The decline of books.

Recently, I have noticed something rather worrisome about what is on the bookshelves of modern bookshops. It is not what you might think. I am not concerned about violence, or explicitness...for they are in no more generous supply than they ever used to be – no, what concerns me is just what kind of books are available. If you look at the teen section of a bookshop, or, indeed, the science fiction/fantasy section of many bookshops, you might be as disturbed as I was to note that almost every book seems to be about vampires or werewolves, or other supernatural phenomenon. 

It is really very boring.

In fact, that is just what Ainan said recently, looking at the selection of books available, in the bookshop we were in: “How boring.” Now, this is from a young boy, who has read much less than me – yet even he is tired of the repetitiousness of the offerings available.

This is a very real problem – one of a lack of imagination, and creativity in publishing. It seems that just because Harry Potter and The Twilight Series have done so well, that publishers want to copy these two series, hoping for similar success – so they “greenlight” anything about the supernatural, particularly vampires and werewolves – and refuse to publish anything about anything new, for that might be seen as “untried” and “risky”. The result is bookshelves heaving with vampires and werewolves – and nothing else. It is unutterably dull. I, for one, couldn’t find a single book on those shelves that I would want to buy and read. So, I didn’t. Neither  did my son. We left empty handed – because there really was no choice, every book was basically telling the same story – a love story around vampires and werewolves – in different words. How crass.

Modern publishing is at risk of killing itself off, ironically, through the avoidance of risk. By not trying to bring new works to the market, with novel ideas, styles or perspectives, but repeatedly pushing the same limited kinds of works, they are creating a market without any real choice. If there is no choice, eventually there will be no readers.

Now, I can’t be sure that this is just a publisher's problem. Perhaps the bookshops are being selective in what they order and are targeting werewolves and vampires and the like...yet somehow I doubt it. You see, when I was a teenager there were no stories about werewolves and vampires – apart from Bram Stoker and the shelves seemed to have much greater variety. Modern publishing has become a business in which everyone is trying to do and sell the same product. They are “playing safe” to the point of self-destruction.

I don’t really buy books anymore, from my local bookshops. Well, I do...but only very rarely. Certainly, the fiction shelves are not as interesting as they were when I was a child. Looking at them, you would swear there was only one story and one writer in the whole world – because every book is much the same. There is no longer any reason to read anymore, because there is no longer anything new to read, being presented to us. I do hope this is just a publishing problem and not because every writer on Earth thinks it clever to write about vampires and werewolves. In fact, the problem has become so obvious that it really is dishonest to call the sections in the bookshops “Teen” or “Science Fiction and Fantasy”...they should just be called “Vampires and Werewolves” – because that is basically all that is on offer.

It is no surprise to me that bookshops are closing down. Readers no longer have interesting books to buy. They just have the same old same old. So why should they buy anything in these moribund bookshops? As long as publishers compete to be the same as each other, producing the same products, by different authors (who might as well have the same name), then readers will no longer have anything worthwhile to read, or any reason to frequent a bookshop.

Publishing will only thrive if there is true diversity. Once publishers start behaving in a herd like manner, that is the end of the road for them. Unfortunately, they became a herd long ago...so I don’t see much future for them, unless they change soon.

Let us have bookshelves teeming with variety. Let vampires and werewolves become a rarity again – because, frankly, I am beyond bored with them. If you are writing a vampire and werewolf book, please stop writing now. The world has more than enough of them. In fact, why don’t the world’s publishers start UNpublishing vampire and werewolf books? That would be progress, because then they would have to publish something else.

Future eras will laugh at the “culture” we produced over the last decade or so. They will laugh at the advent of idiocy so revealed. In fact, we might one day be known as the time of vampires and werewolves. It might be one of the most obvious facts about our culture in this time. How stupid is that?

Everyone reading this can do something to encourage more variety in the books stocked on bookstore shelves – simply stop buying vampire and werewolf stories. Eventually publishers will get the message and start publishing something else....hopefully lots of different things. As for me, I have only bought myself two fiction books in the last year. The first turned out to be rather unreadable, and ineptly written. The second I have yet to try.  I will comment more later.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

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If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Does quality of writing matter, anymore?

There was a time, when the world appreciated quality in writing. I am not sure that that is so, anymore. In the modern world, the worse the writing, the larger the audience. To become rich as a writer, it is almost a truism, that you should be really quite bad at writing.

Let us look at the world's richest writers. Dan Brown, for instance...a most formulaic writer, given to adopting ideas wholesale from prior works and calling them his own. JK Rowling...hmm...a most formulaic writer, given to adopting ideas wholesale from prior works and calling them her own. You get the idea. There really isn't much need to continue. Today, the writers who sell best are not, necessarily, the writers who write best.

