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latepaul · 03-05-2014, 01:08 PM

Pangolin,

You make some excellent points. One of the problems with the article is that because of its choice of examples and tone it undermines what could be an interesting argument - the consequences of the change in the book market.

However what it comes down to for me is: if you're not going to let the market decide which writers "deserve" to make money, then how are you going to do it?

So let's say you set up a body - let's call it the Committee for Supporting the Literary Arts (CSLA) - which has a fund from which it can provide grants to authors it considers are making good art but not making money by simply selling books. The problem is whose definition of "good art" are we going to go with. Even if we argue that there's an objective standard, in effect the judgement looks subjective to everyone that doesn't share that standard. In other words a lot of people don't agree with CSLA's decisions (and if they did CSLA wouldn't be needed).

Also where does CSLA get its money? Either it's a charitable organisation, in which case it's competing for donations with a lot of other causes and possibly other similar organisations with a slightly different definition of "good art" that some donors may prefer - or it's government funded, meaning tax-payers.

So ISTM you end up with either a less efficient, more convoluted version of a market-driven process or you have to have people prepared to pay for something they personally don't think is good.

03-05-2014, 01:08 PM	#34
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,270 Karma: 10468300 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	Pangolin, You make some excellent points. One of the problems with the article is that because of its choice of examples and tone it undermines what could be an interesting argument - the consequences of the change in the book market. However what it comes down to for me is: if you're not going to let the market decide which writers "deserve" to make money, then how are you going to do it? So let's say you set up a body - let's call it the Committee for Supporting the Literary Arts (CSLA) - which has a fund from which it can provide grants to authors it considers are making good art but not making money by simply selling books. The problem is whose definition of "good art" are we going to go with. Even if we argue that there's an objective standard, in effect the judgement looks subjective to everyone that doesn't share that standard. In other words a lot of people don't agree with CSLA's decisions (and if they did CSLA wouldn't be needed). Also where does CSLA get its money? Either it's a charitable organisation, in which case it's competing for donations with a lot of other causes and possibly other similar organisations with a slightly different definition of "good art" that some donors may prefer - or it's government funded, meaning tax-payers. So ISTM you end up with either a less efficient, more convoluted version of a market-driven process or you have to have people prepared to pay for something they personally don't think is good.