https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books The U.S. publishing industry is driven by celebrity authors and repeat bestsellers, according to testimony from a blocked merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Only 50 authors sell over 500,000 copies annually, with 96% of books selling under 1,000 copies. Publishing houses spend most of their advance money on celebrity books, which along with backlist titles like The Bible, account for the bulk of their revenue and fund less commercially successful books.
>Making profit from the BibleGod I hate this country.
>>23324365>No One Buys Books*actually they do but not most of them hehe
Most movies lose money Most businesses lose money and fold in a yearMost music with money invested for production loses money
>Books by the Obamas sold so many copies they had to be removed from the charts as statistical anomalies.At least 90% of the buyers didn't read it
>>23324423I met a guy who ran a bookstore that REFUSED to carry any book at all relating to modern politics. According to him theyre some of the worst moving books you can possibly stock, especially after whatever relevant happening or hysteria ends. Whats likely is that the bigger book stores like Booksamillion, Barns and Noble, etc; are paid to promote these books as a form of advertising for whatever candidate or author, moreso than to actually sell them.Obama/Clinton/Bidens books however are likely bought as decorative coffee table pieces by Liberals.
>>23324365Absolutely damning article >50 percent of books sold less than a dozen copies
>>23324366>Not learning how to manuscript bibles for profitNo problem, you can still make it.
>>23324365manga can't stop winning
>>23324435Smart, the audience for those books doesn't pick them up at small bookstores anyway. It's sad walking into a small store and finding shelves upon shelves of literary shovelware.
It’s interesting info but there’s a huge difference between 1,000 sales and 500,000 sales for a writer. If 20,000 people read your book and like it, that’s huge as a budding writer.
>>23324459Are manga sales even that good either? It seems like everyone just pirates the stuff?Also, how has an American not moved to Japan to learn manga and brought that back yet? The American comic industry is practically begging for someone to do that and fix it.
>>23324569I've never understood this year. With the global popularity of anime and manga you'd think an American artist would try their own self-published comic but it hasn't happened. The comic book industry in America is still just a niche clusterfuck for anti-social nerds who like superheroes
>>23324569>>23324580FUCK OFF WEEBS, DON'T RUIN IT
>>23324386If only half of movies lose money, that means 50% of movies are financially successful. But these numbers suggest something like 1-3% of books are financially successful, maybe less. It’s just not even comparable.
>>23324569Ummmm, excuse me sweaty. But I noticed your comic book has a diversity quotient below the required minimum of 0.45. I'm afraid we can't publish this. In fact, we've put your name on a list so you'll never get published in the industry. Also, a diversity quotient of only 0.35 renders your work hate speech, so we've notified the federal government.
>>23324580Americans put webtoons online. They’re just not any good. The American comic book industry is the American equivalent of manga. It just sucks is all. Young Americans are just not even interested in American comics like they’re interested manga and the publishers won’t publish manga-inspired stuff. I don’t know why they won’t, but they won’t. >>23324594This is relevant, retard. Half of the merchandise in book stores is fucking manga.
>>23324600Ok so if this is the reason American comic publishers won’t publish manga inspired comics it still doesn’t explain why Americans aren’t trying to make their own manga-inspired comics. The interest in making manga among American readers is relatively low. They don’t even try.
>>23324604They probably do, but no one buys it. I don't think manga is really that big here, especially since the Japanese names are already so well established.
>>23324604>>23324614Zoomers only buy manga and don't even bother paying attention to the comic scene. All attempts made fail because nerds aren't looking for manga-like works and weebs aren't looking for western comics.
>>23324614Manga is huge with zoomers. In Japan, new manga series debut every couple years that become worldwide hits. No American has replicated anything of the sort. The medium of writing and drawing your own comic series with weekly entries and building a franchise is simply not a thing that exists outside of Japan. There's no one like Toriyama or Oda.
>>23324365Clearly the solution here is publishers need to push LGBTQ shit even harder.
>>23324640Why does it take western /co/ a month to do 1 issue when japs pump them out weekly with better art too
Comics have too many words for zoomers. A large part of manga's success is related to its focus being more on the art and less on the actual dialogue. Generally speaking, it's easier to consume slop.
>>23324648Because they trace and use like 5 people lol
>>23324648Japs slave away m8. I have no idea how some manga artists live as long as they do.
>>23324459>>23324569>>23324580>>23324594>>23324600>>23324602>>23324604>>23324614>>23324624>>23324640>>23324648Prepare to see more than you ever wanted to know, let alone read:https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-297-bookscan-2023-comics-sales-sag-but-scholastic-was-still-a-powerhouse/
>>23324602>The American comic book industry is the American equivalent of manga.Manga sells much much better than comic books. I think a year or two ago One Piece alone outsold the entirety of DC and Marvel comics combined. No one wants to read gay Superman, black Batman, fem Thor, fem Ironman, or black Spiderman.
why can't americans just copy the manga format?>small booklets instead of issues with long pages>black and white instead of color>paperback instead of hardcover>matte paper instead of glossy>plenty of pages, more bang for your buck Comics now are for the 35+ year old collector rather than for the curious young man with a few bucks in his pocket. This should change. Also stop promoting faggotry instead of just pure entertainment. Why make superman a fag? ffs
>>23324569Rampant piracy seems to have only served to grow a fanbase some of which later like to buy volumes for collecting purposes. Manga is selling like crazy right now, it's completely eclipsed comics in the west and at this point it's no longer even close.
>>23324640The only reason I bring this up is because something akin to a manga series in America would probably a healthy development for the fact that manga is more individualistic and places creative control on one artist and his mind. It has a higher potential for originality in a time when fucking everything in the media is regurgitated slop, reboots and sequels. This model would even benefit existing franchises. Think about it, why isn't there just a single long-running comic series about Batman that takes place in one universe? Why a million different comic book series about him with a million different artists and writers when nobody reads these anyways? Why not a major Batman animated serial akin to something like Attack on Titan with distinct narrative arcs? The point is, literature and comics need to move beyond whatever models we currently have in place right now. There are ways to inspire democratic originality but we haven't harnessed it yet.
>>23324386Media in general is just dying and I don't think there's any one clean answer as to why. There are a few smaller answers (shitty economy, social media attention spans, etc) but the whole thing just seems like shit right now.
>>23324365Damn now I feel bad about pirating literal thousands of books
Books are expensive, and disappointment is always around the corner. I'm not so rich that I can waste money on a potential disappointment.
>>23324689There's no fixing western superhero comics, even if you were to reboot all comics for one for one more fresh start and never do it again (lol, lmao even) and eliminate all crossovers (also never gonna happen) the fact would still remain that manga has the simple appeal of being a self-contained story that starts on chapter one and eventually ends, rather than having a single character going through multiple stories and even writers ad infinitum.There should by all means be a bigger market for independent, self-contained, comics but it's been a while since anything blew up in that scene. There was a time back at the peak of the MCU's popularity that a lot of people got into comics but rather than go into Marvel/DC a lot started reading independent comics, which made Saga in particular outsell all capeshit for a short while which was something unheard of, but even that seems to have died down at this point without leaving behind any significant boost to comics outside of small niche enthusiasts and the ever fewer Marvel/DC zombies that still remain.
>>23324569>>23324602American comics suck because they're produced to be speculators' collectors items (stupid variant covers and shit) rather than actual media for their own sake.
>>23324718It's probably just shifting tastes and social media ruining people's attention spans. People spend more than ever on media and entertainment so it can't be the economy.
>>23324718Uh there's no reason to pay for anything. And artists are all on twitter where they reveal their out of touch and abhorrent personalities so you don't want to help them for the sake of it either. Not that they need it when they're rich
>>23324718Social media and the internet stealing people's attention. I know I started reading less and watching less after I discovered this place
>>23324596About 90% of movies lose money
>>23324718It’s not dying. These statistics were always the case. That’s just how any enterprise works. Even big retail loses money every month except between Thanksgiving and new years. Most businesses and enterprises lose so much they fail in a year. Of those that survive, most fail in the next five years.
>>23324423Political books are bought by the crateload with political NGO money. Sometimes it’s the presidential action committee (they write a “bestseller” to launch their bid), sometimes it’s interest groups like a Heritage Foundation subsidiary making a “bestseller” out of whatever cunt they want to promote. These books are then donated to “fans”, if not destroyed outright. This is normal, not an outlier. The media is complicit because they write the “best selling so and so politician” articles and it all feeds on itself for promotion purposes. Picture of Larry David unrelated.
>>23324718Decline is real. We are in a sad, miserable era of decline. The slop that was derided 30 years ago is fucking gold today. I would take a gory 80s horror movie over today's movies, a cheesy Hong Kong action movie from the 70s has better choreography than any martial arts film in the past 15 years. Scrolling through TikTok and Instagram is how every young person spends their day outside of work and school -- not reading, not creating. Taylor Swift is one of the last titans carrying the dying music industry, Hollywood is on the brink of collapse, literature has been a joke for decades. What can we do? The technological algorithms say we need to watch Family Guy clips on TikTok and Friends re-runs on Netflix. No room for much else.
Patreon Chads keep winning
>>23324447AI post
>>23324718> and I don't think there's any one clean answer as to whyThere’s only so many hours available each day per person for “entertainment”. Radio listening died down when TV became normal. Boardgames got killed by videogames. Blogs destroyed newspapers. Drive in cinema died when that car culture was gone. Home VHS completely changed what movies were viable and when DVD sales died, it killed off sectors of the movie biz. It’s never been that static. People used to read a lot more because there was less competition for attention. Now games are sucking up so much free time it’s killing movies. TV already strangled book reading. Social media is the other time suck. There’s also the problem of entertainment competing with itself. Used to be only a couple of TV channels. Modern TV can’t get those numbers ever again; too many options fracture viewership. For books, more is published year by year, with fewer customers. More competition, fewer customers, plus competition from the eternally growing back catalogue of everything ever published before. Look at recommendations here. Old books vs contemporary? 99%/1% at best? And in that 1% how many are from the same names? Sequels, series, genreslop?So you NEED to make yourself famous to get sales, the merit of the work itself is a lottery ticket’s chances of getting noticed. People writing fanfiction mog most original authors in readership.
Yo fuck Penguin, fuck Simon, fuck Hachette, we be REAL NIGGAS chasing that LITRPG clout up in this bitchElements of Style can suck a dick, ain't no elements of style gonna get Timmy to click"Follow", yeah, that's the name of the game. Agents and Conventions are so fucking lame, think they give a shit about books and literature?They just want Zimbabo and her dyke Native American pictures
>>23324718Under the old paradigm, a piece of media would get prompted by magazines, media companies, gatekeepers, etc. Now everything from books, comics, blogs, tik toks, YouTube, etc is shit out into the noosphere without a filter. Before social media, audiences were hardly organic. People consumed what was presented to them. The excess of choice has led to a new paradigm where media cannot build a large audience. This much abundance of "stuff" is fairly new to humans.
