![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 30th, 2012 09:45 amI tried. I tried so hard to read about this whole John Locke situation. And so much of it is just so incredibly boring.
Allow me to share with you ( The Interesting Parts Version )
There is a lot of discussion to be had about the ethics and efficacy of paying for reviews. Outside of the economic sphere there's a lot of discussion to be had about the relationship between critics and writers, and whether critics should keep themselves at arm's length, or whether they should be involved in the literary life so that they have context for what they read. In addition, there's a debate to be had about whether this is that much different from big publishers who can afford to splash out on the kind of PR it generally takes to get a book to bestseller status. (I will never forget being fifteen and having a friend of mine's father, who worked in publishing, explain to me that books are mostly sold through expensive PR, which is why small presses have it so hard.) And that requires an examination of the tension between big publishers and small/self publishers, and the philosophy that any edge you can get is a good edge.
So there's a lot to chew over, which would be fantastic, except that it appears that everyone commenting on it is attempting to be as uninteresting as possible. MY GOD, PEOPLE, this is brickspace book wank. It should at least involve a few lols along the way. I keep trying to sort out who thinks what about which issue but then I start nodding off, or I stop reading because the person blogging about it has said something so incredibly irrational or stupid that I can no longer pay attention to their opinions.
And it's hard to form one of my own without hearing the arguments. It's easy to say "paying for reviews is wrong", but it's not that simple, especially when some publishers have the clout and cash to get their books seen in a way that startups and selfpubs can't.
So the basic opinion I have formed about all of this, which is no doubt informed by the article I recently read about the 1962 Edinburgh World Writer's Conference, is that WRITERS BE CRAZY.
Allow me to share with you ( The Interesting Parts Version )
There is a lot of discussion to be had about the ethics and efficacy of paying for reviews. Outside of the economic sphere there's a lot of discussion to be had about the relationship between critics and writers, and whether critics should keep themselves at arm's length, or whether they should be involved in the literary life so that they have context for what they read. In addition, there's a debate to be had about whether this is that much different from big publishers who can afford to splash out on the kind of PR it generally takes to get a book to bestseller status. (I will never forget being fifteen and having a friend of mine's father, who worked in publishing, explain to me that books are mostly sold through expensive PR, which is why small presses have it so hard.) And that requires an examination of the tension between big publishers and small/self publishers, and the philosophy that any edge you can get is a good edge.
So there's a lot to chew over, which would be fantastic, except that it appears that everyone commenting on it is attempting to be as uninteresting as possible. MY GOD, PEOPLE, this is brickspace book wank. It should at least involve a few lols along the way. I keep trying to sort out who thinks what about which issue but then I start nodding off, or I stop reading because the person blogging about it has said something so incredibly irrational or stupid that I can no longer pay attention to their opinions.
And it's hard to form one of my own without hearing the arguments. It's easy to say "paying for reviews is wrong", but it's not that simple, especially when some publishers have the clout and cash to get their books seen in a way that startups and selfpubs can't.
So the basic opinion I have formed about all of this, which is no doubt informed by the article I recently read about the 1962 Edinburgh World Writer's Conference, is that WRITERS BE CRAZY.
