Poll: Literary Apocalypse.

[AlexWinter]

It's just a passing thought. After seeing Fifty Shades and Twilight reach the bestseller spots do you publishers will soon mimic Hollywood and only fund books that are calculatedly relatable?

Are we looking towards a future full of celebrity autobiographies and lewd romance novels with the same basic characters copied and pasted into similar scenarios? It seems likely that the industry will stop funding smarter books and stick solely with the repeated romance genre. All the future Dickens' and Hemingways being banished to some small section of the bookstore?

Do you think this could happen?

 

[Queen Michael]

Let's be honest here -- bad romance was popular way before our time. Always has been.

 

[Kahunaburger]

There were always terrible books. The classics are the ones we decided are worth keeping.

But yeah, it does make my snob side a little sad when someone on this forum asks for book recs and ppl jump in the thread with reccomendations for stuff like Eragon and Sword of Truth. That doesn't mean literature is dying though.

 

[IndomitableSam]

As a librarian... no. The current pop culture genres are dystopian and supernatural. These lend very well to the teen audiences, which we see a great deal of these days. It's crap, but kids are reading so I don't complain. However, the publishing world has picked up on the fact that parents (mostly women) are reading these as well so they've shifted their publishing focus to similar adult-themed books. That way the transition from teen to adult novels is pretty seamless for readers.

There will be another genre shift, hopefully in the next few years. Right now it's a pretty shitty collection, but who knows? Maybe Sci-Fi is next? We've had our Political Intruige and Mystery binge recentley, so it could be something else. Historical fiction is poking its head in (with a twist of the supernatural), but it's a possibility too.

So, no apocalypse, just the shifting interestes and focus of the publishing world. They're out to make money, not introduce the world to masterpeices.

 

[Nerexor]

As I've pointed out elsewhere, the fact that a bit of poorly written, geared to girls erotica selling well is nothing new. The romance novel arm of the publishing industry has been among the most successful, if not the most successful for years and years now. It's regarded by authors as the surefire way to make money off a book, because if it gets published by companies like Harlequin and... I don't know whatever other companies publish trashy romance novels, they are pretty much guaranteed to sell reasonably well.

Now yes, this one has a huge spike in popularity for reasons unfathomable to me. After a friend of mine kept texting me some of the more hilariously awful sections of the book (and there were a lot of them) I picked it up and tried to read it just for giggles. I wasn't even able to make it to the first "sexy" scene because of the stilted writing and atrocious characters, but then again I hold my books to fairly high standards and I was reading it with the view that this was going to be awful, which means you notice all those flaws that you might otherwise ignore in order to read a story.

As a librarian... no. The current pop culture genres are dystopian and supernatural. These lend very well to the teen audiences, which we see a great deal of these days. It's crap, but kids are reading so I don't complain. However, the publishing world has picked up on the fact that parents (mostly women) are reading these as well so they've shifted their publishing focus to similar adult-themed books. That way the transition from teen to adult novels is pretty seamless for readers.

SNIP

They're out to make money, not introduce the world to masterpeices.

Both of these points are very true. The supernatural focus has been creeping up for ages now, and the publishers are very aware of it. Fantasy novels have actually been geared towards women for quite a while now, it's just been getting way more noticeable with the emergence of the "Paranormal Romance" subgenre. Which I loathe, because it encroached on my favorite genre of urban fantasy and now there are maybe 3 series in that entire subgenre that don't stick you with female protagonists who go all moon-eyed over the latest muscly vampire or werewolf or other supernatural being... but that's a side-issue.

And yes, publishers are businesses and like any business, they pay attention to demographics and sales trends. They saw Twilight getting sold to certain groups of women, and they saw trashy romance novels getting sold to some of those same groups. Then they saw 50 shades of grey and I assume they thought "BY THEIR POWERS COMBINED, WE CAN MAKE A BOATLOAD OF CASH!"

And at the end of the day, 50 shades has spawned some truly hilarious youtube videos, so at least it's contributing to our culture in a meaningful way for the comedy community.

EDIT: Apparently embedding this video is disabled, so here's the direct link to youtube instead. It's a Saturday Night Live skit regarding 50 shades and his hilarious (but slightly NSFW)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJfwv6LNhc

 

[Rainmaker77]

Actually, with the success of Harry Potter getting children to read, in a few decades we may just have a massive influx of authors inspired to write great books.

At the very least, the increased literacy of this Harry Potter generation (I know they aren't difficult books, but they are the perfect gateway for children to start reading) they may demand better quality works when they grow up.

