So who defines "quality" in the digital age?

[Robin]

Jillian Bergsma writing in Independent Publisher recently produced an interesting analysis of where the digital revolution was going http://bit.ly/1pI8GLy. Reading it prompted me to add this topic: because for me there is one question that is of burning relevance, and I would be most interested in your opinions – both on the validity of the question as well as the variety of possible answers.

Like Jillian, I have a degree in English, and I also have a professional lifetime’s experience of teaching it and of running writers’ workshops. My first attempts at writing 40 years ago were published by Penguin; but in those days I was on my way to being head of a high school and far too preoccupied with the challenges of teaching inner city children in a very stressful social services area of London to think seriously about developing excellence in my own writing.

By the time I finally set out to achieve that goal - four years ago at the age of 68 - the digital revolution was in full swing and the publishing world had changed out of all recognition. Our house is still full of beautiful books, and I have always thought of myself as a bibliophile; but once I had my kindle there was no going back.

Printed books don’t make any sense to me anymore on any level: impact on the planet, price, instant availability, the portability of a whole library on my travels, manipulation of print size, daily access to free books in almost all genres (I’m highly selective, but have still downloaded 200+ free books worth reading in the last three months), tremendous highlighting and note-making facilities for review/study purposes… The list goes on.

Jillian says a recent survey showed that the majority of Americans still prefer the feel and smell and tangibility of traditionally published “books”. In the late fifteenth century there were still many people who preferred the feel and smell and solidity of a manuscript that had taken a patient monk a year to produce. The crossover from manuscripts to printed books took most of a century. I predict that in our more literate age the crossover from traditionally printed to e-published books will take perhaps half that time, and I would expect schools to play a leading part in effecting that transition.

What interests me most, however, is how ‘quality’ writing now gets noticed by more than a handful of discerning people in a marketplace barely containing the constant flow of millions of new titles every year. I wonder how many seriously good writers are now submerged under the struggling mass of authors - previously denied that status - who are all now diving into the self-publishing pool: thrashing and splashing on about their own personally prized publications, most of which are destined to sink with hardly a trace

The erstwhile gatekeepers, it seems to me, have now largely turned into parasites feeding on the backs of celebrities and using stardom to promote sales of on occasion ghost-written or professionally “edited” semi-autobiographies, while much better writers are routinely turned away because no one has heard of them. “Quality” scarcely enters into such an equation.

So who defines ‘quality’ anymore? - certainly not traditional publishers or agents, whose only concern (understandably enough) seems to be guaranteed volume of sales (hence their fastening on celebrities); and certainly not the reading public, which merely defines popularity (often a very different thing).

I’m 100% in favour of e-publishing and self-publishing; but it does raise that interesting question. Wonderful writers aren’t necessarily wonderful publicists. Shakespeare, as far as I am aware, made no attempt to publish his own plays. Thank the Lord for Hemynge and Condell: for without them we wouldn’t have had the First Folio, published eight years after his death. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems were found among his papers after his death…

Perhaps the most I can hope for is to go on writing to the best of my ability for the time I have left, and to achieve what I consider to be a kind of excellence. I can certainly hope for recognition from a handful of discerning readers and fellow writers (recorded in their reviews), and hope to leave behind something that future generations may one day find interesting and valuable. How many of us are in that boat, I wonder? I’m pretty sure ‘boat’ is the wrong word. It had better be ‘ocean liner’ (to contain the numbers).

Please be clear that this is not a complaint about the status quo! I’m merely trying to understand it, to come to terms with it, and to discover what thoughts you have on the matter.

[Mike]

You are surely right that the traditional publishing industry is no longer an effective gatekeeper or promoter, if indeed it ever was. But it is irrelevant now anyway; its role is indeed now to handle sure-fire sellers, taking no risks. It ten years' time there will be little of it left.

So where does that leave writers and readers? It looks like we'll be dependent on the crowd-sourcing of wisdom. If you think you might want to buy a book, you will look at the readers' reviews online, and learn to judge whether they are genuine (it is not always so difficult to tell). In this new world, almost no-one will sell 10,000 copies, but good writers will sell a few hundred in this way and by word of mouth. There will be few, if any, famous writers. Instead, we'll be back to a world where every (electronic) village has its storytellers!