>>23324839There's literally nothing we can do about it. Technology is created and things democratize. The Algorithm determines media more than humans do, and this will only be more apparent when AI takes over everything in the coming years. At some point humans won't even be coding video games or animated films. It's so depraved. We are in such a depraved point in history. All the safety we could ever want in a society but no value or meaning or art whatsoever.
>>23324447the bible and the declaration are priceless, it could cost a million dollars and still be a good deal
>>23324365It’s all fag shit the movie industry is going to go the same way if they keep just making fag shit
>>23324604It's actually very common in younger graphic novels / comics intended for the 9-12 age especially, you basically see two types release now, either HEAVILY inspired by manga, or the kind of gross typical tumblr art with fat ugly black trans women all over the place talking about how hard it is to be gay. The second kind don't usually sell very well, surprisingly.
>>23324809The silver lining of media getting worse is that the more inquisitive and tasteful sections of the audience are more likely to turn to literature.
>>23324718Is it obvious from this thread? Internet and social media as well as foreign media like manga and anime have gobbled up audience of more traditional media big time. People spend more time scrolling TikTok, more time watching YouTube, more time reading manga, and less time watching movies. Zoomers in particularly are caught in a 24/7 work wind of online social discourse and “content”. It’s literally all day, non-stop. They wake up and they scroll. Then they scroll until they go to sleep. Some of them play video games in between. It’s all they do.
Ok that’s enough about manga and comics. Can anything done about declining novel sales or no? Can we fix this for writers or will the only writers that will be able to earn a living the few dozen that churn out mass produced shit and get television adaptations? This civilization desperately needs a literary renaissance.
>>23325097Sort of. It's really because the decentralization of media means more democratization of the media, which sounds good on paper, but also means there's no unified narrative. Back in the 1960s, when a man landed on the moon, everyone watched it on TV, there was a pageantry and harmonizing attribute in this, everyone went to work and school the next day and talked about the Big News. Back then, too, the television only offered the National News, so you got one non partisan narrative. By the 80s, it loosened, you still had this going on, but bipartisan channels on TV covered the same events with different spin. So everyone still talked about the same events, but from two different polarized lenses. Now, it's totally fractured. If something is big enough, like a terrorist attack, everyone will still hear about it, but you'll have 2 bazillion spins on it and everyone will remain siloed within their chosen framing. Also, way back, it wasn't even just news events; everyone was watching the same sitcoms, same movies, so cultural references were mostly unified, which means culture itself was mostly unified. It's interesting to me, how despite none of this really impacting people's local lives, the advent of mass media both created and then destroyed people's ability to get along and harmonize. I think it says something about the fundamental retardation of humanity.
>>23325104>Can anything done about declining novel sales or no?Write books people want to buy and read? Be the next Rowling, Tolkien, King?
>>23325117Would that even sell? I don’t see a lot of people reading Tolkien or Rowling even. It seems like they like to talk a lot about Tolkien and Rowling and not actually buy their books and read them. But besides, you didn’t have to be a fantasy all-star to eke out a living from writing novels.
>>23325136No one will ever be a bestseller like that anymore even if the book is good bc of media siloing. I'm not happy about it but the modern equivalent of making a Great Work is making a highly resonant viral meme.
>>23325142Isn’t this the problem though? Readers always talk about how modern literature sucks now and how impossible it is to get published but nobody is reading. Yeah, maybe another ASoIaF or another Harry Potter can be written, another fantasy standout. But the great novelists of the 19th and 20th century largely were not even writing fantasy. I just wonder if the fact is that there’s no space for a writer like a Dostoevsky or a Tolstoy or a Faulkner or a Fitzgerald because there’s no demand at all for the sort of novels those guys wrote
>>23325157It's only a problem for guys like us. Ask your average person if they think this is a problem. I agree it's a problem. But thats because I'm a guy like you.
>>23325157I recall a good thread about this last year. That is basically the problem. There's no longer a need or desire for great literature so our culture doesn't facilitate it. Our era is based on the premise that everything has already been achieved. There's no need for greatness or exploration. Go home and scroll through TikTok after work, you've earned it. https://warosu.org/lit/thread/21942168#p21949113
>>23324765"lose money" due to hollywood accounting
>>23325186I think "greatness" has always been a false concept but something like transcendence, when it comes to art, is closer to the mark. I don't think there's no demand or need for it, quite the contrary, the world's desperate for it. But the issue is more so that the siloed nature of media makes it impossible to pierce through clutter and noise; furthermore, any transcendent work would be both disruptive to the status quo, and written by someone who has deep flaws and a questionable past, so stakeholders in the status quo could destroy this person and their work both by burying it under clutter, and highlighting their flaws.In today's world, for example, Dostoevsky would be called an incel, and his tweets or 4chan posts where he was calling women whores would be prime time news on MSNBC.
>>23324569>>23324580Short answer is that Japanese people use mass transit more, have anthology magazines to showcase new talent and provide reliable audience for old ones, and the industry itself encourages a kind of apprenticeship between artist and assistant(s) in addition to workinf with editors. In America, decades of poorly managed corporate control of publishing, marketing, and sales, a lack of thematic diversity, and often contempt for the audience, has led to stagnant output and bloated legacy IP's, outside of indie and web comics.
>>23324435If you really want to read any of that slop just go to a thrift store a few months after the book releases and it will be on the shelves for a couple dollars.
>>23325211No one has ever read one of those books
>>23324365Why isn't there a more profit driven house, that tries to find books people will actually want to read.Like the next JK Rowling, the next King, etc? Why do they spend time and money publishing diaspora literature?
>>23325216That's what publishing houses already do you dolt. Lmao. The issue is demand.
>>23324580Courtney Love published a manga series.
>>23324365I've bought at least 20 books so far this year so stating that "nobody" buys books anymore is inflammatory and false.
>>23325216Queer fiction (yes I know, but you don't) is about as profitable as you can get as far as the speculative and weird fiction is concerned. You don't stay open pumping schlock to people with interest in greek drama and occult philosophy who also read all the good shit in the genre. And it's the only place men are still published and write for other men.
>>23325252What in the fuck is queer fiction
>>23325257
>>23325257fiction with LGBTQXYZ+ themes, uneducated chud!
>>23324886holy shit lmfao
>>23325262>>23325263Gay
>>23325257Fiction that rejects abjection or uses it as a device written by people who don't recognize trannies as women insofar as you can't be trans-black.
>>23325262>ywn have a Tom of FInland cover for your book that worships male beautygay
Papa-Romeo-Oscar-Juliet-Echo-Charlie-Tango Golf-Uniform-Tango-Echo-November-Bravo-Echo-Romeo-Golf. Over.
>>23324365have you ever considered that 96% of books deserve to sell under 1000 copies?
>>23324803you forgot to mention it's an easy vehicle for less than scrupulous payoffs
>find book on amazon that I am thinking about buying>$160 >check the next day>price is down to $120>don't feel like buying it then>price goes back up to $160>process continues for a week, going up and down continuously>manage to find a review of the book and realise that I definitely want it>price is $160>been checking it for the past week twice a day>price stays at $160>check price today>it's gone up to $186Goddamn it
>>23324809Anon the greatest martial arts film of all time came out in 2011
>>23324569To speak on the ongoing debate about American Comics: One of the major issues with American comics is that they are stuck in the 60’s, yes there was Supes and Batman in ‘39, but the explosion of the ‘Marvel Age of Comics!’ being replicated in the Marvel Age of movies has just convinced Marvel (Disney) and DC (Warner bros) to dig in their heels and continue to be loss leaders by recycling characters made 60+ years ago. They are a shell of themselves, IP farms, which are feeding on the efforts of Kirby, Ditko, Romita, and Lee et. alThere are good Indy comics, but most Americans assume comics ==superheroes. Can’t save an industry that’s 75% cancer
>>23325439What's the book anon?
>>23325439Anon, meet Anon>>23325389
>>23324886if by "priceless" you mean "available for free at gutenberg.org," then yes
>>23324718production and distribution got decentralized, which drove down the costs of making and shipping media, which drove down the sales pricesit's a race to the bottom, and only a return to something like a guild or trade union system can save the industries, but the degree of decentralization is so profound that it's too late
>>23325449It's this oneI really hope that the price goes down>>23325450Yeah I have the texts but the problem are the notesI had read a review which stated that he didn't think the edition was well done which made me uncertain whether there'd be enough notes included A week ago I found a review which stated that the edition has 300 pages dedicated to notes
>>23324809>I would take a gory 80s horror movie over today's moviesSlasherslop (with the exception of the good ones that all the other ones ripped off) was absolutely terrible is not better than low rent stuff today.
Honestly even with Gutenberg and libgen I still enjoy owning and reading physical booksFor me reading physical books is the goal
>>23325460Every industry could be saved if people cured their inherent narcissism or at least put it back into balance But that's a pipe dream I guess.
>>23325527>muh narcissismit's economics ya silly goose, even a disinterested financier can churn out slime video compilations for profit
>>23325399This. I’d be okay with them publishing less shit if it meant they’d actually give a fuck about the standard quality and taste of their output, but that’s not a good business model. They need to appeal to the lowest common denominator (see the long dfw interview for a qrd on this topic) and cast their net wide to catch the maximum amount of sales regardless of how many of those units actually get read.Besides all this, I’m more worried about the correlation between growing YA fiction and the failing literacy of the younger generations. It’s no secret that there is a large sector of “young” adults (people in their 20s and 30s) who are devouring these simplistic, trite fantasy novels and posturing as being well-read. And, while it’s not surprising or alarming that people should read trashy smut and call themselves well-read, it is alarming that this is being exploited in a social market where everyone is trying to find and milk a niche viewership for their own benefit. So, you have people appealing to the most base and tasteless consumers and passing themselves and their image off as cool and desirable, and you have the younger generations who are vastly uninterested in reading or language in general and would rather comb their perms and swagger about in a world that is progressively more witnessed, more monitored and evaluated for its social worth.While not correlated in any way I can devise, it’s troubling that these two population factors are so present for those of us who bother reading anything besides the clickbait articles on our web browsers.
>>23324435Fahrenheit 451 but we only burn shitty books written by politicians
LOS PINGÜINOS ESTÁN MURIENDO
>>23325538Economics is just the analysis of the techniques of an axiom playing itself out.
