the books they are reading, if they are SFF, are part of the field as well. And those authors are often also going to conventions, doing interviews with Locus, etc. -- making them feel unwelcome and pretending that the category market is actually a cult helps no one.
Walter is also, though he doesn't realize that he's doing it, slagging female fans as well. Women make up 70% of the general fiction reading market (and 50% of the SFF category market.) So if you're whining that the readers of well-regarded general fiction SFF are SFF tourists, you're saying that the female readers who mainly made Cronin a bestseller aren't real SFF fans. And this is a continual problem -- this myth that women readers in SFF are recent invaders, not true fans. It's so ingrained, people don't think about it.
As for the 50 Shades vs. Twilight saga.. It's hard for me to disagree because I got irritated at both novels.
Well, Twilight is kind of an interesting novel. Bella actually does have a personality -- sarcastic loner (which in the movies, they had Stewart just play sullen and hesitant instead.) Her parents are dysfunctional (in the movies, they made them more functional and nice,) and Bella has had to play parent to both of them, try to fix their problems and raise herself. So she brings that attitude towards Edward. She has been isolated and often bored, so the mysteries surrounding Edward -- and finding this new, more exciting world around him, draw her in. Also, Bella is a Chosen One who is going to birth a Chosen One. She is destined to be with Edward, and because of that, they are both magically drawn to each other, even though both have many reasons not to be near each other. That is also why other people are drawn to Bella in the small town -- her new human friends, Jacob, etc., because they are being drawn to that strain of power in Bella which is developing. Of course, then Meyer lost the thread and Bella became a mess.
But the thing of it is, Meyer didn't write Twilight for a bunch of adults. She wrote a teen fantasy romance with a fairly complicated mythology attached to it and sold it to a YA publisher for that market. And it became a phenom and so a lot of adults read it. And complained that it was a teen fantasy romance novel. Meyer certainly is not a stylist but she writes way better in my experience than John Grisham, another phenom. And I don't remember anybody complaining about how Grisham wrote legal thrillers and nobody should like them.
Popularity goes to books considered literary by many or to those not. Sales develop from word of mouth and people like whatever it is that they like. So fiction authors aren't in a race with each other; they help each other sell. Meyer brought in a ton of readers to both YA and SFFH, a large number of whom browse outward. Cronin brought in a ton of readers to SFFH. Anybody you dislike who is popular is still helping those authors you do like to get in front of new reader eyeballs and have more chance of selling, as well as funding publishers to buy more new authors. The book market needs to get bigger. A lot bigger. But it will do it slowly, especially in fiction.