 

[Fappy]

There have always been terrible books. So, no.

 

[Grimh]

Since the dawn of creative thought, shitty stuff have been made.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

A combination of yes and already here.

For example an e-book publisher is publishing new 'enhanced' versions of storys like Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey etc featuring explicit sex, bondage and homosexuality.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we won't still have non-erotic books in the stands, just that the frequency of them is definitely on the increase. Remember that even five years ago the thought of a specific section for Twilight Imitators in a book store would have been absurd, but nowadays 'Dark Fantasy' or 'Dark Romance' sections are right there alongside Sci-Fi/Fantasy. These are sections dedicated to nothing except bad Twilight knockoffs, so obviously this is a trend.

 

[Drake666]

A combination of yes and already here.

For example an e-book publisher is publishing new 'enhanced' versions of storys like Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey etc featuring explicit sex, bondage and homosexuality.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we won't still have non-erotic books in the stands, just that the frequency of them is definitely on the increase. Remember that even five years ago the thought of a specific section for Twilight Imitators in a book store would have been absurd, but nowadays 'Dark Fantasy' or 'Dark Romance' sections are right there alongside Sci-Fi/Fantasy. These are sections dedicated to nothing except bad Twilight knockoffs, so obviously this is a trend.

Sex in Sherlock Holmes, really ? Who would want that ? (Ok, some Yaoi fan would perhaps appreciate a manga or a fan-fiction with Holmes and Watson shagging, but that's it...)

 

[Veylon]

Mass popularity of cheesy books has always been the case, all the way back to the printing press. In Cervantes' time it was Knight books. In the late 1800's it was Invasion novels. Mark Twain took time to mock Deerslayer and other poorly-researched books that glorified colonial times. In the colonial times themselves, it was the recently-vanished pirates that held readers' attention.

Every era has it's genre; ours is that of supernaturalist "romance".

 

[Metaphysic]

The popularity of shitty fantasy romance novels among teenage girls isn't surprising. It annoys my inner literature-snob that such bland books as Twilight and Eragon (and even Harry Potter, especially the first four) are published to such huge success, but not terribly surprising, and at least in the case of the Eragon author, I have to applaud his attempt even if I find it to be utterly banal. It was written by a seventeen-year-old who probably grew up on crappy fantasy.

I do dislike that even in the fantasy/sci-fi/literature sections now, it seems like half the books or more are 'dark fantasy romance' novels... it's getting increasingly hard to find books I like because I have to sift through more crap.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Even forgetting what everyone else has always pointed out, that there have always been terrible books, I just don't think that's going to happen. A big part of the reason for which movies are skewed so heavily towards the overly relatable is that they cost so much to produce that they can recoup their costs only if they sell a lot. Books on the other hand do not cost near as much to produce, and as such it's much easier to publish something of genuine intelligence, because it doesn't have to sell as well to make a profit.

 

[the Dept of Science]

Considering that the best-sellers list ALSO includes the 7 part high-fantasy epic, A Song of Fire and Ice, I'm inclined to believe that good literacy is still going strong.

So no.

 

[Animyr]

There were always terrible books.

Never this many though. Or this many books in general.

The circle of literate people nowadays (I use "literate" in the loosest sense, but the distinction is still true) dwarfs the entire amount of literate people from centuries past combined. And a great number of those people fancy themselves authors, at least in a passing sense. Likewise, technology has made it relatively easy to get published when compared to, say, 1700. Once a few hundred books would be published and thus more likely to be noticed by the literate community (which was small, but whose tastes now define the same community when it's large, ie Jane Austen is the bomb etc). In the same time period nowadays tens of thousands (maybe hundreds) of books will be, and they will be read by a collective audience of a few billion. Plus fanfiction, which has almost no barriers.

So anyways there has never been this much quantity of literary output in human history (or earth history, I don't even want to touch theoretical alien tween romance), and it will probably increase with population and literacy. This of course means there are inevitably more bad books, and these books are more likely to be published and more likely to receive increasingly large amounts of attention compared to their more esteemed peers.

And yes, crime and political thrillers are frequent but there are a f*ckton of romance novels. Load and load and loads of mainstream romance, plus erotika stuff, plus the tween novels that Twilight made so infamous. So many that the romance genre is considered a reliable barometer for cultural trends (was vampires, now according to TIME it's soldiers and veterans) The most profilic modern romance writers have written hundreds of books, which rivals if not eclipses the old dime novel writers. Interestingly these writers hail increasingly from the upper echelons of education, the ivy leagues. Where once the prospect of a professional, serious writer writing three genre books a year would have been highly implausible, well....

