Just as a thought experiment: what might a literary ecosystem look like without publishers and bookstores, or with their role much smaller than it is now, and merely optional?
Literature is such a large thing, both culturally and economically, that around it there has grown an ecosystem of its own, one that might be called the Traditional Literary Ecosystem. It is ruled by publishers and bookstores, while at the top of its food chain prowl the professional critics of the media, hunting through its alleys, tearing at bloody flesh, or looking on indifferently as some passer-by proves too lean for a meal, or sometimes taking into their mercy someone who is officially admitted into the Herd of Significant Authors.
And the book itself is rather like the bicycle: for a long time now it has seemed so perfect that its basic idea has developed no further, even though the whole rest of the world is in technological upheaval. The very concept of the book is so stuck in Gutenbergian printing technology that even legislation, when speaking of digital books, clings to that idea like a wolf cub to a teat, unable to imagine otherwise. The car was once in the same position: its real development began only when people understood that it was not merely a horseless carriage, but something entirely new, with the right to be different.
Just as a thought experiment: what might a literary ecosystem look like without publishers and bookstores, or with their role much smaller than it is now, and merely optional? And what if, instead of professional critics, readers reviewed books for one another?
An Alternative Ecosystem
It would, of course, consist largely of writers: hundreds or thousands of authors, each able, at little cost and with relatively little technical skill, to publish their texts on the internet under whatever copyright arrangements they chose. One might put everything into the public domain under copyleft; another might try to sell his work, and either succeed or fail.
In this ecosystem there would be independent professionals from whom writers could obtain assessments of their texts, advice, tutoring. There would be freelance types who edit. Someone would do layout, if desired, and underground literature would not necessarily have to stew in old stylistic conventions. A book could take many forms. There would be illustrators and visual artists, musicians, theatre people. What, after all, still prevents us from combining a book with music and video recordings, even live ones? It is technically quite possible to make, say, a music book that has, on some page, an evening live connection to a jazz club.
In a decentralized ecosystem, each producer would either work alone or shop around to assemble a team for his projects, whether these eventually appeared outwardly as books or, say, performances. If some project became one that also interested the so-called general public, then all the better. But the approval of the Keepers of the Great Literary-Commercial Truth would no longer be a prerequisite for anyone’s literary appearance.
The Role of Peer Reviewers Grows
It is clear that in such a literary milieu great sums of money would not always come clattering in, but where else does money reliably nest every time? In a decentralized literary ecosystem, the role of peer critics would grow. Not everyone has time to read everything, but people trust those critics whose taste they have found to correspond with their own. If some critic’s following grows large enough, he becomes a national influence. Not because of office or position, or because of the prestige of his media outlet, but because he has followers who have chosen his taste for themselves.
In such a literary milieu, books would not remain unpublished. They would appear in enormous numbers. Most would not reach a large readership, but if some writer absolutely needed that, he could join Walmart and design advertisements for daily consumer goods. “Get Costa Rica coffee almost for free today! At Walmart!” That is the kind of text that sells the most.
Creation has value in itself, and for most creative writers, money earned from one’s own work of the spirit is a fine thing, but not the main goal. The current literary ecosystem rewards sales, but on the other hand it functions in such a way that the creative core of the system, the writer, is the one actor in the entire system whose wages most often go unpaid, or remain very small, because they disappear into other smacking mouths: writers are the common dairy cattle of the whole ecosystem.
The alternative would be a system based on the author’s own direct sales, in which the writer would benefit from the sale of his works much more directly than now, because the middle-milkers would be absent. The sale prices of books could fall sharply even as the author received a much better payment per book for his work. All this is made possible by digital publishing outside the publishing houses.
From the point of view of distribution, it is of course challenging, because most readers are not yet accustomed to digital books, nor to the idea that a book might be sought outside the channels of mass distribution. An even greater difficulty is that most “lovers of literature” are in reality only “lovers of free books,” and do not truly want to pay for their hobby and their pleasure to the author who has gone to the trouble of writing the book, doing the work of months or years.
People are ready to pay for a jam doughnut, and for an evening paper whose reading pleasure lasts seven minutes and whose memory lasts only until tomorrow, if even that—but not for a book whose reading may be enjoyed for dozens of hours, and which may after that remain in the mind for decades as part of a person’s cultural capital.
Still, I believe that in the long run change is possible. Good literary culture is not that books are available free of charge in a wealthy country while the writer scrapes by. Good literary culture is that citizens are willing to reward the writer of a book so that he receives proper compensation for his work. Of course not all books please everyone. It is also possible that some writer’s books please no one except their author. But no one is forced to buy them. In a literary ecosystem, people vote with their feet. And so they should.
But no one fell in love with Mika Waltari either before reading at least one of his works. Whether you like sushi or not became clear to you only after you had tasted it for the first time. The same applies to literature.
To me, a true lover of literature does not merely follow the recommendations of well-known critics, who for decades have steered book sales and shaped publishing policy, general taste, and the very notion of the criteria of literary quality.
A true lover of literature adventures through literature like a carefree backpacker in distant countries, trying things and deciding for himself. In the long run, that leads to the renewal of literary culture and to a diversification of the content on offer. And if it leads to the spread of self-publishing by authors, it will also lower the price of books sharply while improving the finances of writers. That is good literary culture.
Its opposite is the present culture of expensive books, shackled by the gatekeeping of publishers and critics. Combined with the free distribution of books in libraries, and the almost-free distribution of books through monthly priced mass-distribution channels, it withers the core of literary culture.
When the compensation most writers receive for their work is as poor as it now is, and when AI-assisted writing—and even literary products made entirely by AI—become increasingly common in the very near future, the human writer will soon no longer be competitive beside the AI writer, unless the present literary ecosystem is repaired drastically and soon. Such is now the writing of the invisible hand on the wall. Those who are able to see it, see it.