[Robin]

That is exactly the conclusion I was coming to, and I find it very reassuring to share it. Thank you.

[Mike]

Let us hope we are right! It won't be a bad world to live in; none of us will make a living, but if we are good, we will all be read, if only by 100 people.

But for that to come about, it depends on readers getting into the habit of writing concise, helpful reviews of everything they have read.

[Robin]

A hundred sounds about right; and as a psychiatrist told me in 1982 (in relation to a different matter): "...the trick is not minding". He also told me I would find it a difficult trick to learn; but I'm getting there...

[Mike]

Ha! Yes, I think I am too.
We shouldn't mind, because if you really want to write, you're going to do it even if you're on a desert island.

[Open Books]

In my opinion "a desert island" isn't the best metaphor. After all, we are not the best judges when it comes to our own work. It's more about where to look for the good judges - and the tricky part is that for example online readers may be well-wishing and even passionate but it's hard to measure their knowledge, which would be necessary to truly evaluate their reviews/opinions. But well, I guess we have to learn to live and write in this mess :)

[Mike]

Would professional reviewers be any better? If my books are any good, and I hope they are, I'd rather be judged by 100 people than one reviewer in print - in the pre-internet era a reviewer in print could sink the book for all time, even if they were completely wrong.

Further, what in fact is good and bad? The same book can be loved or loathed by different people and they can all be right, because they are reporting on their own experience as readers.

[Robin]

Yes, we come back to that point time and time again in this very interesting discussion. Each person's 'reality' IS = by and large - a figment of their own imagination, and 'opinions' differ wildly on whether or not a book has "quality".
But I can't just leave it there. Cultures, communities, or somehow-defined groups of people DO decide what they agree indicates "quality" in a book, or a film, a play or an individual performance, and that collective judgement has to be based on a set of 'standards.'
In publishing, the people who used to define those standards by and large got it right, though they often failed to recognise quality in something that was different from the classic norms, and many great books may not have seen the light of the published day because of that. Now, however, those gatekeepers have largely been removed, the dam has burst, and we face the resultant deluge of books (at the rate of about 6,000 per day in the Kindle Store?): such a flood, and such a marketing frenzy it reminds me of those images of fishermen drawing in a vast net to reveal thousands of fish thrashing frantically around... How, in amongst all those, is one to find the very 'best'? What does that even mean anymore?
I think it has to come down to reviews. I have had wonderful reviews from some very gifted writers, and one or two not-so-wonderful ones from readers who just didn't get it (which has to be fair enough). Self-published writers in most cases have to be patient, try their best to accrue enough positive, well written reviews (to outweigh the other kind that occasionally wash up on their shoreline), and hope that in time, someone with clout in the book or film business will be impressed enough to lend them the support of their celebrity status: so that the oxygen of that publicity enables that author to become well-known enough to reach some kind of "tipping point.'
And even then,most of us will never get our bums anywhere near that BBC Breakfast Time sofa. In the meantime, however, at least we can go on writing books that we believe are of sufficient quality to merit that kind of exposure!

[[deleted user]]

I am very new to this. Anything I think now is very unlikely to be what I think in a couple of years.

Electronic publishing, internet retailing and digital printing are all new. We haven't really adjusted yet. Our frame of reference is still the printed book and the publishing industry.

I think reviewing has got to become more collective. (No, of course it hasn't got to. But I think it will.) One interesting experiment that I have come across is Only Indie on GR.

Amazon is a TNC - by definition the enemy. It is one of the biggest retailing businesses in the world. Its market dominance is a quasi-monopoly.

That degree of market dominance means that Amazon is not just on the internet. Amazon is part of the internet. The internet behaves differently from the market. Markets exploit scarcity and restrict access. The internet is abundant. It is very open.

I think we have to give up the notion of gatekeepers. Quality will have to be debated. Not dictated. That's healthy, I think?

I notice that while I prepare to self-publish nearly every piece of software I download is not just free but Open Source. That seems to be a parallel movement to the one I'm hinting at. Much more developed.

I wonder where all this is going. It's certainly interesting.