End of the Publishing Age

Times have changed, and they just keep changing. Though it's not always as obvious as we'd prefer it to be. As I wrap up shipping on my first ever crowdfund (if you have yet to fill out your survey, please do so! It's the only way to get your book), I've spent some time looking back on the way things are compared to the way they used to be.

Years ago in the wilderness of publishing, emerged these brand new inventions called eBooks. They soon began popping up in then-burgeoning online stores. This was a gamechanger in the world of writing that you might not appreciate if you're young enough to have grown up when they were always around. Overnight, anyone could publish their own works on an even playing field with the wider industry and get their books out for anyone to read. This changed everything. A new wild west had been born.

As a consequence, the gatekeepers of the old publishing industry (OldPub) could not keep up with this new ecosystem, and fought to destroy it from every angle they could. They attempted to deliberately sabotage this new landscape by putting their own eBooks at absurd prices in order to prop up their stranglehold on the paper industry, but it did not work out for them. Eventually it succeeded in pushing readers away from them into these new spaces where many readers tried out these new, far cheaper books, and realized how much they had been missing out on sticking with OldPub. The revolution had begun and could not be quelled halfheartedly.

Many other events happened over the years to help alter the way things were, including the ever-present Coronavirus which put a heavy squeeze on OldPub which quite possible wiping out the adjacent audiobook industry (since no one was driving to work--the main audience for such products). Said event also killed off even more of the old chain bookstores that stocked these corporations' works. In essence, what has happened is that the old industry is on the way out and they have gnashed their teeth over it while flailing the whole way down.

Now, if you meet anyone who reads at all, they either only indulge in old works and classics or have chosen to dive into obscure and strange NewPub (the new publishing landscape) material. Go to a chain bookstore today and it will be slathered in manga with a spattering of knickknacks and some tables for classics with terrible modern covers. Their pet projects and newer agents contracted to write for them are buried even as they trumpet them as the obvious future. But there is nothing there underneath the bluster. They have no mainstream penetration, and no desire to have any--they only want control over their own cliques. The OldPub industry only now exists to prop up its failing lumber business and writing seminars for those who will bend over backwards to join the rapidly shrinking club. It is an unbridled disaster and only getting worse.

Naturally, there is no future here, though it will take years, maybe decades, for those in control of these industries to realize how little influence they actually have on the wider culture. Perhaps they will never understand. It doesn't really matter because that is the way it is.

Before we know it, the industry will be nothing but a memory.

The problem going forward between readers and writers, however, is going to be a tough gap to bridge. Wild west climates do not last forever, by necessity. Eventually a landscape will coalesce and rules will form from some source adjacent to it. This is unavoidable. The question is, who will be the one to assert that authority? Because it will happen. It is just a matter of time.

The issue needing to be tackled will be the lack of unity or overall direction in the NewPub space. With so many creators going their own way in random directions, it leaves the audience confused as to what the overall goal is supposed to be. Subcultures of the 20th century understood this better before they also crumbled to dust.

At the same time, the same subcultures that once demanded standards and focus now celebrate mediocrity and human automation--checking boxes and fulfilling corporate tropes to be sold in dwindling store space. While berating AI, they clear the path for it at the same time by making writing a a soulless robot the way to get your book on their shelves. And readers know this--the ones not in the club have already moved on.

All of this contributes to turn an industry that should be built on creativity, on excitement, on new frontiers, one wedded to niche and untenable political ideology masqueraded as the opposite of what it actually is. OldPub has nothing left to offer readers that they can't get elsewhere, and they have nothing to offer writers, either.

This is the current level of the competition coming from OldPub:

Updated stats from the above: barely any better, though.

The obvious question that remains is obvious. What does one gain from climbing aboard this broken system, especially in this day and age?

You won't be selling books. You won't even be on a store shelf. From what everyone in OldPub has stated, you won't get much in the way of editing, you won't get a decent cover, and you won't get a platform to advertise your books. You will basically be getting the equivalent treatment of a vanity publisher from the 2000s: paying to put your books out in front of a miniscule audience that won't even see your book.