>>23325564bro really thought he was spittin here
>>23324365Millennials constitute the majority of physical book reading (Boomers are terminally Television News Brained, Zoomers do E-Readers). No one buying nu-Trash shunted on to the public by tastemaker speaks to their extra-monetary political motivations while in possession of a cornered publishing market.>>23324718>Media in general is just dying and I don't think there's any one clean answerThe same resistance seen in cable television bundling bullshit instead of PPV/custom channel individual subscriptions (and inadequate attempts to reconverge on 'streaming') is playing out in other fields. There are hazards to going full bore on Tower of Babylon, and in their conceit they failed to capitalize on that splintering of a previously, largely monolithic market. >>23324839There've been any number of studies corroborating decision fatigue for embarrassment of options riches. And for the premium, live events are only getting more attractive (can't do that with films, unless you count 70mm/IMAX and/or drive-ins)>>23325439I was fucked out of two different titles - either sending the wrong volume or not even the wrong printing but still hardcover - one now five times the original attempts', the other fluctuated between that and ten times the premium (the second attempt conveniently doing the bait and switch seeing the price leap after the Author's death). Fly by night sellers are a dime a dozen scum.
>>23325576I dont think anything. It's just a truism.
>>23325594>I dont thinkyea we can tell buddy
>>23325262Gross. If you want me to buy a fiction book, a literally GAY fiction book at that, it better have two girls on the cover.
Before the pandemic a rich industrial from my country gave an interview about his publishing house. Basically, he said this type of stuff you see on OP's link (going after celebrities, paying a fortune to franchise writers and trying to catch the next unicorn) is dangerous because the book business is small, but profitable and permanent if you're reasonable. He even said his best selling books are a work about art history and a novel from Umberto Eco, he also said he was planning to publish some manga.I don't know about the American situation, maybe it's a different economy or maybe even the publishing houses there have this extremely greedy spirit amplified by near-sightedness that seeks short-term profits by sacrificing the sustainability of the whole system.
My fantasy series ends in a polycule, can I spin it as queer fantasy?
>>23325623Thats capitalism in a nutshell anon. There are no real consequences for the perpetrators who sacrifice the future for their short term gains.
>>23324365>No One Buys Books Any MoreGoodhttps://annas-archive.org/
>>23325563los pingüinos me la van a mascar
>>23325623>have this extremely greedy spirit amplified by near-sightedness that seeks short-term profits by sacrificing the sustainability of the whole system.We call that the American Dream
It ain't capitalism making every publisher seek demiqueer australian aboriginal faggots as their exclusive talent pool, pinkos
>>23325715That's a fancy brain you got there
>>23325733Yeah it allows me to stuff for what it is rather than going into Communist Apologia about how obvious Marxist Subversion is ashkully Capitalism
>>23325186We need a major war so fucking badly. I'm tired of that faggot Fukuyama and his faggy end of history.
>>23325743Yeah man, you really see shit for what it is. Marxist subversion because people entertain ideas different from you and want to buy books on those ideas. You're a fuckin genius.
>>23324365>A “Netflix of Books” would put publishing houses out of businessLibraries have been around for decades. What are these (((publishers))) complaining about
>>23325743>Marxism is when companies sell product
>>23325813I think they mean less "the Netflix business model but with books" and more "something that disrupts the publishing industry the way Netflix disrupted the film and television industry."Basically the publishing industry is a fat old dinosaur waiting for a new fast predator to come along and disembowel it.
>>23324365I don’t think I own a single piece of fiction published since the fall of the Soviet Union.
>>23324365I think the honest to God answer is that everything is being subverted. I would bet my house there is still good art out there worth reading, watching, listening to but the fact of the matter is mainstream gatekeepers are actively shitting on quality stuff. I genuinely believe. It's the same with most stuff nowadays. The indie market might be niche but at least there's soul as opposed to the slop that is shat down our throats as "good media". >>23324459>>23324569>>23324580>>23324600To everybody complaining about the comic book market here, have you checked into indie artists, or do those suck too? I'm talking that you probably need to dig real fucking deep to find at least an artist who's doing something unique and interestin
>>23324365I read a book about this once.
>>23324365i buy books. i dont like how libtard shit is shoved in my face when i go to the bookstore though
>>23325855More and more, I'm convinced that the belief everything is being subverted, has more to do with an underlying psychology that requires this belief about everything to sustain itself; and I'm saying that without dismissing the possibility that omni-subversion is true. Its just that if it is true, that has no bearing on the need. They're separate.
>>23325828When the product is Marxism, yes.
>>23324566>If 20,000 people read your book and like it, that’s huge as a budding writer.even 20k sales is unlikely lol>The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.
>>23324718Why would you pay for media entertainment when you can get it for free?
>>23325136I genuinely don't think a Rowling or Tolkien could exist in this day and age. The last "equivalent" could be George RR Martin and that was just before the mass media shift before smartphones really took a hold on the consciousness. It's actually surprising GRRM gets the platform he does now, considering how un-pc his series is. I don't even know what the future could hold but at least boomers back then had a fairly good grasp on what was to come or could make their own art to appeal to other boomers. Now zoomers can't even reach zoomers, unless you figure the algorithm out
>>23325883Define Marxism.
>>23325855>To everybody complaining about the comic book market here, have you checked into indie artists, or do those suck too?They mostly suck because of internalised liberal dogma, oversaturation of of teenage lesbian angst and most talented artists being terrible storytellers unable to go any further than adding twists to overused anime cliches. I would say that it's really only American comics in crisis, because even outside the manga industry you have Eurocomics doing better than ever. Franco-Belgium comics follow the creator based model you find in manga and they've been expanding their reach into the English speaking market with imprints like Cineprint and Ablaze. Before the kind of French comics available in translation were only graphic novels and collections, but more recently they've been publishing serials in English as well.
>>23325906Zoomers aren't any different from any other generation. Our generation was full of people mindlessly consuming both products and cheap tropes, to their own detriment, and the boomers was the same. Contrarian, thoughtful, elitist douches like us have always been in the minority. The art fucks are always in the minority. The zoomers have them too. It's a cop out to act like the kids are aliens.
>>23325907As far as I'm concerned it is a any political or social movement/ideology that influenced by Karl Marx in even the slightest. You either totally reject Marx, or you are a Marxist.
>>23325251I buy used books for the most part so I don't count, basically. That being said, when I gain more money I'll definitely spend on new books and buy new editions of all my collection
>>23324365>be me, 25 years old >have a collection of books I've already read or that seem interesting enough for me to hold onto until I have time to read them >if I ever realise that I'm missing a noteworthy book, I can visit a library or secondhand bookstore and more than likely find it there>if it isn't there, I can more than likely find it online with a few clicks and download it to my e-reader>still buy physical books for reference value but very little new fiction interests me >whenever my little brother wants a new book he just comes into my room and asks what's good, and if a book I brought up while talking to him piques his interest more than my recommendation he'll just go and get it off zzOutside of textbooks and other resources for learning a skill or language, every book worth reading is easily available second-hand or for free online. There's never been less reason to go out and buy books.
>>23325623What country are you from, anon? If I were to take a gander the publishing house in my country is even worse than the U.S. I can probably count on my hand the people I know in my life that read, and that's of all ages (my mom, dad and granfather being 3 of them). I've met a few other boomers who read and as I grew up I saw kids reading here and there but currently? My girlfriend and a friend of mine, who are close to my age, read. Other than that, I don't even see how a publishing house could make a living in my country
>>23325917I didn't say zoomers were different from boomers back then. The technilogy is different and that's a fact. Social media has made most of the population into dopamine junkies and I don't even think that's an exaggeration (I'm including myself, btw). My point was that we're dealing with a whole other beast that hasn't been dealt with in all of human history
>>23325915I was a big fan of comic books back then and I sort of tapered off from American comics when I ddi,'t find anything similar to Bone or Calvin and Hobbes. Now I'm interested and might have to look to Japan and Europe
>>23325927Okay, that at least logically follows. But it's a little empty unless you can tell me what you think Marx was saying.
>>23324365I'm curious who makes money off of the Bible? Does it all go straight to the vatican or Olstein?
>>23326024Marx said a lot of things; he developed many of the ideas of his day into broad philosophical-historical-economic system that touched on almost everything relevant to humans as social creatures. I don't think there's any form of leftist or progressive thought (in the broadest uses of those terms) that that is free from his influence, even if the ideas that influenced them are taken in such a way that they ignore Marx's philosophical and political end goals.
>>23326062Can you be more specific and provide some concrete examples of what Marx thought in your next reply.
>>23326062I think that's also true of the right...Marx was one of those thinkers who provoked such a disruption that on some level, everything that followed after him was a response to him, whether in agreement or disagreement. >>23326074I second this. I'm not sure if I believe that you have a good understanding of Marxism. Maybe you do.
>>23326074I'm not going to fall into your trap. Marxism as an intellectual movement, and the work of Marx itself, is so broad that any attempt at generalizing it, especially to the extent it can be done in one of these posts, could be nitpicked into oblivion by those who would rather split hairs than recognize the obvious chain of influence. >>23326118>I second this. I'm not sure if I believe that you have a good understanding of Marxism. Maybe you do.I don't. But I know enough to understand its place in the history of philosophy and to observe the impact it's had.
>>23326126You can say that about any idea man. Christians have done a lot of good. They also killed untold billions over centuries and forced their dogma on the whole world. Capitalism same thing. What idea hasn't had this mix of extreme good and extreme evil in its outcomes? I'm not discounting the horrors of the various communist projects but you should be fair in your approach, and also consider that the human inclination toward evil, might not be Marx's fault. There's some pretty good and true stuff in there. I don't agree with all of it. But, some of it is almost indisputable. He predicted the current neoliberal plutocracy phase of our world 200 years ago.
Why would I pay for media when the Internet exists and I can get what I want instantly for free?
>>23326242>why is everything shit? why are all books catering to people who are not me?
>>23326254Why do I care again? I have thousands of years of books to read. There is already more than I could read in a lifetime. Hell there is more movies than you could watch in a lifetime and they have only been around for just over a century
>>23324365Well yeah, why buy a book for 15+ euromerkels when I can just get a free epub and put it on my comfy kindle? Now that I think about it, the publishing industry is probably the only industry that is significantly hurt by piracy.
>>23326258If you really were content with what you have you wouldn't keep looking for more. Since you don't contribute, don't complain about what you find.
>>23326265Make sense
>>23324718All the replies to this are stupid. The real reason is that everybody is busy with videogame time sinks. Doesn't help that most contemporary media sucks ass.
