Sputnik changed everything
At the moment of Sputnik the planet became a global theater in which there are no spectators but only actors. — Marshall McLuhan, Journal of Communication (1974)
Technology has turned the world into a dimension-less stage of creators and consumers of technology. Anyone paying attention can see technology’s speed-of-light progress flooding the stage of McLuhan’s “global theater.” The actors are in their places, lit by that bright moment of Sputnik. They are also in the seats, an audience of peers. Everyone plays every role in the Digital Age.
It’s an incredible time to be an author. Author/readers are running the numbers, exploring their options, and sharing their content and experiences with the world. And with all the world a stage, they are inspiring other author/readers to do the same.
And yet some author/readers still segment by content’s publishing origin: traditional, small, self. Why? Because some actors don’t want to share the stage with the spectators who want to act
These actors say the reason there are stages for actors and chairs for spectators is because then everybody will know their place. Actors are actors for a reason, they claim, and the casting director is an expert at choosing the best actor for the part. Spectators might as well be actors not good enough for the stage. And like-wise, in the rhetoric of the Big Six, there is only traditional publishing and it’s perceived prestige (which matters little to the average reader)…and then everyone else.
But the times, they are a-changing. As Will Entrekin, an author and publisher, says so eloquently:
It seems like we’re moving into times of cultural responsibility, and we’re taking such responsibilities away from the people who traditional took control of them as we notice that many of those institutions gave up their reins. One of the biggest arguments people tend to make against so-called “self-publishing” is that it’s not vetted, there’s no quality control, etc.
And then they buy and publish A Shore Thing by Snooki.
We’re the upstart crows. We’re the Johannes Factotums. We are the creators and contributors, channels of inspiration and information. And we’re not just living in exciting times.
We’re exciting them.
Welcome to the global theater. You’ll find me standing under the glow of the moment of Sputnik.
Yours in Provocation,
M
“It seems like we’re moving into times of cultural responsibility, and we’re taking such responsibilities away from the people who traditionally took control of them…”
Amen to that. The way I see it, traditional controls and directives need to be shaken up a bit now and then, just to see if they’re still serving a purpose.
Thanks for having Write It Forward on your list. I’m finding a lot of public resistance to pointing out the changes that are coming. As if there’s a value judgment on it rather than it’s simply a reality. I even read yesterday in PW Daily a CEO of a major publishing company saying that one of their imprints is trying for the good old days of hardcovers, etc.
The bottom line is that most people are consciously, and more often subconsciously, trying to protect their turf. I find that even many midlist authors, who are getting slaughtered by the changes in publishing, still want to protect their mass market paperbacks and think ebooks are some form of evil virus.
The example of the Snooki book is good, especially since it sold all over 8,000 copies. Kate Gosselin’s book sold 11,000, but it also made #6 on the NY Times nonfiction list which makes one scratch their head. There’s a lot of misinformation being bandied about and a lot of ‘juking the stats’ as they say on The Wire. It’s almost a full time job just trying to keep up with it, which is one thing we try to do with Write It Forward.
I’d never heard of McLuhan’s Sputnik thoughts, but I like the idea a lot. Obviously. Thanks for the hat tip, there. Glad to be inspiring more writers and authors to pursue business and publishing every bit as much as agents and editors might have before they sold out to the bottom line.