16 Comments

All I can say is ughhhhhhhh to all this. I'm finding the academic series of articles you mention fascinating but absolutely agree that sales data being public to all would be...well. Yeah. Everything you said. It's so frustrating to see the way we've moved from the term artists to the term creators with the implication being that creators create *content* and *entertainment* but NOT art because art is for snobs. Or something.

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great commentary and thanks for the links to those articles up top. I agree making Book Scan data public is dangerous, BUT, why couldn't a registered author at least understand sales statistics in their subcategory?

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What I don’t understand is how alllll these literary agents are making a living. I’m convinced many so-called literary agents are charlatans.

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100% agree with your sentiments. The poetry collection I’m serialising is title F*cK Everything, but most of all F*ck the algorithm. Focus on what serves us.

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Oct 22, 2022Liked by Lincoln Michel

The diversity of New Yorker fiction article was interesting but told me nothing I didn't already know by the "eye test." I actually don't have a problem with a magazine or editor having a specific vision for what they publish. The problem with The New Yorker is their outsized "importance"--and the fact that they actually pay $$ for fiction, while magazines with more diverse or experimental visions have no $$$ and much less influence.

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“Cultural products” perfectly describes the jarring algorithmic disconnect in how we collectively view art and how it is created and shared in the world.

Tell your friends, indeed. Over coffee perhaps--skip the retweet.

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Oct 22, 2022Liked by Lincoln Michel

The what-if scenario of Bookscan numbers going public and the ensuing Twitter fallout would make a great short story...

I think you’re right overall, and I will add: assuming that data will lead to better art is giving the audience a much, much larger degree of credit than they deserve. And it’s not that I think that mass appeal is always antithetical to art. However, if all of that sales data were to be made public, I think the business takeaway would be “how do we sell to as many people as possible?” Not “how do we communicate to this one audience very very well?” The former leads to an overabundance of corporate IP that writes toward their worst audience. The latter is the basis of the modern indie patron model, and still allows for a degree of creative freedom and experimentation.

Artists are always at the mercy of the audience, but real art communicates a singular vision; a narrowness of taste, experience and tradition. It’s not supposed to be all things to all people.

And I *do* think the Big 5/4/however many we’re counting now, plus the mainstream review outlets, are partially to blame for the state of this discourse. You cannot bankroll your entire business on a handful of bestsellers and then act surprised when the audience confuses popularity for quality. Would we even need to have this discussion if monopolies didn’t hold so much power?

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I wonder if the problem of “weaponizing sales data” is more of Twitter problem, than a data problem?

Also, in the event that suddenly everyone is aware of how poorly books sell, might we finally be able to move on from books and look at other markets? I personally think it’s to authors’ detriment that publishing has more prestige than it does an actual market, it means authors spend years working on something that won’t find readers.

For example, my first book sold 29 copies on Amazon, but garnered 6,000 newsletter subscribers on Substack. By all means, make that data public! Not so that people can look at me and say “oh she only sold 29 books, she’s a nobody.” But so they can say, “books are dead, but wow there might be a market for my writing on Substack!

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White people white peopling (& that includes the comments). Of course someone whose career is dependent on publishing companies thinks it's bad for access to information to be determined by someone other than our benevolent overlords of culture...

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Thank you for such thoughtful content! I was wondering if you had any "best/recommended practices" for readers who want to seek out what isn't being read?

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