>>23324718>and I don't think there's any one clean answer as to why.yea one can only speculate as to why the tranny-nigger-woman filled media is not resonating with people anymore
>>23326277>The real reason is that everybody is busy with videogame time sinks.Most people aren't playing video games anymore. Zoomers are growing out of video games, player counts and streamer audiences are going down and the gaming industry as a whole is contracting. The way things are going, millennials are the only demographic that will play video games into adulthood.
>>23325464I finished A rebours the other day and dear god des Esseintes was such a little bitch. Sick tastes though, I loved his detailed descriptions of Redon's and Moreau's artworks.
>>23326336What are Zoomers doing instead?
>>23326576VR onlyfans
>>23325586>Millennials constitute the majority of physical book readingSource? In raw numbers this might be true, but in terms of the proportion of each generation that consume literature I'm not so sure
Making it as an author on book sales alone is nigh-impossible. The real goal is to sell the TV/movie rights to one's work; that's the only way you'll see real money.>>23324720As long as you buy copies of the books you enjoyed reading, then there's no reason to feel bad. I do that. Then downloading books becomes a replacement for the library, which (at least in my area) has a terrible selection, and are mostly places for homeless guys to fap to pr0n.
>>23324882Under the old paradigm, a piece of media would get promoted by magazines/media/gatekeepers/press etc. because they thought it could become popular and profitable. Now, they do so in order to push a far-left agenda. It's no wonder they're failing to have an impact. But they'll never learn until they literally bring their world crashing down over their own heads & go bankrupt. Disney, for example, is losing BILLIONS over this stupidity.
>>23325113>non partisan narrativethat was never true. the press has been dominated by the left for longer than you've been alive
>>23324365"A big audience means publishing houses don’t have to spend money on marketing" is what really matters here. Everything in our world is based on ads and marketing. Self-publishing is cool as an idea but only if you have some sort of audience to begin with. I'm way too lazy and probably way too proud to metaphorically take off my clothes and lay bare. Publishers do all that shite for you and, as the piece says, even they have issues with success.
>>23324365I have a used book store and had 22 customers last week.
>>23325839>new fast predatorIsn't that what Amazon self-publishing is?
>>23324765/lit/ posters have no clue about business.The point is to lose money.
>>23326031https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
>>23325907Equality of result over equality of opportunity. The former is insane & leads to collapse every time it's tried.
>>23326651Why?
>>23326641This is true. I am the left and when the printing press was invented I was already there, promoting queer theory.
>>23326647There's a used-book store in my area that charges way too much for its wares. I tried to talk the owner down on price on a few things, and he got irritated with me. Then I went home & bought them online for the price I was offering. Even with shipping, I paid less than I would have at the used-book store. The guy is living in a different era.Does any of this sound familiar?
>>23326667No because I run a large business that makes all my money and I'm just a good guy so I sell $3 paperbacks and $5 hardbacks no matter how big or nice it is.I'm only a year or two in to doing it.A young lad I was stocking westerns for came in and took his senior pictures here last week so I think my job is actually done.At this point a used bookstore should be supported by other income or run by someone that doesn't mind being entirely poor. kek
>>23326657Because you pay taxes on money you make if you haven't noticed from your wage job.If you lose money you don't pay taxes.Take a guess at how much my bookstore I mention here makes >>23326679 >>23326647
>>23326686I don't have a wage.
>>23326679BasedI think I remember your postsWhat is it like purchasing stock?How do you deal with customers who think they have more value than they actually do?
>>23326667Successful used bookstores either survive off notoriety (Strand), don't care about losing money (>>23326679) or go the antiquarian route. The latter is where I get most of my books now, they make their money on collector's items and rare editions and don't care about piddly stuff which they tend to offer much cheaper than elsewhere. Key is to find a store that specializes in your niche.
>>23326697I am in a small town and so far have only really dealt with customers that are very happy for me to be here.I have several side hustles that are making money but just as a general rule I use my "authority" as the owner and person who knows more than them to matter of factly say that I know the price of things and they can just deal with it.>>23326699Here's the situation with books currently, the "state of the union" for books in the US.Books are worth absolutely NOTHING unless they are in a shelf at a store. I take in 300 a month for free from donations, I donate $100 to the library and they give me 500 books, I trade or buy pallets of them from estate dealers for like $150 for 1000+ books.So the margin is fantastic if you can move them because you can get them for between nothing and a quarter max. Never pay more than a quarter a book.During all this commotion you can and will accrue a fair amount of old books that are worth something to someone. But you have to find that someone.So you list online, shelve, and wait. These margins are even better but things move very slowly. You are much better off with SEMI RARE books like 80+ year copies of Ben Hur.Yea there are a lot of them, but you can get $40-50 for something you got for nothing and you will actually sell them in under a year.Antiquarian medical books are great for the list and shelve and wait strategy because antiquarian medical books are gifts to and from who? Doctors who have a lot of money.I have a "vintage" section of books that are out of print and at least 50 years old. No one wants them, I get them for basically nothing. I price them all $7. If you hunt through you will find MANY books in my store that don't go for less than $20-40 online.However...time factor, work factor, etc. I'd rather get $7 and sell the book, I got it for .25.There is a volume game and a wait and wait and wait game.A successful operation needs several things.1. Time and other income streams. You will not get enough customers fast enough to not lose your shirt otherwise.2. Space. Not just your store. Massive storage space/containers/etc. Books are only as cheap as I'm talking if you set the precedent of stacking the shit out of them and then sorting them yourself for the "good ones." I have 8,000 books on the shelf and 20,000 in storage.I have literally 5,000 cookbooks I'll never sell. Why? Because if you don't take the cookbooks no one is giving me all the others. They want RID OF BOOKS.3. Don't try to be trendy and cool. Start your store in wherever you can get cheap space. People that want books will come to you. Simple as. You don' go to them. They come to you.
>>23326767Oh yes. And the biggest key imo is that NO YOU DON'T GET TO TRADE IN YOUR BOOKS.I straight up tell people to their face, "Your books aren't worth anything. You can leave them with me and they'll find a home for someone cheap, or you can leave with them, I don't care at all because that's how little your books are worth."Now, that attitude flies a lot better if you are selling the books cheap like I am. That attitude probably pisses people off more if they can see you are asking $12 for paperbacks and pretending to be BnN or something.Also, tell everyone you are losing money constantly. kek
>>23326646It’s not just about audience though, is it? Everybody knows this intuitively already. Barack Obama can write a best-seller because he was the President of the United States but could a Hasan Piker or an Mr. Beast also write a best-seller? Well, maybe. It could sell well but it wouldn’t be quite so best-selling. The Obama audience reads, at least sometimes in some cases, and the Piker-Mr. Beast audience doesn’t read. People would probably still buy it like they buy Mr. Beast’s shitty candies or whatever, but nobody would pretend it’s good literature and the people who actually read would have no interest in the book at all whereas they might have interest in Obama’s. There’s a degree of institutional legitimacy at work here. That’s really the primary role these publishers played in the last century. For an author to be published by Vintage or Penguin Random House in some sense says “this is a legitimate writer”. That’s a different thing than audience. So if you think you’re just going to gain an audience and become a celebrated writer by being like a live streamer or YouTube content creator, you’re probably wrong. Audience is important but it’s not the only thing. The publishers expect you to bring some credibility now.
>>23326336They are playing video games. They’re just playing old video games. Sometimes they’re watching other people play video games. Game streaming is the single biggest thing among people under 30.
>>23326258Because literature speaks to the soul of a people. It’s a product but not just a product. When literature stops being written, the soul of that people has died.
>>23325216They all do that. There are no readers. The reason they’re publishing the How to Unf*ck Your Life book and Sarah J. Maas novels is because those books sell. Literary books like we like don’t sell. A small fraction of the consumers are interested in those sort of novels and they read classics almost exclusively.
>>23326787I think there is some confusion among the credulous members of /lit/ here."Best sellers" are entirely determine by scam corporate pay offs and "pre buys". Obama doesn't sell those books. They are bought as political favors and grift AHEAD of time and then churned down through the whole system, ALREADY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, by big corporations and such.It's a racket. It's shenanigans. It's stolen money.Everything is a co promotion. Every auto-bio by a band member books is part of their record deal. Etc.Nothing is real. There are no "real" sales numbers on these things.
>>23324365i've bought 60 books this year alone, i'm doing my part
>>23326679>>23326699Right, so the used-book store is not a business, it's a hobby. I'm pretty sure the guy who runs the store I'm talking about deals drugs on the side. He doesn't seem to realize that I can hear him even though I'm not near the register. But my point stands...selling used books is not a lucrative business.
I think what literature needs is a writer that can continue the canon of “classic” literature, a McCarthy or a Pynchon but for the 21st century and also an inheritor of Tolkien, someone who can bridge the gap between classics or what we might call literary fiction and science fiction fantasy. That would really open up the horizons of the kind of things people are writing because right now, good writers, which are few, aspire to write literary fiction or science fiction fantasy but never both. There’s no market for the former but a huge market for the latter. They just can’t get published, I guess because there’s a market for fantasy but not that kind of fantasy. It’s easy to throw your hands up and say “there’s no market for this stuff” but there are no products either so how can they expect there to be. Why would someone with decent literary taste go buy a bunch of contemporary fantasy or a contemporary literary novel? There is no reason because the sort of novel they might want to read is not being written let alone published. We also have to question whether we should be looking to the novel at all. It has to have a primary function. The novel doesn’t do any better what manga, anime, and film already do. So should we even be looking to novels or should we be looking to those, or perhaps back to poetry. I don’t know. I just want literature to live on among a small esoteric circle if nothing else. It’s actually extremely dire for our civilization and I really believe that.
>>23326796So what's your point? That the soul of the people has died? Then we agree.
>>23326811Sure, but I meant best-seller in the literal sense of “highest selling” because that’s what the thread is about. The Obama did indeed sell a lot of books. It’s not just mass buys for political mixers and whatnot.
>>23326823No. It’s alive but in poor health. We are like an army allowing clowns to act as generals and our nation’s defense is at stake as a result. We need to fix this somehow.
>>23326827we cant do shit we have to learn to live with it or ruin our lives pointlessly
>>23324435White fragility, how to be an anti racist, fire and fury, real Anthony fauci, 12 rules of life, how to avoid the next pandemic, so help me God, unmaskedThose kinds of books? So he doesn't have any books for kids with two dads?
>>23326832We can. You are just a doomer.
>>23326576Scrolling on social media and occasionally going outside so they can meet up with other zoomers and take photos for their social media.
