Welcome to the weekend!
We've talked about the future of the publishing industry and how it's changed so much over even just the last few years. But while we go on and on about death of OldPub (and yes, it's done and finished) we also do not seem to have much of a plan for what NewPub's future will be. Not that one can "plan" a future for a large burgeoning industry like this, but more that there isn't many ideas been discussed about what should happen.
The above video by David V. Stewart is not one of complaining of the market itself, there is little to be done about the state of something you can't change, but more about the realities of how things currently are and the modern mentalities that prevent us from improving our station in any significant way. The truth might be that "indie" owns the publishing world right now, but it is a mess for discoverability and there is no real way to connect with a larger audience due to the sheer amount of Content being produced in lieu of actual stories.
As mentioned many times before, NewPub, as it is right now, is not the savior of reading or writing in the modern age, which is what it needs to be. The industry is currently a pit of rehashing late 20th century cliches and stereotypes into a void and getting as much return as those trying to reach audiences on any level other than those engaging in pure surface pandering. There is no real way for a writer, good or bad, to sift through the noise and reach a wider audience.
And the biggest problem is that the noise is getting louder and drowning out everything else while the base audience remains the same size, or continually shrinks.
One can argue and scream about AI until they are blue in the face but the side of the argument not discussed is its ability to flood the market with Content. This deluge of Content overwhelms and crowds out everything else to pander to the lowest common denominator. It takes away any sense of true selection and turns NewPub itself into a battle of who can advertise their Content better to a narrow audience instead of being about creating art to connect to a wider audience. It more or less turns the industry into a cynical cash grab, and the worst part is that the cash is barely there to begin with. It is not giving the audience more choice, it is telling them there is only limited Product that can be generated and that they would better use their time finding some other space where wringing dollars out of a half-interested customer base isn't so paramount.
This is why NewPub has had the growing pains it has had, and why it hasn't reached its potential. It is not the readers who caused this but a large segment of authors who merely wish to have their names on products and rehash their version on half a century old genre tropes to the void. There is no direction, no goal, and no cooperation, to anything bigger. All any onlooker will see is chaos and vapidity. Neither will grow any sort of scene, and that's why there hasn't been the audience explosion there should have been.
Of course one can't ever build a scene based on quality alone. Quality isn't as subjective as we like to think, but taste very much is, and the truth is that there is no real uniform taste in the wider culture anymore. Yes, this is mostly due to the destruction of the monoculture, but even alternative scenes once used to thrive when they had a unifying element to them. Simply put: there is still a whole alternative ecosystem missing. Everything is just as blown apart and atomized as audiences are from the mainstream industries.
Before the age of mass media it was much easier to have universal themes and connection with each other, but in the age where everyone's fetishes, preferences, and hyper specific niches almost become personality traits in themselves, there is little reason to find anything outside of our narrow worlds, especially less of one when the ultimate goal is Content Consuming. Even more so when you can automatically generate your own personal Content instead. Why would you go looking for any outside yourself at that point? As we can see from how things are, the audience doesn't see any reason to patronize creators when they can have the bare minimum for nothing.
There is a lot of doom and gloom in just about every artistic circle these days due to how much more fractured, unsteady, and broken, everything is. No one can really get a foothold unless they want to pump out algorithm defined Content into the ether, which is how we've been trained to treat entertainment and art our entire lives. But we also all know that this exact mentality is what led to this current state no one enjoys. It can't continue, and in order for it to stop we need to find other ways, and until we do it's only going to get worse and worse.
And it already is doing just that. We have not reached the bottom.
Just because OldPub is worse (as the above video shows), it does not mean it is okay for NewPub to kick back and rest as that implosion happens. It's really not going to do anything but chase even more readers away from the hobby at a time where we've already been hemorrhaging them for decades now. We need to grow, but we don't seem to want to do anything in order to actually do that. OldPub doesn't think its readers matter, but why do so many NewPub also think this same destructive way? Where are the conversations happening about this topic?
This throwaway style of thinking about art has made everything feel disposable and pointless. There is nothing being built on, only a race to the bottom whether it be in production itself or in a drive for artistic merit. What happened to striving for more? Not only just as artists or audiences, but as people? When do we stop living by moldy tropes and jangling keys and start looking for connection and meaning once more? When do we stop treating life as a beltline factory? The 20th century is dead. I keep saying it because we seem to not want that reality to sink in.
There is no individual or wider callout here. I am just as guilty of thinking this way about the world. It is only when witnessing the destruction of things I loved that I could take stock and realize not only how temporary they truly were but also what really mattered beyond the surface level. And yes, even the "trashiest" piece of entertainment can still house a spark of life in it that can affect anyone who comes across it. All the more reason to make it mean something in the greater scheme of things.
