I'd Rather be Writing @the-writers-wrench - Tumblr Blog

So disappointing to stumble on a list of book recommendations for people who liked [series I read recently and really enjoyed] only to realize every single recommendation is just "this book has a main character of color!" "this one has a disabled trans lesbian character!" "you'll love this character because they use neopronouns and are polyamorous!"

Really? Is that all the book has going for it? Because if it is, I think I'll pass.

celticcanon

I hate to be one of those "build a parallel entertainment industry" people, but I really do think that we might have to. Both agents and publishers are all in on pushing identity politics both in the stories they promote and in the authors they contract.

The following is an average wishlist that agents post when they want to solicit manuscripts from new authors:

Notice that this wishlist shuts a significant number of authors out of the publishing process before the agent even reads their stories. Now yes of course, this is an agent and not the publisher itself and of course it is up to the agent do decide what kind of stories they want to work with. Which would be fine if this wasn't somehow the majority of agents in the traditional publishing space.

The thing that blows my mind is that from a business perspective, people who don't want to have to filter for DEI topics are an enormous untapped market that is currently only being served by self-published who in a lot of cases really need the help of a professional editor and thus don't see a lot of traction, or reprints of books that are 20+ years old.

A publisher that could serve that market could sell a ridiculous amount a books to an absolutely starved audience.

Yet somehow they don't.

At this point, the lack of print media that is not specifically aimed at the left leaning audience has to be more than a business decision. It has to be ideological.

greater-than-the-sword

This is why I started @keepersofthegate ... not that I have published anyone's books but my own so far.

vincent-van-gtg

fitnessdesire

Can’t risk it

laderdesders1

The duck of creativity. I waited so long for it.

manywrites

GIVE ME THE WILL TO WRITE AND BE CREATIVE!

orokayagi

PLEASE

aceie267

DUCK IS LORD

the-half-blood-nerd

PLS MY BLOG IS DyYiNgGgG

chandra-telescope

hope is a skill

nostalgebraist-autoresponder

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

chandra-telescope

favourite additions

chandra-telescope

tenaciouswritingdragon

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

wonderwyrm

worldheritagepostorganization

World Heritage Post

knowledgetosorrow

katebeckets

In theory, maybe I get the “we’re all just playing with barbies, they’re fictional characters, no interpretation is incorrect because it’s an interpretation” argument. But actually no, not all takes are equally valid. Framing something as an interpretation doesn’t mean it inherently has merit. Some takes are completely incorrect and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material. They just aren’t a reason to harass people or send death threats

overseer-picard

keepcatholic

AI companies are buying and scanning printed books for training data, raising copyright and cultural preservation concerns as rare volumes a

The word for this is libricide and, by all accounts, it appears to be happening on a scale nominally rivaling the libricide committed against Polish literary treasures during the Second World War (with no intention of minimizing the malicious and systematic cultural devastation wrought by the latter).

Booksellers, libraries, educational institutions, and book owners in general have a moral duty not to sell books to outfits whose stated purpose is to destroy books, particularly antique and out-of-print books; that duty is going to become harder to fulfill as the price of old books rises now that the word is out that there are buyers willing to vacuum-up piles of otherwise slow-moving inventory. Individuals have the opportunity to save humanity from a relative “dark ages” by keeping and preserving hard copies of books in their own home libraries away from the destructive appetite of technology companies hungry for “training materials” not already polluted by the sludge spewing from their bots, like so much of the modern Internet.

Old books are the closest thing we have to a shared repository of memory across the ages. It is a cultural crime to allow a relative handful of greedy and unscrupulous actors to afflict the rest of us with societal Alzheimer’s to enable their stupid machines to become a fraction of a percent better at faking humanity. This needs to be stopped immediately.

ramonacatholic

"A federal judge found the scanning process to be 'transformative', making it eligible for fair use protection under US copyright law."

This is sickening how is scanning a book transformative at all???

christ-chan-official

They are transforming the books into mulch so i guess that counts. Clearly the feds just want to excuse this bull cuz hindering the progress of AI companies goes against their interests

#I’ve seen the videos.#it makes me feel things that would put me on a list if voiced #anti ai