The problem of online publishing is a real problem

July 21, 2022 

The problem of online publishing is a real problem.

There are two separate but not completely immiscible problems within it.

I'm not even talking about profitability alone, but if places like Substack have turned out to be based on some very problematic culture war paradigms - where is it that smart writers are supposed to take their work? Back to social media, with its own platform–based problems, and work for donations from their Amazon wish list? I think that would debase the craft that I love.

But the two separate but not completely immiscible problems are these: 

One. For the one thing, the Internet is great for readers but really not great for writers. I could go on and on about this but even the readers will have noticed this in recent years, that the quality of writing on the Internet has gone down - and now, perhaps, it just "frustrates you "to "keep up with what's going on"? The traditional clearing houses for writing are "barely hanging on" by all accounts because, not the quality of writing, but the attention of the readership, went down. The problem came about because the dominant narrative in the Internet publishing space has become "own your niche" and "be a specialist in one small thing". The problem with this paradigm is that it is outdated. Niche knowledge is not what people know or care about these days. It's not what is good about the people who are either really writing now or should be writing right now. So the problem that exists now started on the demand side. The publishers adapting to the Internet were told to demand a niche specialty from the writers they hired (also abbreviated to "personal experience") and that didn't align with the actual demand from readers. And this has continuously squeezed out the good writers. And this has bled over into traditional publishing, where there are just more and more and too many "books about the Internet" which are of very limited interest to digital natives. So what is left? I read very little these days except for occasionally re-reading parts of classics that are relevant; and, the Internet bores me. Some of us digital natives are still spicing up some niche topics about this or that, but we're really at the tail end of the culture wars. Who knows when the news cycle will get it: not for a while, at this rate. 

Two. Readers, in search of writing that is actually interesting to them, have started to read widely, and by the way have exposed that the traditional institutions that are supposed to craft and channel the work of writers to readers are not up to the task of doing that. And of course, we only once supposed that they were doing that in the first place, but that may have been never their object. So these pipelines don't work how we need them to, and likely they were never supposed to bring us what we need. Writers have very little trust in these traditional media pipelines, and part of this widespread mistrust is so widespread because more writers have become aware of this bullshit game. The media companies sometimes still blame this on "social media undermining everything" or other media: the radio blames the TV, the TV blames Twitter, and the paper publishing companies blame the Internet, and the Internet publishing companies blame Reddit, "video" social media like TikTok, and social media. So then writers hip to the game take their work to social media and then they can even more easily get marginalized by the system, by algorithms and crowd-based social engineering. The scariest thing to the modern system of government is an uncaptured and practiced hand with a pen, sure. But does it not make sense, given all this, that some people, both smart and knowledgeable, find most freedom and even power, in the Anonymous and WikiLeaks-esque paradigm of privacy and secrecy politics? 

What else is new? This is how it always has been, translated onto the Internet. But, maintaining the status quo when there is so much more power given the Internet paradigm we live in would require that the state apparatus reserve so much of a new reserves of power to itself, that we would be heading very quickly to a totalitarian state.

States have always maintained control with the power of the purse and the power of the pen. But totalitarian states are distinct because they have a monopoly on the power of the pen. That's why America has a first amendment in the Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of speech and press, assembly and petition.

But imagine the situation we're in right now, sort of arguing whether the state or "some other thing", which we can see right now in America is totally messed up should have total control over all of this power of the pen. OK: Solomon and "dividing up the baby" – that famous story. That is sort of where we are at as a country, trying to decide where this new capacity for the power of the pen should go. He was renowned for his skill of judgment as shown in that story… But here's what I think: that poor baby. Anyone else ever thought about that? The poor baby. 

So I return to some of my public policy training here too. In that story everyone's immediate perspective has Othered the baby whose life can casually be sacrificed to determine where he or she belongs - or to whom the baby belongs. The human life of the innocent child has been subsumed to considerations about property, and property - of a human life no less - has been determined to be a more appropriate area of moral debate than the baby's life. How has that happened? Because in the perspective, somehow, of everyone in that room, the baby was Othered. Considered to be Other than the rest of the human life in the room. 

What's the analogy? The baby here are these new young writers connected to the Internet representing the new capacity for the power of the pen, and somehow, beyond understanding, the question has been put to someone, or some singular entity, whether that new capacity for power of the pen should be put entirely into the province either of the state or of "civil society."

This is completely absurd but it is not an idle analogy. It shouldn't be solved this way because it is no solution; it is based on faulty premises. The new power of the pen, or more precisely the new capacity in the power of the pen, is not one entity, and no one entity should choose where it "goes"; but we are societally treating this problem this way, and I have experienced it, and I think this is very dangerous.