>>23324718Retarded take, unmoored from reality
>>23326824I think you are still a little off. Obama only sold books BECAUSE of the pre-buys and the presentation to everyone, at every corner, in every store.Anyone, a total retard, with that sort of promotion and presentation will be a "best seller".It is orchestrated and they take MASSIVE losses to do these things for guys like him. Or, more accurately, relative losses as they generally avoid actually losing big money. But did spending millions and millions of dollars for a return that is less than they could get on T bills.The entire publishing industry and supply chain is grift and basically like selling skittles. You put garbage in front of people enough times and they eventually buy it.Literally any book would have sold as many if treated as such.Obama has no appeal. It's just manufactured.
>>23326767>pallets of them from estate dealershow do you find these
>>23326695Based
>>23326860If you have stats on those pre-buys then I’ll admit that I was wrong but I’m otherwise very confident that the Obamas sold quite a lot of books outside of pre-buys and mass purchases by orgs and whatnot.
>>23326820You are correct. I think I will eventually go into the "made money" category with my books.But only because I can support it as a hobby for 3-5 years to start off and at the expense of literally anything else I could have done with my money.Now...it is NOT an expensive hobby compared to most. If you have a $20,000 ATV or anything like that, you could support a bookstore instead for that money and you could support it for years and your book collection and all that would be huge and it opens up doors and etc.But no one can just start a used book store these days.I would have to see it to believe it that someone without other incomes started, ran, and supported themselves with a used book store in current year.
>>23326776>NO YOU DON'T GET TO TRADE IN YOUR BOOKSAs in, "I give this and this book and I pick that and that book from your shelf"? What if I brought you like 10 books and asked to pick one or two?
>>23326881>NO YOU DON'T GET TO TRADE IN YOUR BOOKS>"Your books aren't worth anything. You can leave them with me and they'll find a home for someone cheap, or you can leave with them, I don't care at all because that's how little your books are worth."pay attention
>>23326861I'm a hustler and came up from generations of hustlers. So opportunistically found a few of them over the years and then made a move.There is low demand. I would contact people doing estate sales on HiBid or other professional estate sale types, auctioneers, etc.Tell them you are interested and can be the buyer of last resort for books.Try to get your name out there as someone who will take books.They often buy entire estates. Occasionally they are looking at 1,000 books they have to handle, carry around, store, etc. They don't want to do that because that's not their business. They'll be more than glad for you to come and get them very cheaply and them move on with their real business.Here's the hitch. If you achieve this, and you are contacted by someone with unappealing load and you deny it, that basically ends the whole thing. These people talk.They'll go to the person who gave them your number and say, "He didn't take the books." In turn that person will never give your name to anyone else again.You need to be known as the guy that will take the books. If you are known as the guy that is picky about books, it's over.They want rid of them. Your service is getting rid of them for them.
>>23326867>I'm a normie and entirely credulousGood luck with that.Obama got $40 million from Netflix without having ever produced anything.He doesn't write the books either.It's the same op.Take it or leave it.
>>23326881>>23326886You have to be a hardass.But, on occasion, I have allowed an entirely lop sided trade from someone. But you must make it clear that it's quite begrudgingly that you do this and it won't happen again.Probably did it less than 10 times in three years out of hundreds of requests.
>>23326886>>23326908No I get it, just wanted to confirm. What's the downside on asymmetric trades? Not worth the time spent?
>>23326900Right so in other words you don’t have any stats and you’re just making a blind assumption for quite literally no reason at all. That’s more or less what I thought but I wanted to be polite and let you admit it on your own.
>>23326898what to do about moldy books?
>>23326910NTAget known for trading and all you will get are trades
>>23324365>Only 50 authors sell over 500,000 copies annually, with 96% of books selling under 1,000 copiesProbably most of them don't deserve to sell a single one. It is nothing unusual, and has never been otherwise, that selling books is a low-profit undertaking except for the occasional hit that can then finance a publisher's experiments and risks on new authors. Besides that, books don't sell as an isolated medium anymore, but certainly if they're "integrated" with other media. Like if they get a movie/netflix deal, or a video game adaptation like Sapkowskis Witcher books or the Metro series. Of course someone has to notice that your book has the potential to be turned into a "universe" in the first place - and that means it has to have that potential, it has to speak to something archetypical, have the stuff of mythology, even when its literary qualities are lacking. Authors that would focus exclusively on literary quality never had an easy time. They usually had to find their little circle of similarly elitist admirers, and those can make sure they don't starve, like the French government giving some bullshit bureaucratic positions to literati.
>>23326915You will never.>>23326910Yes, what this anon here says >>23326933Conditions vary, but I'm in a small rural town and have the only book store for two hours drive easily. I'm their option and I genuinely don't want their books. I'm perfectly happy for them to keep them. So it's easy to drive a hard bargain with all the leverage.Bills aren't paid in books.>>23326929Once you get rolling you throw them out. I love books and have a pretty high throw out bar. But you will not get any money from them. Mold can infect other books.If you have room you could start a "musty and dusty" pile in the back and try to get a buck for them?I have found I end up storing them forever with no good options.
>>23324718>Media in generalVideo games are on the rise because they're a form of entertainment meant to entertain
>>23326951>Bills aren't paid in books.Makes sense. Thanks for sharing insights anon, it was interesting
>>23324809>Taylor SwiftStopped reading.
>>23326915Read this other anon who understands >>23326935He has a full grasp of the situation.>books don't sell as an isolated medium anymoreThis is concise and gets to the heart of what happens with someone like Obama.
>>23326929>>23326861Not sure if you are the same anons, but these questions go together.Once you get things rolling, your problem will always be...TOO MANY BOOKS.So then for practical purposes you have to start drawing a quality line.Embrace your roll as the "the decider" on which books live on.I put all holocaust propaganda directly into the dumpster. I'm the curator of history now. kek
>>23326951my favorite part is being in a bookstore browsing when someone comes in trying to sell their books and listening to the awkward conversation. like you can't tell the bookstore has 0 money you idiot and your books you been holding onto for 20 years are trash
>>23324365The article is absolutely right. I work in a publishing house in Europe but obviously we have the same issues. Book industry is down everywhere. It's actually funny how marketing in the book business is 90% inorganic, manufactured by the publishing companies, culture journalists, influencers and celebrities who work in the industry. No one cares about books or buys them anymore except gen x/millennial women and the "look at me I read books"-women on booktok. I hate working on this sinking ship but it's exciting to me to see where the book industry is going.
>>23326970>but these are MY booksOn rare occasion someone brings in such quality books or so many that I take pity or deem it an actual good trade for me. But it's incredibly rare.The average is dead on what you describe. I see that most take the news well enough. A few leave with their books butthurt.
>>23326951Do you think there is a dehumanizing aspect of trading? You have to sell items at a profit and treat everyone as a customer and not a person who perhaps shares your interest and tastes (let alone a friend). This is a question I have for everyone who engages in retail commerce, but made even more pertinent as you sell books. Always thought it must be alienating to some extent
>>23326983boiling people down to numerals and fiat calculations vs. actual interpersonal bartering is inherently dehumanizingwhy do you think those with wealth have dragged it to the forefront of all commerce, despite them spending their little paper receipts on things you bartered for in the past (land, weapons)
>>23326983I actually think trading is MORE humanizing and I do a lot of trading in business in general. There are a lot of advantages to it on the BACK END or wholesale side of certain businesses.However on the retail end it is impractical and leads to special treatment and treating everyone differently. I think if you offer a fair product at a fair price then money is the best way to handle it.But when working with someone in business then it works well to find the margins where "this is worth nothing to me, and that is worth nothing to you, so let's trade these nothings and we'll end up with something."This happens a lot in the liquidation business and estate sales.Certain folks can move certain merchandise and certain folks can't move certain merchandise. So you trade it around until the stuff is where it's supposed to be and no one "makes money" until they sell it to a real customer.Even in that business you get problems though.>Hey you traded him that for this but now you won't trade me this for that>Yea well that was because he came on a Tuesday afternoon and you are bothering me on a Monday morningI'm at my business now, it's Friday, I was here early, situation is different. Dealing in money keeps the situation stable and everyone knows what to expect.kek
Here is an example of what you can get at estate sales for people.If you live in the STL area then this auction has a lot of books and some are going like this.https://hibid.com/lot/195588368/1977-first-edition-anna-hastings-book-by-allen-druSo that's a leather bound, Good to Very Good condition, Franklin Library book.It's one day from close and NO ONE WANTS IT.Listed online this sells in 1-3 months for $20 easily. $30 if you want to wait longer.It's nothing special, but it's leather bound and it good condtion, someone will decorate with it.You can buy entire shelves and the book case with it for $8 all the time.Just consistently shop your local area.
>>23324365Money is tight for a lot of people these days, so spending upwards of 25$ on a book that may or may not be good is a risk a lot aren't willing to take. Combined with cheaper audiobook services, many are moving to those sorts of platforms.Myself, Ive made a pact that I won't buy a book that I can't otherwise get from the library. Its a patient business but the amount of money Ive saved in the year, combined with the amount of books Ive read has been monumental
>>23327019Before I got into "the business" of books I used the Library system.You can get almost any book if you can just wait a little bit. Most states have large college libraries and such in their library systems and they will snail mail (or whatever they do) any book in the system to your local library.Small local libraries have pathetic collections typically, but have access to the entire system's reserve of books.
>>23324365I know most of this is because everyone is illiterate now but it certainly doesn't help that publishers are now ultra woke racists that literally won't even read your manuscript if you're a white male. Not publishing good books AND only ever marketing books for women effectively destroyed 50% of the market (men). If sci-fi was still held to basic standards I think it would do a lot to stop the perception that reading is only for women
>>23324365I'm guessing 99% of the best sellers are genre fiction, self help drivel, YA and kid books.
>>23326983yes selling is lying and manipulating. The only thing which counts is the PnL.This is why a society base don commerce like democracy is going to shit.
>>23327053Typical /lit/ poster with no economic knowledge.Commerce is not the same as "fraud" and as soon as you get rid of the commerce you hate so much you'll find it was actually a limiting factor in regards to fraud.
desu even in the old days true literary masterpieces were lucky to break 1k copies2k was something worth of celebration
>>23327053too bad the soviet union isn't still around for you to emigrate to, i guess it went to heaven instead to shit
>>23327073He doesn't realize that as a US AMERICAN he is as close as he can get to that already.But he's just decided to call it "commerce" and probably usually "capitalism" to avoid having to think or change his opinion.
>>23324365I only buy used books. The internet makes it so easy. There's almost never a good reason to buy new.
>>23327340Then you're only buying well known mads produced books. Try reading lesser known authors who few know of and buy. You won't find people selling those on craigs list or whatever
>>23326961Ok but I asked for data to back it up and you just don’t have anyway. So you don’t even know if this understanding is actually true.
