Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.
--Socrates or Plato (it’s argued by philosophers), does it really matter who said it? What matters is we have had philosophers for centuries arguing that youth are completely falling apart and where will the next productive generation come from? And still…we have survived. New young men and women of stature have arisen and done mighty and miraculous things.
And now, new folks are wringing their hands over the writing industry:
Oh, gloom and doom. Bankruptcy, reorganizations, cutbacks, store closings, imprints closing.
Wringing hands, heart stopping, tears flowing. It was a dark a stormy scenario!
…Our writers now love self-publishing. The have bad grammar, contempt for editors: they show disrespect for traditional publishers and love quantity over quality; they no longer show deference to those in the industry who’ve paid their dues; they contradict editors, say things they know nothing about; gobble up potential royalties with no care for all the work done on their behalf.
It’s all been said before. It’s all been done before. Oh woe is me, it will all happen again. And in light of that, we must not turn are heads and pretend changes aren’t happening, but rather, realize that change will always take place. We will always wring our hands and worry, but the printed word and e-word will stand the test of time. Some books will be good, some will be bad, but one thing is sure: Books will continue. Stories will march on. And authors will keep telling stories, one way or the other.
"…Our writers now love self-publishing. The have bad grammar, contempt for editors: they show disrespect for traditional publishers and love quantity over quality; they no longer show deference to those in the industry who’ve paid their dues; they contradict editors, say things they know nothing about; gobble up potential royalties with no care for all the work done on their behalf."
ReplyDeleteWow. Is this your view on indie authors? It seems quite harsh, particularly since a number of the indie authors I know were multi-trad-pubbed authors who were offered less and less pay for more and more work.
I agree with your overall concept, that change is always happening and it's easy to complain that things are getting worse. But I'm hoping that these words here aren't meant in the way they're coming across.
OH, NO! Sorry if it came across like that. I was merely trying to show a correlation of the gloom and doomers. That life goes on. And Since the original post was just a negative, I played off that. hahaha, no, have plenty of friends who self pub and even did one with some clients this year. My point is just that one can pub with all of the problems that I outlined, and it's still out there. Once it's out there, there's no taking it back, and a lot of the reasons I stated are ones I hear often, "Why bother and give someone else part of my money when I earned it!" and if often followed by a not so great work. There are ALWAYS exceptions to the norm, and we are seeing a lot of those being pubbed and they're great, but I still think the bulk of the primo works are coming from established publishers. I just hate when tone isn't expressed in these exchanges just like FB, so hard to know what someone is actually feeling. Sorry, Sally!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification! Yes, tone is so hard to read in email and blog posts and such sometimes. :)
ReplyDeleteThat first one is funny!
ReplyDeleteYou are right; we must not let worry overtake us. Thanks for the reminder!