Publishing and marketing is sure a thing right now
Hey, folks,
So I was mentioning in my last missive how anxieties and tensions are running high in the writer world, and how a seismic shift seems to be underway in publishing, and in general how almost everybody I know is on tenterhooks and struggling to figure out what the path forward is.
People are, not to put too fine a point on it, thrashing. And I think we see some of that thrashing in editorial as well as writer circles.
The slow-roll demise of Xitter is only one of the things making people feel like they’re in crisis, but it’s a big one and I don’t blame anybody who feels like they have lost their megaphone. On the other hand, I’m also sort of… relieved at the drop in marketing pressure to be Extremely Online that enxittefication has provided.
Honestly, getting on the internet was feeling a lot like going to the dentist for a while there—a grim thing you do because you are supposed to do it—and I kind of welcome a return to blogs and newsletters. Though the newsletter Renaissance definitely comes with some drawbacks of its own. I wonder if we aren’t all just spamming inboxes to the point where people are just going to ignore most of what shows up, especially when everybody’s already drowning in marketing emails from everything you ever accidentally clicked on on Instagram.
There are, of course, Slacks and Discords… but those, at least for me, don’t come with the pressure to be extremely, performatively out there having opinions and takes that Xitter, being more of a broadcast medium and less of a conversation, seemed to foster. There’s still a certain amount of shouting over one another in your average Discord (though not mine, I am pleased to say, but I pay a professional moderator for a reason—paid subscribers get access, by the way), but it’s not anything like the waves of Internets looking for a place to fall you get on public social media.
Funny how in the thirty-four years that I have been regularly online, we have come technological full circle from message boards back to message boards.
Message boards mean you have to build real connections with people instead of just shouting your wares to the world, and I’m not sure that’s honestly a bad thing. Even if it is playing hob with discoverability and the ability to reach new audiences.
And freaking everybody in publishing right the fuck out, into the bargain.
Anyway, if you love a book, tell a friend. That’s, I think, the real way forward. Heck, tell two friends. Then you double your chances of one agreeing with you!
Best,
Bear