I don’t BookTok. I barely Instagram. I do have readers. Thank heavens for publicists, but nothing makes small press writers feel more inadequate than the latest fad that the big houses throw money at. We try to eke out money to hire our own publicists knowing we can never pay them enough. I understand why some young folks want to grow up to be influencers. Who doesn’t want to be courted?
This one caused me to think about why I feel so let down by the trope machine as a reader in the last several years. One, books that I'm expecting to be at least slightly literary, are more and more often turning out to be really a basket of tropes. This summer at my mom's house I came across a nice-looking hardcover that seemed appealing and was set in a small town in my region. My mom and I thought it would be a fun beach book about women's friendship with local setting appeal. The word literary was on all the jacket copy. And. it. was. just. too. tropey, even for my mom who has good taste but is less picky. It's maybe not even the tropey-ness, it's the absence of anything else. My other complaint is maybe another side of the same complaint, which is that even when I'm looking for a particular commercial genre that I have read a lot, it seems harder than it used to to find *good* ones. Even my kid, who reads kind of between middle grade and YA, is complaining that "these books are all the same." It's to the point where if I'm not buying a book from an independent or university press, I'm probably buying one that was published more than 10 years ago or (especially) first published outside the US. I guess what I'm saying is I like familiarity and commercial books sometimes, but I think big publishing is not doing this well.
I tried to think of how to respond to this, and then I was like yep--just all this. I think part of it is a lack of freedom for editorial vision (top-down), and a lack of time to put true editing into big four books anymore. Some editors have more time, but acquiring editors are so pinched that it sort of always drills down to "can I convince the money people this will sell?" And so we get things that are just remakes and remixes, with as many sales tropes as we can shove into them.
I also think on the other side of publicity, everything is revolving around itself. Lists all have the same books--it's recycling, and because of the pandemic (and the other ways we live) people are buying books so much more online than anywhere else so we're not getting personalized recommendations, and there are fewer places that offer that sort of recommendation too. There are some sub stacks I love (Elizabeth Held's What To Read If), I'll try to find others that take those tropes and offer really exciting books!
As usual, you give us food for thought in your completely open, honest way. Thank you for that, and for always being open to the "peg that doesn't fit the hole". Those are books that I would like to read.
I don’t BookTok. I barely Instagram. I do have readers. Thank heavens for publicists, but nothing makes small press writers feel more inadequate than the latest fad that the big houses throw money at. We try to eke out money to hire our own publicists knowing we can never pay them enough. I understand why some young folks want to grow up to be influencers. Who doesn’t want to be courted?
This one caused me to think about why I feel so let down by the trope machine as a reader in the last several years. One, books that I'm expecting to be at least slightly literary, are more and more often turning out to be really a basket of tropes. This summer at my mom's house I came across a nice-looking hardcover that seemed appealing and was set in a small town in my region. My mom and I thought it would be a fun beach book about women's friendship with local setting appeal. The word literary was on all the jacket copy. And. it. was. just. too. tropey, even for my mom who has good taste but is less picky. It's maybe not even the tropey-ness, it's the absence of anything else. My other complaint is maybe another side of the same complaint, which is that even when I'm looking for a particular commercial genre that I have read a lot, it seems harder than it used to to find *good* ones. Even my kid, who reads kind of between middle grade and YA, is complaining that "these books are all the same." It's to the point where if I'm not buying a book from an independent or university press, I'm probably buying one that was published more than 10 years ago or (especially) first published outside the US. I guess what I'm saying is I like familiarity and commercial books sometimes, but I think big publishing is not doing this well.
I tried to think of how to respond to this, and then I was like yep--just all this. I think part of it is a lack of freedom for editorial vision (top-down), and a lack of time to put true editing into big four books anymore. Some editors have more time, but acquiring editors are so pinched that it sort of always drills down to "can I convince the money people this will sell?" And so we get things that are just remakes and remixes, with as many sales tropes as we can shove into them.
I also think on the other side of publicity, everything is revolving around itself. Lists all have the same books--it's recycling, and because of the pandemic (and the other ways we live) people are buying books so much more online than anywhere else so we're not getting personalized recommendations, and there are fewer places that offer that sort of recommendation too. There are some sub stacks I love (Elizabeth Held's What To Read If), I'll try to find others that take those tropes and offer really exciting books!
As usual, you give us food for thought in your completely open, honest way. Thank you for that, and for always being open to the "peg that doesn't fit the hole". Those are books that I would like to read.