I think a lot of people don't get that books are a business. They get caught up in the mythos of literature and of the artist. And art (as we all know) is never a business. (Go tell that to Handel, who sold the rights to his works to at least two different publishers).
So, in their heads, the entire publishing world exists to connect their great work of art to its awaiting public. And for some reason they've never quite thought about the mechanism for this. They've not considered that unless an organization get a big fat grant or endowment or something, it has to sell things to people who want them. The more copies of the same thing it can sell, the more profit it will have. Therefore, bestsellers are a good thing.
I think too, that because a lot of people who write literary fic also read literary fic as their first choice, and mostly associate with people who share their tastes, they perhaps suffer from bubble-thinking—in my bubble, everyone does X, so I see only people doing X, therefore everyone (or at least everyone of good sense) must do X or would do X if only they knew about it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-04-21 11:24 am (UTC)So, in their heads, the entire publishing world exists to connect their great work of art to its awaiting public. And for some reason they've never quite thought about the mechanism for this. They've not considered that unless an organization get a big fat grant or endowment or something, it has to sell things to people who want them. The more copies of the same thing it can sell, the more profit it will have. Therefore, bestsellers are a good thing.
I think too, that because a lot of people who write literary fic also read literary fic as their first choice, and mostly associate with people who share their tastes, they perhaps suffer from bubble-thinking—in my bubble, everyone does X, so I see only people doing X, therefore everyone (or at least everyone of good sense) must do X or would do X if only they knew about it.