A piece of common book industry wisdom frequently cited by self-publishing proponents such as myself has it that there’s an anonymous cadre of indie authors quietly making millions on Amazon. This popular bit of publishing lore happens to be true.
It also presents indie authors–and the emerging New Scheme of Things–with a problem.
In the old days, when trad publisher mega-fauna roamed Manhattan, the most popular authors actually got to be something like stars. Time was, if you made it onto the A list, you’d get to do TV appearances and movie cameos. You might even get to introduce your own anthology series. Housewives in Lincoln, Nebraska knew your name.
Now the tradpub dinosaurs are dying. Like all entertainment industries locked into death spirals, they’re losing the ability to make the people they exploit rich and famous. When was the last time you heard of some fresh-faced young go-getter rising from the slush pile to become a household word? Larry Correia might turn out to be the last SFF rock star.
Successful indie authors will be glad to tell you that the death of the celebrity author phenomenon is a positive development. Who has time for afternoon talk shows and spouting embarrassingly out-of-touch Twitter screeds at the President when you’ve got to write, edit, format, and market a new title every 30-90 days?
Let the validation-seekers and attention whores chase fame. Thanks to Amazon, it’s now possible to pull down six or even seven figures annually without anyone outside a relatively narrow cohort of readers knowing who you are.
There’s no question that this new model has advantages. I’d say the pros outnumber the cons. But the anonymous indie millionaire model comes with a price.
There are benefits to celebrity author status, too. Being on TV, having the mainstream media report on your public statements, and having enough clout that people put your words on par with leading politicians’ gives you a level of cultural influence that money can’t buy.
Tradpub will always have A listers. That’s all they’ll have after B&N’s collapse. Indies might outearn trad authors as a group, but who will have more power to shape the culture?
Much has been made of the need to develop parallel institutions to replace the converged and corrupted ones we’re currently stuck with. The truth is, a few guys silently raking in hundreds of thousands or millions on Amazon aren’t an institution. They’re a group of business enterprises.
Don’t get me wrong. Producing new and entertaining fiction without political lectures is necessary to saving Western civilization. It’s probably not sufficient, though. To really make headway, we’ll need our own film and TV production outfits at least.
Add that to the long list of stuff conservative investors could be doing to conserve the culture but aren’t.
– authorJon Mollison