>>23326796Like art, people will write just for someone to read it. Income is secondary for creative outlets.
>>23327437then you get fired from your job and now homeless in a high inflation and other issues. don't do anything
>>23327437If you can’t publish, nobody is going to read your book. Your book doesn’t exist. The truth is lists like this one https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/the-read-down/authors-under-35-to-watch/ matter for getting books in the hands of readers and the people who are making these lists are just interested in your straight white male books.
>>23327775Non-issue in the age of the internet. The audience is here. You can think about a physical release once you have readers.
>>23324809>Taylor Swiftkek roastie hands typed this
>>23327775There's a few males on that list and a token straight white male even.
>>23325813libraries buy physical books from publishers, then lend them out to readers. it's analogous to bluckbuster, who bought dvds and vhs tapes and then lent them out. by contrast, netflix produces its own content and streams it directly to consumers.the distinction is that in the library/blockbuster case, the publishers manufacture and sell a physical product for profit. the cost of manufacturing a physical object sets a floor on its price, and the publishers add a markup. the copies also degrade over time, requiring the lender to make repeat purchases from the publisher. the result is a large, recurring revenue stream.in the second case, the publishers don't sell any physical goods; they only sell a license to a digital file. files are cheap to transmit, even with ten times the markup a publisher would apply to a physical dvd or book. so, publishers make less money even when they distribute more copies of the same material.to get a bit more concrete, let's consider the following example:>10,000 libraries each buy 2 copies of a trade paperback>the books cost $5 per unit to manufacture, $2 goes to royalties for the author, and $3 goes to recurring business expenses (legal, hr, etc.)>the book has a total per unit cost of $10>the publisher marks the book up 100% and sells it for $20>this gives the publisher $10 of profit per unit sold>multiplied out, that's 10,000 * 2 * $10 = $200,000 of profit from a single book, in its release year alonecontrast with the ebook model:>most libraries license ebooks from tech companies, which charge the library a few cents each time a book is checked out>for the sake of argument, let's be generous and say each library pays $5 per book to the tech company during the release year>the tech company takes a 30% cut of that (this is the standard Amazon Kindle set) and gives the rest to the publisher>so for the same level of circulation, the publisher gets $3.50 * 10,000 = $35,000 of GROSS income from the release>then they have to pay their author royalties and fixed costs>so the net income winds up negativeif publishers only sold ebooks, they'd have to downsize drastically>inb4 "good fire all the hr harpies"that's not how this works. the publishers will lower author royalties, load more projects onto fewer editors, and generally lower their standards in an effort to churn out more slop. quality will decline further, and faster. if you want a picture of the future, imagine a teenager reading thousands of pages of werewolf erotica, forever.t. used to work in publishing tech before i got a job in big tech
>>23328247Good point, but the question arises of how should a publisher make money through ebooks then, if it is so unprofitable? Since it is not likely to go away. There are lots of i dustries which seem to profit from total overall views, through advertising and so on. Do you think that ebooks should start containing advertisements?
>>23328622>how should a publisher make money through ebooks then, if it is so unprofitable?in the long term the best move for publishers would be to build their own subscription apps and cut Amazon et al. out of the deal. the film industry is already doing this (disney+, peacock, hbo, and so on). then publishers could set their own terms with libraries and consumers, and presumably raise prices.>Do you think that ebooks should start containing advertisements?iirc the lower tier kindle subscriptions already do this, but all the ad money goes to Amazon. we'll probably see more ads regardless desu.
>>23324435You are probably correct about the books being purchased as advertising. During the anti-Scientology protests back in 2008 an Anon that worked at a New York bookstore reported that the Scientologists would come in and buy the copies of Dianetics off the shelf. The bookstore would reorder them and they would be delivered with the bookstores price tag still on them. This allowed the Scientologists to keep promoting the book as a New York Times Best Seller with X million copies sold. I suspect the main market of that promotion was internal to the organisation, propaganda to keep the masses believing. Just as Mao's Little Red Book, Gaddafi's Green Book were for internal consumption. Political hagiographies aren't to convince the other side or the undecideds in politics, Western societies are too fractured for that. They are to bolster the loyalty of the decided to the party with "Did you read...blah, blah, blah" discussions and ensure they go out and vote.
>>23324886Back in the '80s my high school had an original 1st reissue Magna Carta in the foyer in an old perspex case. None of the students knew about it, if they did they didn't care. Original documents about liberty don't mean much when the population has been subverted and dumbed down. Distributing The International Jew and the Protocols would be priceless, people have to be aware of whats happening now before they will start looking back for what was lost.
>>23325104Write what people want to read. I recall an author boasting of making 2k USD writing incest smut for Amazon before they banned it. There are authors making a good living off of Patreon writing weekly installments of smut, isekai, do-over, romance, etc. Some established authors make a good living off of Patreon just using it as a pay walled blog and their rabid fans pay so they can read. Wen Spencer was pulling in 5k a month and wrote nothing but vignettes and rambling blog posts for a number of years.Journalist / researcher types post on Substack and paywall some articles.Publishing was very heavily gate kept before the internet. I'm confident that zero /lit/ writers would have had a chance to be mass market published under the old system. I wrote occasional letters to the editor of newspapers. They would never publish anything that went against their narrative unless it appeared unhinged, thus reinforcing their narrative. They freely edited the letters they did publish. Now imagine the difficulties involved in getting a book through the gate keepers. There were also international publishing 'conventions' allowing gate keeping between nations. Some books were not freely published in all 'free world' nations. Now they can be. Authors may not make a living out of it, but they have a chance to be read.
>>23325443Christ. Thirteen years ago.
>>23327034The Net Zero plan for the British govt calls for the end of paper production by the 2030s due to the energy consumption involved. This came out at the same time as the 'no white male authors' BS. The publishing industry is being deliberately imploded. Internal combustion engines are to be phased out with no new aircraft after 2035. Look at how Boeing's management continually work to implode the company. They are fulfilling the aims of their ultimate paymasters.
>>23328738i watched it recently too. still holds up.
>>23324886It's funny how people make these posts yet the Founding Fathers were vehemently against any sort of religious influence in the government or governance in general.
>>23325958>Outside of textbooks and other resources for learning a skill or language, every book worth reading is easily available second-hand or for free online. There's never been less reason to go out and buy books.Just wait until the internet goes down or becomes censored.
>>23324648>Why does it take western /co/ a month to do 1 issue when japs pump them out weekly Because there are multiple people working on manga issues while only one artist works on most headliner western comics. This can also be true for Manga.>with better art tooIf you've ever actually seen the technical ability of most of the big artists that work for Marvel and DC you would know how dreadfully wrong you are. Main Thor comics are going to be drawn by the best, side comic 12 is going to be done by some fuckhead they got on the side.
>>23324886HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAabsolute state of trumpfags
>>23327361Well if you have a list of lesser known authors worth reading instead of the 2000 years of established Western literary canon then, by all means, don't keep it a secret anon. Go ahead. List some of your super secret hidden gems that we can't find anywhere online.
I have around 5 old books i dont want anymore. Is ebay or amazon better for selling used books?
>>23324718you need a dark age in order for a renaissance to occur
>>23327340I don't want someone else's tiny snot particles in my books. A new penguin book is only like €8, so it's not like it's some huge expense every time. There is literally no reason to buy used.
i bet all the top sellers are white men and the flops are all those young adult poc books
all the money is in children's books. schools are forced to buy those things. therefore there be gold in yonder hills
>>23324365have a friend who is a very successful author sell pulp fiction stuff on amazon basically. he says the majority of his profits actually comes from kindle/amazon subscriber fees which is paid by pages read since his books are included with kindle subscriptions. He sells most of his ebooks for $1-5 or box sets for $20 or so. I think u can buy print on demand copies, but he doesn't have anything at all in stores afaik. No publisher and he made his book covers using blender and photoshop, which was funny since he could easily afford a graphic artist I would think.this is prob the best model for writers if you can write something ppl would read, i only write esoteric philosophy so not for me
>>23324365Give up
>>23324718we are currently in the 'weak men make bad times' turning. its the golden age of dragshows and social decline however
>>23325464>>23325439Sir you can just take a pdf and print it yourself. Copyright has expired so it is actually legal (not that anyone cares about that).
>>23324365Hey anons, let's say I write a book (or comic book maybe) and print out like, a hundred copies and manage to sell them all. Let's say I live in LATAM but since I write in English and have an small following online mainly from US and Canada the copies I print were cheap to produce and costed Pesos but sold for Dollars... Would that make me the most profitable author alive? Certainly in the top 10% or so.
Libraries are great, I hate e-readers. I don't think books make much sense as a commercial mass market product, having a large personal library is something for rich people.
>>23324365No one should be compelled to buy books when the best ones are in public domain available through project guthenber, internet archive; ones that aren't public domain (but should be) are easily downloaded from libgen or anna's archive — and if you prefer physical — bought at garage sales, antique shops, second hand book stores, library sales or acquired through book crossing. Mediocre new editions of old books, and new books that were written by people who had nothing to say, are not worth anyone's money and should not be printed. Why even print in the current year? It is perfectly viable to format your book in LaTeX for pdf, or HTML/Markdown for web, or clean plain text .txt file, and host it on your own website, or any of the existing blog sites. There are enough cash grabs, and there should be less incentive to make more. You are not going to get by on book revenue either way, so why destroy the peace and solace that writing brings, and exchange it for a jewish reaper breathing down your neck holding you by the balls so you publish more slop.
>>23329187That’s complete bullshit. They were against a state religion at the federal level for a of states. Any one particular state government was free to be as religious as it pleased.
It was already unlikely that you would ever make a living as a writer or be widely read, but it’s even less likely now. I think that’s just something writers have to accept early on. Don’t quit your day job.
I would buy books, but they are expensive and I'm poor as fuck
>>23324365I mostly buy used books.
>>23326031>>23326652And now you know why new translations and study bibles get produced nonstop.
>>23325623I'm in Romania. There are currently 2 big authors that are selling to the point that even normies buy their stuff even if they don't read them: Mircea Cartarescu (lol) and this guy who made a trilogy out of a very good folk tale. This second one would have remained a buried gem if it wasn't shilled hard by the biggest book retailer in the country. Outside of that, most of the consumption is shlock, generally poorly translated shlock, either YA romantasy or self-help books. However, there is a noticeable, if rather small, serious cohort of readers so publishers still do market serious literature here
>>23324366You think those illuminated manuscripts were made for free?
>>23324365more for me
>>23324365why would i buy books?new books cost anywhere from $10-20.why the fuck would i spend that much money when i can just read the shit on internetarchive, or shop for used books for a fraction of that price? it makes absolutely no sense.
