Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbadburninbush
But actually, upon more careful examination, this thread brings up a subtle point which is that today there is no clear way to differentiate between the artists we should pay attention to and the more common fare. Companies like Amazon have sought to democratize literature and so promote the idea that everyone can be an author and stand side by side with greats, and the only differentiator is sales. Same is true for other arts too.
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If the "greats" were truly great, then they would not be losing as badly to the self-published authors as you seem to be implying.
The good authors will sell books, the bad authors won't, and whether or not they are trad-published is not nearly as important a criterion as whether or not they know how to write. Which incidentally, not all trad-published authors do.
Amazon offers
choices, more so than...
the trad publishers, of whom it could truly be argued that they try to tell us which "artists we should pay attention to".
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbadburninbush
Well that's just it. Amazon says we should pay attention to Stephenie Meyer. A lot of attention! Even though amongst those who value the written word, it is well known that she can hardly write. Her books being full of mistakes and common prose. I believe that great voices shine through based on their intrinsic qualities, however in this time it seems that market interests can all but drown it out.
So we're talking about authors. And that used to imply some quality, but sadly now not really, hence the need to distinguish. I guess that used to be called 'taste'.
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Amazon says to pay attention to Meyer because people are already paying attention to her. Amazon is interested in only one thing, and that is sales. And funnily enough, the same applies to the trad publishers. If people truly thought she wasn't worth reading, her books wouldn't sell and she wouldn't get such a high rating on Amazon, now would she?
This is besides the fact that she can write very well, you and a lot of other people (me too, in fact) simply protest against the vapid nature of what she writes.
But apparently some people like that kind of stuff, enough to pay money for it.
In any event, you just sound stupid when you insult the
quality of her work when you really (should) mean the
content of her work.
And that still doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to be listed.
Also, she is trad-published, and the trad publishers are the ones who first pushed her work. Thus -- proof that trad publishers care as little for the "noble art" of literature as Amazon does.