So what exactly do you get from engaging in OldPub? What is the advantage, especially as we know the industry prioritizes automation over creativity? What is the point of becoming a writer if all you are going to do is check boxes to be stocked on a shelf no one will ever bother looking at? Is it about prestige? If so, I think our ideas of what "prestige" actually means is going to be changing very soon, if it has yet to.

As I've said, since I started my writing journey, things have changed a lot.

For one example, back when I began OldPub would not accept manuscripts under 100K words. For an idea of what that means, the average novel is 40-60K words, the average novella is under 40K words, the average novelette is under 25K words, and the average short story is under 15K words. In other words, OldPub had no interest in publishing the majority of story types that have existed longer than the industry itself has. They only wanted one type of bloated story at the expense of all else. And if you look at what gets published, how much of it is interchangeable, you can't be left with any other impression other than stories themselves not being the point of the industry.

And don't think readers themselves haven't noticed this change. They are the ones that have moved over to NewPub, after all.

But what does a newer writer and creator do these days? Especially as the old ways have fallen away and gaining a foothold has been difficult for so long. How does one even find people to appeal to in a climate as rotten as this one?

There are a few options, so let us go into one: Neopatronage.

For an idea of what might be coming in the creative landscape, check out this conversation on Neopatronage with my co-authors of the free Generation Y: The Lost Generation, Brian Niemeier and David V. Stewart! This conversation covers just what this new system might consist of, and what newer creatives should strive for.

A lot of the current changes happening in publishing are bringing things back they were before the modern industry existed. This is why I do not call the dying system "Tradpub" as so many others do--there is nothing tradition about it--this industry was always an outlier and a mutation of the way it was once done. The Neopatronage model is actually closer to a traditional model of a successful system than what is erroneously called "Tradpub" ever was. This is because it is merely old--"OldPub" as I call it. It is not getting any younger.

Every industry is currently in a downturn and has been since the creation of streaming, throwaway social media like TikTok, and the devaluing of physical media. So the question at this point should be in just what the future is even going to hold. Because at the rate we are going, no industry built in the 20th century will be around in the next few decades.

Unless we have some mass "Come to Jesus" moment (and at this rate, an actual one), it seems the pattern is obvious and the future ahead coming into view is going to be one thing in particular. We are looking at atomization on a scale that will make our current terminal case look almost quaint. And that is an eerie thought.

Remember the image below? This is not an isolated example. It really feels as if we are breaking apart as a coalesced culture.

This is an incredible turnaround from what it was like in the 20th century. We have allowed ourselves to separate entirely from each other and go off to our own corners. What exactly sort of society this is going to lead to in the future is anyone's guess.

But it will most definitely not be an improvement, socially.

That aside, it is inevitable at this point. This is the climate that such things such as Neopatronage has come into, partially because finding connections through art and entertainment is actually getting more and more difficult. This is actually one of the reasons Hollywood can only lean on tired political sloganeering or nostalgia bait to attract attention--it is because they otherwise have no other way to relate to the average person.

It is a shame we live in a time where communication appears to be failing, even as we have more ways to communicate than ever before, but perhaps this was inevitable change after we sold ourselves on automating and stripping the humanity from the art and entertainment we have produced over the years. All that is left is inhuman formula and old ideas that newer audiences have been trained not to connect to. How does one grow an industry from that point?

That is where we are, however. All we can do is start from the beginning and hope it works out better this time. There is nothing left except to begin again.

Yes, so while the old age dies, and we flail blindly towards the future, we can only hope that things will work out this time. As long as we can connect with each other, there is always a chance. We're going to have to fight for that connection in ways we never thought we had to before. Perhaps we took it all for granted, but we can't do that anymore.

I can't know what the new age will promise, but I can hope for the best. We've got a wide open road ahead of us. Let's take advantage of it this time, and really make something out of it. Not only do we deserve it, but we need it.

The future is already here.

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