/// We should have sat down and addressed the issues head-on /// It felt churlish to tell him that I was in a hurry, that the coffee would have to be quick /// She could always be relied on to hold court with hilarious tales /// Her remarks were intended to scotch rumours of imminent job losses /// The middleweight fight was said to be a grudge match /// After the row in a pub he drove off in a huff /// One is the passive failure to disclose something a negotiation counterpart doesn't know, while paltering is the active use of truthful statements to mislead /// Today, women tennis players are not encumbered by long, heavy skirts and high-necked blouses /// Even iconic Italian runabout boatmaker Riva stopped using wood for its hulls in 1996 /// The reason is misinformation for sure, and more fundamentally a lacuna in thinking prompted by an emotional reaction /// She thought that the houses were a nice little nest egg for her sons when they came of age /// There is widespread gloom and doom about the company's future /// Liquified gas is removed from the canister with a long offtake tube that runs up the length of the torch /// The unions have urged members to hold tight until a national deal is struck /// The sweet and tangy flavors of orange, honey and ginger coat the chicken for a quick, savory dinner /// Sally was tired of being called a stick in the mud by her friends just because she refused to drink alcohol /// The megasculpture reinscribes the values of colonialism on the landscape and regenerates the invisible power structures that made the creation possible /// Most orthodontic work is done on children between the ages of 10 and 14 /// The scientists in the crowd would look nervously at one another, the New Age types would beam and chortle /// The police has busted up two automobile theft rings /// After a clipping infraction, the team committing the foul is penalized 15 yards ///
>>23324666>gay Superman, black Batman, fem Thor, fem Ironman, or black SpidermanI saw the gay Superman and black Spiderman, so I assume this anon isn't exaggerating?... It just sounds so retarded that it's hard to believe they'd do this with all of them.
>>23328634most streaming services have been losing money since they started, netflix just became profitable in the last couple years and is now starting to see declining revenue. if publishers want to make ebook stores theyll have to invest a lot and compete with the big players who lock their devices to a single distributor (yes you can sideload books but most people dont know its possible and wouldnt bother even if they did)
>>23329208that's why smart people download every single thing now.
>>23333115the last step (raise prices) is the most important. this is what's happening with streaming across the board, and it will have to happen with e-books too. e-book sales at current prices, whether to libraries or individuals, are only profitable if you skip basic steps like professional editing and legal review. but you can only raise prices if you get out of kindleland and develop your own platform.i've wanted to work on a federated lending technology for a while. we could have "brokers" like libraries who collect subscriptions/donations/tax dollars from readers, and then distribute each reader's subscription fee to all the organizations that lent said reader books, minus a percentage for the broker. but there's no industry interest, since the existing camps in the industry have no incentive to decentralize:>incumbent techalways fights change. won't even fund your startup so they can buy it out later, since it's easier to use their library connections to blackball you.>university presses, big academic journalsoperate on a dual model of (1) selling physical books at huge markups to libraries ($300+ for a single copy; this is why you see amazon listings for crazy prices even though the book is in print) and (2) licensing access to incumbent tech companies. they're also in the unique position of not paying their authors, since professors already draw a salary from the school. no real incentive to change.>open accessthe left wing of academic publishing. they want to give everything away for free. this is workable only because the professors who write open access content already draw salaries.>legacy publisherscomplete lack of interest in technology. still coming to terms with the fact that amazon has monopoly power. as the article in OP shows, they're just throwing book ideas at the wall, and don't really understand that this is a game about platforms.>indie publishersan "indie publisher" is four authors in a trenchcoat, sometimes with a lawyer on retainer. they have very little business know-how and for the most part can't conceive of a life outside amazon and/or wordpress blogging. the rare exceptions tend to care only about physical books as art objects.a federated system would need an ecosystem of many mid-sized (and small) publishers to either self-host or lease technology for distributing e-books, and a competing group of brokers. in this model, rather than having an exclusive license to content, kindle direct would be one broker of many, competing with local and national libraries as well as other tech companies. brokers would win over users by offering better UI/UX, and win over publishers by extracting less per transaction (e.g. 15% instead of 30%).from a technical standpoint, this would be simple enough. one engineering team could prototype both the broker and the publisher halves of the system in a year. the only trouble is getting buy-in from the incumbents, which is extremely unlikely.
>>23332792>this guy who made a trilogy out of a very good folk tale.whos that, and what's the folk tale?
>>23324366You expected Jews to write a book and not sell it?
maybe stop selling the fucking books at absurd prices and people will buy themnah keep inflating prices and promoting wokeism insteadretards>UH MY BOOK HAS A HARDCOVER SO NOW ITS WORTH FIVE TIMES AS MUCH!!kill yourselves>>23333066they did, they'll just do another gay reboot genesis event and pretend it never happened only to do it all over again, they dont care if it isnt succesful the first few times they just care about slowly boiling the frog and brainwashing people with woke crap so a few sacrificed shekels are worth it in the long run for thempeople are getting more and more desensitized to this crap and thats the point>>23326957kekthey're also dying tard, /v/ is full of nothing but complaints
>>23324435I actually built a coffee table out of my Big Mike books
>>23324656Opposite take a look at something like 80s Claremont X-Men or Spidey far more wordy than something published today which has less dialogue you'd think comics would be more popular today but I am honestly shocked because of people's second hand knowledge coming from movies, merchandise, video games, etc. I knew illiteracy was bad but I didn't know it was this bad that people would be too lazy to pick up a comic that takes 3 minutes in total to read.
>>23332859They weren’t made to be sold for a profit…
>>23333066You’ve got to understand that American media is a lot more institutional and coldly practical than the Japanese equivalents. In the Japanese manga industry, people sincerely love manga, all the way from the artists themselves up to the executives believe it or not. Of course, they want to make money but they listen to the artists, they listen to the readers, they care about what is being done because they aslo read it, and they’re constantly bringing in new talented writers and debuting them in magazines that everyone reads on the train and at home. In America, not only does nobody read this stuff except a small number of very gay Millenials and boomer collectors, nobody actually cares about the content. New issues don’t get adaptations, they’re not made by new passion artists, they’re basically just a relic commodity for these companies to hawk as merchandise. Nobody actually cares about these comics. Now, it’s a death spiral because since nobody cares, they don’t try to make them good, and since they don’t try to make them good, nobody cares. Furthermore, the audience that demands this shit, demands the gay Superman, the black Spiderman, etc. is actually much bigger and louder than it is in Japan. It is not just execs pushing this stuff. It’s hard to believe, but this is actually what a non-insignificant number of Western consumers want. That is the real black pill. It’s not quite right to say that this stuff is popular, but where it is popular, it’s popular. You know what I mean? It’s the same with books. Books in general aren’t popular, but among the audience they are popular with, you know what they like to buy per the data? It’s “black authors”, it’s “feminist fantasy”. This is what the people who buy books and comics want now. That’s why none of this can get fixed. That’s why things will not get better for books or comics. If /lit/ wants to fix books and comics for that matter, step 1 is finding a way to increase demand for contemporary works which are not gay Superman, black Spiderman, black authors, or feminist fantasy, because currently there is none. All the straight normal men are playing video games, worshipping Andrew Tate, or reading the shittiest science fiction you can possibly imagine like Red Rising and The Witcher.
>>23333750They have to sell them at higher prices to make their money back since sales are so low. If they sold many copies, they could sell them for lower prices, but they sell few copies so they have to sell them for higher prices.
>>23324656Manga is vastly superior for several reasons. It’s a long connected narrative instead of childish episodic shit, it’s less wordy, less moralizing, less kitschy, the art is more appealing, the black and white is more appealing, the release schedule is better, everything is just better. Comics are sincerely crap compared to manga.
>>23324885>democratize'sup Rajneeswabhubhadamadeviyatra
>>23326767So you're a retard who inherited the business space right? Because you sound like a spoiled piece of shit, there's no way you're paying for anything for your "business".
>>23333780I stopped reading comics in '87 or '88. Partly it was I was now a man and it was time to put aside childish things. The other factor was the requirement to buy X Men, New Mutants, Powerpack, Wolverine, Spiderman, Secret Wars and three other mini series just to keep track of one story line. Imported comics were expensive (I'm not a Burger) and the story lines were becoming less interesting as they spread into multiple franchises to try and sell extra copies. 'Magneto wants to genocide the normies, but that's OK because his wife was killed by the Nazis'. Secret Wars was just Kabbalah.'Punching Nazis is as American as Apple Pie.''Feds in black uniforms with red armbands want to round up the Mutants and put them in camps'.Kitty Pride was a spunk young dream girlfriend with big tits. Whose grand parents died in the Holocaust.When you realize that Marvel was a self funding propaganda campaign to mold the minds of teenage American males you can see what is happening now.
>>23327057>Commerce is not the same as "fraud"Yeah that's why a rich retard who inherited properties can get free money out of stuff that he steals from the public for free.
>>23333788They were made to be stolen by Norsemen and sold for a profit in Byzantium, along with the scribe if the survived the journey.
>>23333945Why don't you just read good comics then idiot? Afraid of subtitles American mystery meat child?
>>23324809>Taylor Swift is one of the last titans carrying the dying music industrylmao she is one of the reasons the music industry is dying
>>23333648Guy is called Andrei Ruse, the original folk take is Tinerete fara Batranete si Viata fara de moarte (Youth without old age and lif without death) This is the trilogy (the cover art is dogshit but the writing is genuinely good, I found out a lot of old/regional words from it myself)andreiruse.ro/ultimul-imparat-nemuritor-trilogie/
>>23324569>Also, how has an American not moved to Japan to learn manga and brought that back yet?Dark Horse comics imports a lot of Manga from Japan to the U.S
>>23325257as queer as a clockwork orange
>>23324365Rebuttal https://kathleenschmidt.substack.com/p/please-stop-bashing-book-publishing
>>23324614>>23324624>>23324640Zoomers are mostly just interested in aesthetically appealing works with simple and satisfying premises, hence the popularity of manga like Hero Academia, Spy x Family, or Jujutsu Kaisen. They don't ask too much of their reader and have attractive designs, which is 95% of the appeal for the younger generation.We know this because alongside those successes has been the rise of Korean webtoons, often about aesthetically appealing characters with simple yet satisfying premises (i.e., protagonist kills bully, number goes up, dopamine rush for audience). It's such an easy to identify trend that I'm not surprised at all American comic creators haven't noticed it, given how pussified they've been since the 80s. You see, the deep irony of these comic book companies is that they do listen to their "fans"- it just so happens that the people that are easiest to listen to are the loudest ones. A funny thing in I think it was Amazing Spider-Man issues was letters that would get sent, when Peter was doing his usual thing being a deadbeat working for a newspaper company, people writing letters were sick of it. However, when Peter started fixing his shit and had a tech company rivaling Stark, people writing letters were also sick of it- Marvel failing to realize that people who write letters are inevitably going to be the people most upset with what's happening.
