Links of the week November 20 2023 (47)

The publishing industry is in flux. One major publisher has been acquired by a private equity firm, editors are departing (and getting laid off) from others, there are fewer book media outlets than ever, and most literary discourse is happening online. But what does it all mean for the books themselves, and the ways that readers are discovering them? Here, we make some predictions about the future of books.

It'll be even harder to launch debut fiction.

"Celebrities and tastemakers are becoming the new medium for discovery," says Ariele Fredman, a literary agent at United Talent Agency who previously launched eight #1 New York Times bestsellers as a publicist. As a result, it will be more important than ever for debut novels to land on book club rosters.

 

Bernardine Evaristo 

ChatGPT seems to have blindsided us all. In less than a year it has proved that it can make writers redundant, which is one of the reasons why the Writers Guild of AmericaAssociation of writers in motion picture, broadcast, cable and new media.  http://www.wga.org recently went on strike, and why a group of novelists, including Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin, are pursuing a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company that owns the chatbot. The worry is that its monster brain is rapaciously, unscrupulously scanning the internet and suctioning up all the knowledge and writing contained therein, including copyrighted works, which it then metamorphoses into its imitations of creative writing %u2013 poems, novels, scripts, essays, you name it. Imitation that appears to be original writing.

The myth of The Writer looms large in our cultural consciousness. When most readers picture an author, they imagine an astigmatic, scholarly type who wakes at the crack of dawn in a monastic, book-filled, shockingly affordable house surrounded by nature. The Writer makes coffee and sits down at their special writing desk for their ritualized morning pages. They break for lunch-or perhaps a morning constitution-during which they have an aha! moment about a troublesome plot point. Such a lifestyle aesthetic is "something we've long wanted to believe," said Paul Bogaards, the veteran book publicist who has worked with the likes of Joan Didion, Donna Tartt, and Robert Caro. "For a very small subset of writers, this has been true. And it's getting harder and harder to do."

Blind since age seven, he has learned to read at high speeds. (I use the term "read" for audiobooks, as this is the word used by most blind people I know.) Oriano uses a screen reader, which he routinely sets to a speed of 2.5. A speed of 1 is normal audiobook speed for most of us.

When I first stood by his side while he read an email, I could not understand the fast and garbled speech. Yet, Oriano says he is on the slower end of the spectrum when it comes to screen reader speed. He said he knows blind people who, through repetition, practice, and experience can read at chipmunk-fast speeds of 3 or 4.

I was skeptical, but my friend insists anyone can train themselves to discern fast speech. He suggested our brains, with very little coaching, can do unexpected things outside of our usual understanding of "normal."

I learned he was right.

 

I have been an avid consumer of true crime for decades now. Before podcasts, I watched the Paradise Lost documentaries, Dateline NBC (a favorite, because of Keith Morrison's purple prose and swooning affect, not to mention the hardboiled charm of Josh Mankiewicz), 20/20, and Cold Case Files and Wicked Attraction, et cetera ad infinitum. As a child, my family watched Rescue 911, Unsolved Mysteries, and Cops, shows that featured people in distress and unexplained disappearances-even as I wasn't allowed to watch Beverly Hills 90210 because the teens were promiscuous and sassy.

I have often wondered-and been asked-what it is about true crime that keeps me coming back to the well again and again. I used to joke that I was gathering material, that as a writer, surely this counted as research for whatever I was working on.

Only now do I see that that isn't a joke; it's true.

 

"I go by a nickname," I would say. I remember looking up my names in baby name directories. Miriam means "rebellious." Christine denotes belief in Christ. I never could embody both at once-finally finding my rebellion, I lost my faith. I have always been a little out of phase with my names. When I married, I added another name-I liked the x-to my collection, as if it were a figurine on the shelf. There they were, my names: glass images lined up in front of me but never mine entirely, never me.

And like glass, they are fragile. A typo at the Social Security office once gave me, briefly, the surname of Benne Dixon, an almost-welcome error, redolent of blessing. I am regularly mislabeled Chrissy, Christy, Kristen, or Kirstie, in endless permutations. Friends forget my first name and, in their guessing, make me Marian or Muriel. I myself chip off pieces of my names and sign my writing and my checks with my initials. I find it hard to get attached to my many, frangible names. But then, they do not seem particularly attached to me, either.

 

The latest Nielsen Bestseller awards revealed that you've now sold 500,000 copies of Sleepyhead, 250,000 copies of Scaredy Cat, and 250,000 copies of Buried - what does that mean to you?

The idea of those three titles selling a million copies between them seems fairly ridiculous and I'm still trying to picture how far all those books would reach if they were laid end to end. From here to the bottom of the garden? The main road? Milton Keynes? In all seriousness, you never really dare to think about how many copies a book might sell (or how few) because that way madness lies, but to know those books have reached so many readers is hugely gratifying.

At the end of the day, it's readers that writers should be thinking about rather than units, and knowing those books have found their way into the hands of so many confirms at the very least that I made the right decision in giving up the day job. Not that I've ever had what you might call a proper day job to give up, but you get my point...