The video from the Second Story above shows how even plot structure and general story mechanics, even when Done Well, can be sued to peddle pure trash into the mind and soul. It isn't just a matter of Content, but intent. Why does your story exist? What does it exist to do? What is it for? While leisure and entertainment is a fine enough reason, it still has to give something edifying to the readers beyond checkbox lists, otherwise it's just clutter. Said clutter is what we need less of to truly set NewPub apart from the rotting old system, and that is absolutely not currently happening. In fact, it is the exact opposite that is going on.
NewPub or OldPub, the overall issue is that while everything has changed much on the surface and in the wider world, the biggest thing that hasn't is our mentality towards both creating and taking in entertainment and art really hasn't. We still want to replicate the exact tropes and styles from when we were kids without adding anything to them or giving new context. We just want to rehash into the void while expecting others to lap it all up. Even when replicating dead OldPub trends that were floated by mass media manipulation and friends in high places decades ago is now no longer selling because they were never actually popular to begin with. The entire framework we grew up under was fake and we still have yet to let that sink in, never mind affect what we make. The frame shift is a lot more jarring than we want to accept.
This fractured state of everything makes finding a universal touchstone even more difficult, and that's without even getting into quality at all. Everyone now has their own island and reaching them in the first is an overwhelmingly Herculean ask that no writer has ever had to worry about before. Art needs to connect, but finding common ground to connect today is a problem without even considering art at all. And using crusty formulas and AI models to pump Content out does not address this deep societal problem. In fact, that only makes it worse.
For example, think about what creating entertainment for a general audience entails today versus yesterday. No, I am not talking about vague mass media consumer demographics, I mean such as old family sitcoms or classic cartoons used to be able to reach. They were things meant not for kids or one group, but for everyone in the family to enjoy together. Can such an audience even be imagined today when making something? Even if it does exist, how would one even begin to approach them with their art? Can we even imagine spending time with our real life neighbor, never mind a stranger producing a piece of art for us? Those are the real questions.
If you wanted to make something for a kid audience, for instance, how would you go about it? Decades of bad standards from unelected busybodies like Peggy Charren combined with Christian Inc corporate approved standards have warped expectations of what a child can even take in. While we could agree that swearing or sexual content is off the table, what happens when we disagree what swearing or sexual content even consists of in the first place? Because this is the current state of things and you can find no shortage of arguments over this exact topic. You could always pick your own standards to operate off of, but then that also runs the risk of not reaching much of anyone and stranding yourself on an island. This is a serious problem with how things currently are.
How does this bridge get built? It probably involves going back to basics and finding common ground again. This isn't a negotiable, it's necessary for even beginning to connect again.
As the above video shows, stories and art have a defined purpose and until we even begin to agree on that again, nothing will improve. The people in charge of the dying old industries all look down on their entire audience (no, not just those they politically disagree with, even their fellow travelers) and the ones in new industries are using those failed old advertising methods to reach those disillusioned by those industries in the first place.
This is the true reason all these burgeoning alternative industries aren't growing as they should: they have yet to become true alternatives. They will not be able to do that until the old ways and mentalities are finally thrown away, and, unfortunately, we've made little progress in doing that. Until we do, the hard audience cap will not be removed.
All these moving parts we're building have to come together to form a new system: a mechanism to produce art and entertainment better than the failing ones behind us. The old industries broke down because they were always going to end eventually. The only reason anything is even operating still is because of the men who built these systems long ago being much more skilled than those of us left today. However, no one can patch this leaky ship, and everyone knows it. Time is running out to be build true alternatives, and we aren't doing a great job of that.
The question then becomes a game of chicken wondering who is going to make the first real move to build. It won't be those in charge of the old systems: they're too busy being in the looting stage of the decline. They're going to wring every dollar they can on the way out. This is why even humoring their attempts at milking dead IP is a terrible idea, ironic or not. It will not encourage anything positive except to delay what is inevitable. Everything ends eventually, and we can't stop the tide forever.
However, it isn't just about accepting that reality, it is also about building a proper escape shelter when it does, and we have not done that. Until we do, we deserve to be where we are and, unfortunately, it is the audience that will continue to pay for it. We don't want to connect with them and so they don't want to connect with us, and on and on this goes. At some point we have to do Something Else before we lose these forms and hobbies we purportedly love so much.
The divisiveness also won't last forever. Whatever solves that problem, I can't say, but it will have to happen. When it does we need to have something better built than what came before, something meant to last and not run by those who desire nothing more than bottom of the barrel "Content" to fill narrow gaps in their schedule. We're human beings: we both need and desire something more than that.
And soon enough, we're going to fix that problem. We just have to address it in the first place. Only then can the big shift finally happen. Until then, we remain in this neutral state, waiting. What else can we do?
That's all for this week. Have yourself a good end of October and I'll see you on Halloween!
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