Think of a really interesting writer, one with a style of their own, ideas of their own, a unique spirit, unlike any other. Ask the question, then: how do they make their living? I look at the ingenious tale teller, Jorge Luis Borges - and what do I see, but that he was a librarian for most of his life. Thus, his short stories, jewels of the intellect, though they are, could not have been remunerative enough to support him, stably. I, look, too, at the recent career of Martin Amis (whose work I have never read, but of whom many others speak kindly enough) and see a Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester University. Again, it seems to me that if his books were selling well enough and consistently enough, he would not have resorted to securing an academic position (unless he has a particular wish to train another generation of writers, of course). I could go on, but there are endless examples of sophisticated writers, who do not seem to be able, or to have been able, to earn a decent living from their works.

At the other end of the scale, however, there are quite a few writers, of no originality, little talent, but much marketing prowesss, who become almost miraculously wealthy. Stephenie Meyer, for instance, is not a particularly good writer, in the sense of able to use words in apt and novel ways, embodying fresh ideas. There is nothing fresh about undead Vampires. Yet, she is a very wealthy woman.

It seems that what the people of the world, that is the masses, want, is more of the same, but slightly different, please. They don't want to have to think about something new. They don't want to have to pause to understand. They don't want to have to read carefully because each sentence is saying something that has never been said before. No. They want to be lulled by the familiar, the "tried and tested", the cliche.

So, in the modern world, getting rich as a writer, involves not being a writer. To become rich from the written word, one must throw out freshness, originality, style and substance and seek out imitation, repetition and convention. At least, that seems to be the tale told by the lives of those who have become rich from writing. Generally speaking, they invented nothing and retold everything, with just enough vestige of the individual to be able to give the work a new title and copyright it as their own.

However, a writer with thoughts all of their own and a vision that is alike no other, may find it hard to find much of an audience. The problem, quite simply, is that relatively few people, these days, seem to want to think, in any way that might challenge them. Yet, a writer who writes works that are original in any way - be they in style, content or theme - cannot do but challenge his or her readers - and so they shall find fewer such readers. We live, basically, in intellectually lazy times. People aspire to be amused, but they do not aspire to be amusing. They seek to be passive recipients of entertainment, but are not, in themselves, entertaining. They wish to imbibe the thoughts of another, without provoking any thoughts of their own.

In short, the modern world seems an unpromising one, for any intellectual, of any kind, to thrive. The more original their work - of whatever kind, not just of writing - and the more sophisticated it is, the less likely it is to be able to earn them a good living. At least, this seems to be the pattern, when one looks at who gets rich from "creating" and who can never give up their day jobs.

The same pattern is clear, too, in the world of blogging. My blog, for instance, has its regular readers. I have readers from all over the world. Yet, one thing cannot be denied: I have far fewer readers, than far less accomplished writers. In Singapore, for instance, there is a young lady called Xiaxue, who has around 50,000 readers per day for her blog (which seems an awful lot, considering that, at the time of this claim, Singapore only had 4.5 million people...with perhaps only 500,000 of them in her target age group, for readership...suggesting that perhaps one in ten possible readers, WERE readers). Now, what is striking about this is how little her blog offers in the way of any intellectual substance. It consists of gossip, tales of boyfriends, scantily clad photos, accounts of shopping trips, fashion and even, her own encounters with plastic surgery. It is unadulterated pap. Yet, it sells. It is the blogging world equivalent of the best selling authors I have mentioned above. I very much doubt whether there are many bloggers writing in an intellectual or thoughtful manner, who manage to secure 10% of their entire target market, as readers. Let me correct that: "many" should read "ANY".

Although, the more sophisticated a writer, the smaller will be the audience, in one's own time, there is a hidden consolation in this situation, I think, for the better writers: their footprint, in time, is likely to be greater than one might expect. By this, I mean, that their long-term readership, in the decades, centuries and even millenia ahead, will be far, far greater, than that of their more debased and populist rivals.

No-one reads the Ancient Greek equivalent of Stephanie Meyer, these days...but the leading thinkers of their day, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Aristophanes, for instance...are still sought out, by some, and dwelt upon. So, too, will it be with our own more sophisticated thinkers, writers and creators: their works will linger on, long past the "never more to be read by date", of their presently more successful rivals. People like JK Rowling succeed in their own lifetimes...but I don't believe their reputations shall endure on the timescale of centuries and beyond. Their works propel them to riches and fame, during their lifetimes, but it is a kind of illusion, that gives them a present import, far greater than the one posterity shall accord them.

So, if you write and write well, or indeed, create in any medium at all, but your work is a little too sophisticated for the broadest audience - don't worry, for in the long term, your success may outshine that of any of your contemporaries, and your work might still be read, or enjoyed, a thousand years from today.

A final question for all readers, one which invites you to speak of your values and perspectives on what is important, in creative work: would you rather have great worldly success in your own lifetimes, for your creative work, but be forgotten a few decades after your passing - or would you rather modest worldly success in your own lifetime, but have your works, read and enjoyed thousands of years from today?

Answers, please, below. Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)