Brett Stevens's Blog: Brett Stevens - Posts Tagged "toxic"
GoodReads Faces The Culture Wars
The usual neurotics find themselves attacking GoodReads:
It makes no sense to comment on GoodReads policy here; they know what they are doing. However, we should acknowledge that this outrage is merely the culture wars coming to GoodReads.
For a long time, a small "elite" of educated east coast intellectuals have determined what gets published, and they tend to favor politically correct MFAs who write navel-gazing novels.
As it turns out, the people buying books have less interest in that than real life experience, but to write about anything real is to bring conflict, which the publishers fear.
Publishing as an industry is in deep trouble. It keeps churning out highly-praised books that no one reads, and everything it has tried lately has had a short shelf life.
Literature -- and humanity -- requires that we confront the controversial, terrifying, ugly, scary, miserable, inequal, Darwinian, and "absent gods" nature of life.
You are not going to do that without setting some fires. We should praise GoodReads for being a fire pit of this battle, not try to neuter it, IMHO.
Its members had produced 26m book reviews and 300m ratings over the past year, the site reported in October. But for some authors, it has become a toxic work environment that can sink a book before it is even published.
“It has a lot of influence because there are so many people now who are not in the New York ecosystem of publishing,” says Bethanne Patrick, a critic, author and podcaster. “Publishers and agents and authors and readers go to Goodreads to see what is everybody else looking at, what’s everyone else interested in? It has a tremendous amount of influence in the United States book world and reading world and probably more than some people wish it had.”
Goodreads allows users to review unpublished titles. Publishers frequently send advance copies to readers in exchange for online reviews that they hope will generate buzz. But in October, Goodreads acknowledged a need to protect the “authenticity” of ratings and reviews, encouraging users to report content or behaviour that breaches its guidelines.
It makes no sense to comment on GoodReads policy here; they know what they are doing. However, we should acknowledge that this outrage is merely the culture wars coming to GoodReads.
For a long time, a small "elite" of educated east coast intellectuals have determined what gets published, and they tend to favor politically correct MFAs who write navel-gazing novels.
As it turns out, the people buying books have less interest in that than real life experience, but to write about anything real is to bring conflict, which the publishers fear.
Publishing as an industry is in deep trouble. It keeps churning out highly-praised books that no one reads, and everything it has tried lately has had a short shelf life.
Literature -- and humanity -- requires that we confront the controversial, terrifying, ugly, scary, miserable, inequal, Darwinian, and "absent gods" nature of life.
You are not going to do that without setting some fires. We should praise GoodReads for being a fire pit of this battle, not try to neuter it, IMHO.
Brett Stevens
Dedicated to the writings of Brett Stevens, a nihilist hacker who explores environmental topics and the elephant in the room, avoiding civilization collapse.
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