This is a follow-up to my previous post about the Publishing industry which should strive to represent the best in literature, and story telling, and that means diversification just like other industries. In that post, I mentioned a natural displacement. If a weighted system shifts to a meritocracy, those with less skill will sink, and that can cause anxiety and changes in their behavior.
Recently i watched the movie "Burden" about how the poor white community was divided from identifying with any common interests shared with the black community. In that film, that story, the black pastor recognizes objectivity in the other main character, a poor white man trying to escape the KKK. He observes that this poor white man has been fed this narrative that being white makes him special and entitled to more, but his life doesn't reflect that lie, and those are harsh terms to grip, to be indoctrinated to believe something that does not manifest itself in reality.
As I covered on social media this week, I have no decision making power in the Publishing industry. However, I have publishing experience, and I understand the business of publshing. It may sound geeky and technical for me to talk about the market to some members of the writing community, but that's who i am.
The past way revenues coming into the publishing industry were broken down, white male authors held the majority market share. Most of the books sold (and offered) were by white male authors, and white male authors also received most of the manuscript sale money from publishing houses. The market represents money spent on books by readers, and money spent by publishers to purchase those books. It's like a pie, and if you drew a section that white male authors had of that pie, it was a disproportionate piece of that round circle.
When money starts being spent on authors from other demographics, the percentage or size of that pie peice representing white male author's chunk of change that exchanges hands in this business process gets smaller.
That is all a complex context for what might cause anxiety among authors, who already have a fix on who they perceive the competition to be, and trying to judge how they fit into that competitive environment, and that is not only limited to white men. Authors write a book, and maybe they are a white woman, and they see all of a sudden a flood of other authors writing books and being more successful than themselves (whatever gender). Those authors might get a sense that perhaps the competition just became more fierce. Competition brings out a variety of different behavioral responses in people.
That is what I meant about those authors who might find themselves in light of a merit based publshing system less interesting, which equals getting less, if not no, piece of this pie. If a white middle class person, of either gender, spends years getting a creative arts degree, and trying to learn how to craft the perfect sentence, and investing a lot of time, and degrees cost money.... based on a certain set of conditions they think they need to accomplish to acheive their goal of being published, and they find perhaps it becomes more difficult, and all of that preparation isn't enough, I can only imagine the kind of anxiety it might cause.
Personally, I have never put all of my eggs in the boat of writing and publishing. Some people have made that their career goal. It has been weighted undemocratically, that the people who can afford all of that preparation usually come from a certain socio-economic group. (in plain terms, they have to have a financial situation favorable to afford expensive degrees and a starting writer's life of perhaps not making much money) Though, I acknowledge that I have had opportunities and advantages that many do not have, even though I did not put my only career goals in writing.
The way people respond to this shift in expectations may reflect their own beliefs about their abilities, or be influenced by many different perceptions or things happening in their lifes. It is the creative reality that we need support from one another, even though we are all competing, in a way, to be published. However, that balance is difficult to achieve. Some individuals might find themselves targeting the newcomers to the table (new voices), and blame them for displacement. Others might try hard to accept that it is necessary for new voices to participate, but still have some difficulties coping with a perception of increased competition - they may turn on each other, because they think the people most like them have the most similar voices, and therefore pose the most direct competition.
One thing I think we can all strive to do is welcome the change, and help each other avoid these human responses to a change in stress factors on our ecosystem. (and that topic.... is for another time)
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