Naw, no conflict of interest there, no sir.

Ms. Arthen’s extremely informative and well-written post also explained the difficulties in changing the mindsets of bookstores since they insist on identifying self-published/vanity books and POD Small Press books as one and the same. What the hell? I think it has much to do with resistance to the new technology because of their [traditional publishing's] outdated business model: “We didn’t think of it, so it can’t be good/legitimate”, “The Big Noo Yawk houses aren’t doing it, so why should we?”, and “Real Literary people do not ‘DO’ computers (ie., digital content, eReaders, ePublishing)”.

It’s class warfare, I swear: the merchant class versus the artisan class with the audience caught between. More, it’s the inevitable implosion of an industry, a business, both afraid and reluctant to evolve.

I have an online friend and colleague, a poet of some moderate renown, who has repeatedly asked me WHY I waste my time with genre fiction. She sees it as a dead end. Genre fiction is, by current industry definition, extremely limited in its marketable content and possibilities by both its literary traditions and its audience. It’s like comfort food to the readership — people want it, the content, the way its always been written: the same old storylines and tropes. Moreover, the authors who work inside those genres have become “brand names”, much like what people look for when they shop at the supermarket. Therefore, the publishers will only seek out/buy/provide work to that audience that matches that general criteria. After all, they want the book to sell and sell big. But genre-wise, nothing changes, nothing evolves. Oh, everyone pays a lot of lip-service to getting “new and different” ideas out there, to changing up the Urban Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal Romance, Dark Fantasy genres, but when something new appears on the horizon it had better be written by an already well-known industry name. And only the same old names seem to be able to achieve any degree of acceptance from an audience increasingly influenced by video games and “summer blockbuster” motion pictures (entertainment usually aimed at 14 – 18 year old suburban boys or, recently, Potter-heads and Twilight-heads). As a sub-genre, Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy books have a very large female audience, but, let’s face it, they’re pretty well indoctrinated by the influences I already mentioned. And as far as the somewhat incestuous and occasionally nepotistic relationship between the publishing industry and book reviewers?

Hey, I understand. It’s a business. I get it.

So here come the small publishers with new imprints trying to break in and make inroads into those established comfort-food markets… and they’re hawking books with newer ideas written by new authors, writers with new names. And they’re doing it using new technology…

Damn. Triple-whammy. Someone hang up a garlic-wreath and go sharpen the stakes, something bad is trying to get indoors.

Someone else has stepped up to compete for a piece of the pie. In the end, it’s a business, get it?

And then they, the small presses and their products, want to be REVIEWED? If you’re reviewed than that means you’re taken seriously, right? Reviews can create sales. And if you’re taken seriously, then that could potentially upset the Status Quo. And if you upset the Status Quo, then that could potentially cost someone, meaning competitors vying for the same market, money. Because, after all, you’ve just proven that things — meaning the products the larger publishers sell, meaning genre-based books — DON’T have to all contain some minor variation of the same, repetitive story content. And the audience, meaning readers, just might LIKE something new.

Cue the sound of ringing cash registers.

Or not.

I’m an author. And, small though it may be, I won’t pander to my audience. I work hard at what I do. And the dichotomy in Inanna’s blog-post is particularly draining to me.

I wish I had an answer. I don’t. Except that maybe, just maybe, this industry needs to stop dumbing itself down in the pursuit of potential sales and grow up.

Evolve.

Armstead Out.