My point that I'm buzzing in circles around is that alot of people are writing alot of hokey stuff and will be doing more in the future. This is probably unavoidable. Most people can't write well but that won't deter them from throwing their hat into the ring, ie fifty shades.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Sex in Sherlock Holmes, really ? Who would want that ? (Ok, some Yaoi fan would perhaps appreciate a manga or a fan-fiction with Holmes and Watson shagging, but that's it...)

They were writing Sherlock fanfic back when it was first published. No joke.

If you write it, they will... er...

 

[Nerexor]

Not an apocalypse, more like a crash. It will get overloaded with tween/cougar porn and fantasy ripp-offs, collapse and a lot of publishers will end-up folding, then the industry will slowly rebuild itself.

On kindle.

I hope to hell they don't on Kindle. It's the worst e-book platform. It uses a proprietary format which means you are required to use their device to use their store, while most other platforms just let you download a secured epub file to any reader you want. Also, if Amazon loses the rights to a work they yank it from your device. Ironically this happened a few years back with the novel "1984"[footnote]Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html[/footnote] when they removed the copies from users devices when there was a licensing issue. Now, to be fair, they did refund the customers but still... I would prefer a platform where the company can't go in and say "You no longer have this book because of a problem on our end." Amazon's e-book store is also notorious for keeping out books they feel aren't appropriate. While I may not like crap like 50 shades, people still have a right to read it if they really want to, same applies to anything except a few very narrow legal exceptions (i.e. hate speech, child pornography)

Sorry to go off topic there, but that's a big issue for me.

 

[FalloutJack]

No no no... Just because there's been some shitty books... Get out. Just...get out.

 

[the Dept of Science]

There

There were always terrible books.

Never this many though. Or this many books in general.

The circle of literate people nowadays (I use "literate" in the loosest sense, but the distinction is still true) dwarfs the entire amount of literate people from centuries past combined. And a great number of those people fancy themselves authors, at least in a passing sense. Likewise, technology has made it relatively easy to get published when compared to, say, 1700. Once a few hundred books would be published and thus more likely to be noticed by the literate community (which was small, but whose tastes now define the same community when it's large, ie Jane Austen is the bomb etc). In the same time period nowadays tens of thousands (maybe hundreds) of books will be, and they will be read by a collective audience of a few billion. Plus fanfiction, which has almost no barriers.

So anyways there has never been this much quantity of literary output in human history (or earth history, I don't even want to touch theoretical alien tween romance), and it will probably increase with population and literacy. This of course means there are inevitably more bad books, and these books are more likely to be published and more likely to receive increasingly large amounts of attention compared to their more esteemed peers.

And yes, crime and political thrillers are frequent but there are a f*ckton of romance novels. Load and load and loads of mainstream romance, plus erotika stuff, plus the tween novels that Twilight made so infamous. So many that the romance genre is considered a reliable barometer for cultural trends (was vampires, now according to TIME it's soldiers and veterans) The most profilic modern romance writers have written hundreds of books, which rivals if not eclipses the old dime novel writers. Interestingly these writers hail increasingly from the upper echelons of education, the ivy leagues. Where once the prospect of a professional, serious writer writing three genre books a year would have been highly implausible, well....

My point that I'm buzzing in circles around is that alot of people are writing alot of hokey stuff and will be doing more in the future. This is probably unavoidable. Most people can't write well but that won't deter them from throwing their hat into the ring, ie fifty shades.

What I find interesting about this phenomenon though is that you would think that this greater literary output would result in less unity, but it appears that the opposite is true.
The internet has made writing more accessible than it has ever been. Anyone can write something, put it on the internet and then have anyone read it. You would think that would mean that niche genres would turn into little online communities. Self contained little bubbles where the authors can easily find their own small audience and visa versa.
However, Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest selling paperback of all time. There may be more readers and writers but ever before, but 90% of people seem to be gobbling up whatever has been put out by an amazingly small number of writers. James, Mayer, Larsson...

The doomsayers have to remember there is a positive side to this:
A Game of Thrones is selling almost as many copies as those other books.

ps. there's been a similar thing happening in music. This documentary may be quite enlightening:
http://vimeo.com/34608191

 

[Total LOLige]

Everything will be just fine. There's bound to be some shitty material every couple of years at least. Something truly awesome will pop up, I'd say the good books out weigh the bad.