Quote:
Originally Posted by murg
Before Amazon, Science Fiction was written, was submitted to publishers and for the most part, middle-aged white guys pondered on these and bought what they thought they could sell to the SF audience (primary white straight males). What they could sell in those four bays of shelves that B&N or Borders allocated to SF. So, pretty much established authors and relatively benign newcomers were getting contracts, and frankly boring stuff was happening.
Then along came Amazon, and two things happened. Firstly, any published book could be bought, anywhere. So, a small press that was willing to take a risk on a non-benign author found that they could actually sell their product globally, far beyond the reach of the bookstores that would carry their offerings. And without the dreaded returns to deal with! Oh, joy!
Secondly, anyone could publish anything. Well, pretty much anything.
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I kinda agree that thanks to internet (and companies that use it intelligently), the publishers' function (filtering authors so readers don't have to) is more and more decentralized and therefore there's no more "real" gatekeeper so to speak: anyone can write and self-publish their turd, which has its upsides and downsides (one downside is that it's really hard to have visibility amidst the flood, and I'm not sure the money follow the same trend than the number of books published).
You don't have to rely solely on the brand of a publisher, you can rely on a youtuber critic, or goodread reviews, or you can even buy completely randomly etc...
All in all, I think it's a good thing.
But I really don't see "white straight male" banging up together to fight back in the name of racism and homophobia against diversity of books. That's conspirationist / boogeyman.
To begin with, it is in our nature to be slightly "racist". Racist bias is a thing, even amongst (probably particulary amongst, in the same vein some unavowed homosexual politicians shout the harshest against gays) people who shout hard against racism.
But for most people, it is a bias whose influence is really tiny compared to other types of bias we can have, like religion, ideology, and especially class (your socio economic status).
I don't think a typical wealthy publisher who happens to be "white straight male", even a racist one, would fight very hard against taking the money of non-white people more efficiently. I'm not seeing white upperclassmen business owner not delocalizing their business to third world and giving the finger to their lowerclass fellow whities.
Which is why I don't care much if people don't read books because there are white straight males in it. I don't want to lose my time arguing morally, or rationally, because I don't even know the preponderance of their visceral feelings. I myself have my own biases, and I think that diversity means that the market should be left free to satisfy the kinks of everyone.
I am a straight male, I like boobies in movies, and I don't like seeing dicks. My tastes are inherently sexists, there's no need to rationalize it, or make it a moral battleground.
There is no need to fight against "white straight male" book out of revenge ("to balance what happened in the past"), no need to fight for, no need to have diversity in every books. Should we bash asian sci-fi books because they have only asian protagonists? Asian sci-fi movies?
You can see many pictures of a black Jesus in Africa.
When you follow the tastes of a friend, or a personality, you check if their tastes match yours, and if they do you can better trust their future recommendations, for future pleasure. When you follow popularity indicator (like sale number), you can compare your own taste versus popular tastes, and you see if they match. Same goes with specific aggregate, which we name "cliques".
What's important is the usefulness and reliability of your trust in those indicators (your friend's opinion, a popular poll, a clique opinion). For a clique to be useful, it has to be straightforward. A clique that advertises itself as all inclusive but isn't is not straightforward.