>>23335304>korean webtoonsfuck off gook no one reads that garbage, japs have cornered the market on comics
>>23333810It's also worth noting that in Japan, manga is run by a bunch of printing giants that sell paper to agencies that hire talent. The talent make the stories, the agencies stitch them together, the printing giants make the paper, the agency and the talent get the copies moved. In the US, comics are top-down idealogical projects meant to produce stories with certain themes. It doesn't matter if no one buys the comics because the companies can just take out loans for being Woke, and they'll never have to pay the banks back because small hats. You'd have to have a complete political and cultural revolution to fix this as what actually lets manga happen, the printing giants, is explicitly verboten for idealogical reasons.
It's just way too hard to write well. It's possibly the hardest skill to master.
>>23335361>no one reads that garbageExcept for the vast amounts of young people who do in fact read it.This statement would've been true a decade ago, but today Korean media has blown up in popularity among young people. That's an undeniable fact.
>>23324366Necessary evil, I suppose
>>23324365What book would I buy? What book would I fucking buy? the industry only publishes the same 5 books over and over and over and over and over again! That's why I buy from the used bookstore, so I can get something published before 2010 that might actually be enjoyable and original.
>>23324718Gatekeepers are only allowing sterilized factory line content through because execs say it makes money--the same execs who tank every business they take over into the ground, like Boeing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVqcIuQRsUAThe same jackasses he talks about are running publishing into the ground. They refuse to put out books people want to read so people don't read them. How many books about queer jewish negroes can they publish every year? When was the last time you got excited for a newly published book? These books are all shitty and derivative, they might honestly be being churned out by AI, I legitimately cannot tell because they're so soulless. I pick up a "new" book at the store/library and feel like I've already read it. And LOOK AT AGENT PROFILES. THEY WANT IT THIS WAY. They don't want new books, they want more of the same books that already sold, but readers don't want to read the same fucking book they just read. It's a total disconnect. By refusing to "take risks" on novel novels (imagine) they've flushed themselves down the toilet. That's like a restaurant that only serves bologna sandwiches complaining that no one wants to eat there anymore.
>>23325157Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald were virtuosos. There are no virtuosos anymore, just a bunch of lazy hacks. The books are dreadful low effort low brow slop; the "writers" are biological AI engines that take an amalgamation of all the slop they consoomed previously and vomit it back up onto the floor. Even look at the titles--"Queen of Glass", "Kingdom of Amber", "Prince of Darkness;" "The Bookkeeper's Daughter," "The Pianist's Daughter," "The Apothecary's Daughter;" you'll see the same shit over and over again with a few words changed around. They're trying to sell the same 5 novels 100 times each. It's lazy, it's cheap, and people putting their heart and soul into something are dead. honestly in this godforsaken economy where people have the spirit beaten out of them and everyone is dead tired, who has time to have a soul? The only people writing are the small circle of liberal trust fund kids with rainbow diarrhea for brains who get their personality from twitter. Everyone else is too god damned tired to put in the hours to become a craftsman in literature, and these pampered cretins have never known an hour of true effort in their lives. Look into who is getting published and you'll see the same thing over and over again--limousine liberals, the worst scum of the planet.
>>23325257Walk into the library and pick a shelf. Honest to fucking god faggots are 3% of the population and 60% of the newly published shelf.
>>23324365WHY IS IT $30 FOR A BOOK WRITTEN A CENTURY AGOTHEYRE TOO EXPENSIVE
>>23326809Speaking of that bitch (I watched a lovely snark video on her dreck the other day) there's a literary agency called Maass so I wonder if she isn't a nepobaby. When you look into who is actually getting published it's an astonishing amount of nepobabies, the most famous being Chris Paolini of Eragon, but he's still around and still publishing lousy books because his mommy and daddy are industry creatures. That's how sleazy publishing is and it's no wonder an incestuous, intellectually bankrupt industry is crumbling.And for that matter fuck booktok, too. Some retarded whore goes viral because the algo sends her shit to the singularity point? Algorithm based social media is a turbo-cancer engine. Something rises slightly above the static for arbitrary reasons and it goes to 1000 while objectively better content doesn't get off the ground. That fat dirty whore Colleen Hoover won the digital lottery and thinks she earned it, while she shits out heinous pollution and destroys and entire generation with coomer brainrot. I hope to god her obesity gives her a heart attack so I never have to see another shitty booktok skank holding up one of her retarded books.But I digress. The literary industry is a circle-jerk of the same handful of wealthy jews switching between writing and editing positions all publishing each other and all gatekeeping the goyim out. Just like Hollywood. That stupid cunt who played white katara in the shamalamadingdong movie was a nepo hire with a powerful daddy and now based on being born into the industry she's gone on to produce her own shitty movies that get shoved down our throats.
>>23335618>so I wonder if she isn't a nepobaby.>Maas was adopted and grew up in New York City with her parents — a lawyer and a judge — whom she describes as “very intellectual people”.>The only thing I know is that she was adopted, and she attended a private high school in the Upper East Side of New York (which was the inspiration behind Gossip Girl)… so likely very wealthy.https://new.reddit.com/r/SarahJMaas/comments/awebik/sarah_j_maas_plagiarism/>Whether you’ve been thinking about starting to read “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” or you’re a long-time fan of “Throne of Glass,” it’s likely that you’ve heard of Sarah J. Maas. The author is making headlines the world over thanks to her fantasy series. Whether you’re invested in them for the well-written smut or the beautiful way she weaves her stories, fans can’t put down her novels. But what some readers might not know about the rather private author is that she was raised by a Catholic mother and a Jewish father and attended Hebrew school in her youth. She went on to attend Hamilton College for religious studies and met her future husband at her college’s Hillel, where he served as president. Her connection to her Jewish faith isn’t just apparent when looking at her personal history, though. It just takes a keen eye and a flip through any of her series’ to recognize that she has woven her culture through every story.>The way that Maas deftly and lovingly weaves her Jewish culture and faith into her writing opens up the world of our stories and tradition to a wider audience. Jewish faith hasn’t had a very loud voice in fantasy — but thanks to Maas, that might be about to change.>Sarah J. Maas was born in New York City on March 5, 1986. She grew up in the Upper West Side, where she had access to some interesting historical exhibitions at the local museums. One of her favourite natural history exhibitions was the one about the Temple of Dendur.>This temple is an Ancient Egyptian temple built by the Roman governor of Egypt around 15 BC, as one of many Egyptian temples commissioned by the emperor Augustus. This structure could have been one of the many devices to fuel young Sarah’s imagination.>Maas’ parents had a love for opera, and by extension, she grew a love for both opera and ballet. They were healthy interests for her young, developing mind.Fuck these people.
>>23335634When I see both right-wingers and progressives (the latter in context of protesting Gaza) being anti-semitic it warms my heart. MAGA retards and blue haired queerbags can walk hand-in-hand to escort jews into the gas chamber, and when their work is complete I can have some books worth reading.Let's have gamergate for books but instead of whores sucking cock it's jews with mangled cocks. I look at #MSWL and it's more jewish than a bat mitzvah. Every last one of these hyper-progressive publishing plants has a nose like a borzoi.
>>23335580>Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald were virtuososThey actually lived their lives, too. All today's "creatives" do is write glorified fanfic about the characters other people made. Jane Eyre in space! Pride and Prejudice with zombies! And so it goes. The only people writing anymore are either trust fund kids or tryhard ironybro faggots (redundant, I know). Wingcuck garbage has replaced the authentic human condition. The lowest common denominator (picrel) has been pandered to for so long since the turn of the millennium that it's basically either go retro or stare at paint drying to entertain one's self. Simply put, it's all faggotry.
>>23335281Kinda weak riposte. Just "that essay's wrong, you're all missing all kinds of context I'm not going to supply, anyway, later bruhs and brudettes."
>>23335281>a book that sells 5k copies is a "success">a typical book runs $20>a typical author royalty is 12%>a "successful" author makes $15,000 per book>if the book takes them a year to write, they'll make less than minimum wage>if they sell two successful books in a year, they'll earn less than most janitors>"PLEASE STOP BASHING BOOK PUBLISHING"writerbros... i don't feel so good...
>>23335674>They actually lived their lives, too. All today's "creatives" do is write glorified fanfic about the characters other people made.Very true, This is what Hayao Miyazaki was talking about when he saids "Anime was a Mistake" His generation after WW2 create manga, animation, art and so on from their life and lived experience and express the soul of their culture in that time period and reflect on how the experience of WW2 shape the current day japan. Japan economic boom came, here comes new generation of japanese who are obsessed with manga, anime and so on. Naturally some want to also create something of their own but what they do is they copy what they saw and read growing up (Anime, manga) and reiterate it over and over and over. Instead of experiencing life and bringing that into what they create they instead regurgitate the same aesthetics of the past generations.
>>23333819YWNBJ
>>23335665which right-winger? one thing i've learnt is that right-wingers, especially christcucks but also americans are just hopeless shabbos goyim. you could not invent a better goy than a /pol/nigger. The progressives, despite their contempt for other views and general faggotry, at least are naming the jew in a way that hurts them.
Why would we need to write books? Why would we need to buy books? We have books.
This thread depresses me so deeply. What is the point of preserving Western culture and its virtues if we don't even fucking read anymore?
>>23336291>preserving Western culturewho exactly is doing that? It's all been given up. The Future Is Muslim, Allahu Akbar! And Chinese, Shing Shang Shong, Pemis Not Very Long!
>>23335674>The only people writing anymore are either trust fund kids or tryhard ironybro faggots Ridiculous. This board alone has a flourishing culture of writers. You make such a judgment but have you even attempted to engage with contemporary fiction? With Unreal? With &'s stories? Read the literature, THEN form your conclusions.
>>23324699First of all tradition. Second of all, money. Even back in the eighties there was the idea of the crossover: have a big storyline occur in a whole bunch of different titles so that if you want to find out what happens next you have to buy these other comics that you would never usually buy. The idea is I guess that you might buy the other comics and really like them, so then you would start to buy them too. In the beginning you’re only buying Batman, but then you street to buy World’s Finest, Superman and Trinity because you were introduced to them by these crossovers. Unironically if you’re looking for narrative arcs go look for indie comics instead. Invincible, for example, basically does the same thing you’re talking about (though towards the end of its run it started to introduce characters from other comics)
let's just blow up the earthit's gonna happen anyway
