Does anyone know how to play this game?
A few years ago (you can look up the history if you like), someone got the idea to let pretty much anyone who felt like it upload a story and hit a “publish” button to offer their work for sale. The tumult has not died down yet. Literature was being cheapened and degraded, the market was being flooded with all manner of trash, not to say filth; the market was being saturated, unfettered competition would strangle new and worthy voices, readers would not be able to find anything (often meaning “find my book”), and so on.
This hue and cry has been raised before, of course, back when paperbacks were introduced. And I’m pretty sure that when a fellow named Gutenberg had this crazy idea about a new invention that would vastly increase the number of books available, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I far as I can tell, whenever there is a change that increases range of what is available for “the masses” to read, some people get bent out of shape. A few of these people think it is just not right for people to read: they start “getting ideas and thinking…” That is probably an exaggeration in most cases, but the idea that people’s reading should be restricted for their own good is not. This idea is foundational to the gatekeepers of publishing, who traditionally decided what the reading public was allowed to buy and what they weren’t. It is also popular among some published authors who fear the “competition” of new authors who didn’t have to jump through all the hoops they did to join their “exclusive” club. Basically, anyone who had a share of the pie and believed that this is a zero-sum game (which is a depressing large number of people) did not see much reason to welcome this innovation. To these poor benighted souls, defending their share of the pie became the order of the day. The notion that the pie itself is growing and that benefits everyone is foreign to them.
My point in devoting a paragraph to this is not just to decry (or if you prefer, rant) about people standing in the way of beneficial innovations yelling “Stop!” for reasons selfish and/or irrational, but to give some context for the current state of affairs. Innovation does create turmoil, and turmoil creates opportunity and not all those opportunities are positive. That’s why I titled this: “Does anyone know how to play this game?”.
The short answer is: No. Strictly speaking, no one can understand a chaotic system because understanding is impossible, even in theory.* But there is no shortage of people who will tell you they do. When the applecart is upset and the apples go rolling off in all directions, there will always be a bunch of clever fellows claiming they will tell you how to gather more apples than other people, if you pay them some of the apples you already have. These people are called “marketers”. Some of them maybe good and worthwhile individuals, but history teaches us that what marketers primarily excel at selling is themselves. When things fall into chaos, those who are adept at marketing tend to fall back on selling themselves because that is the one thing they can reliably sell in a chaotic environment.
This works for a deceptively simple reason: in a chaotic environment, anything can be shown to “work.” True causality is difficult to establish in the best of times, and chaos makes it next to impossible. Thus, just about any theory of marketing can be supported. And if it fails for you, well . . . you did it wrong.
This is perfect for those selling “guaranteed” schemes to sell our books. It is not so great for us.
Bottom line: With some diligence and proper attention to detail, most anyone can learn as much about playing this new game as anyone else. I understand if some do not find that agreeable. That’s okay. All of the foregoing (and much what will follow in future posts) can be boiled down to one simple principle: it’s better to trust in luck than in people who claim they can beat it.
* However, that does not mean all is lost. This is a theme I will develop at a later time.
