#WritersCoffeeClub Day 29 – What’s something you’d like to see future generations of writers discard?
Supine obedience-in-advance to the whims of marketing diktat issued by publishing marketers (who frankly don't know what sells because there is no way to research it b/c publishers sell to wholesalers, not direct to the public). NB: such whims involve writing for a specific genre, bullshit "X meets Y" comps, bandwagoning, and standardized lengths. Oh, and shoot that "save the cat" formula book!
@cstross
How would we know the protagonist is a good human otherwise?
And who would save the cats if not the protagonist?
And, most importantly, why do you hate cats!?
;-)
@StompyRobot Cats are just velociraptors in fur coats!
Proof:
@cstross
suitable for a villain!
I see where you're coming from...
@cstross I love this one! One of the most delightful realizations for me is that the genres are much more fluid than I was led to believe when I started writing and it's so freeing. But also I self-publish so don't have to rely on publisher nonsense.
@KitAuthor Genres were invented to give booksellers a way to shelve like-with-like, after alphebitizing the authors by name—it's a unidimensional tagging system. Actual keyword tagging systems are much richer.
@cstross Um. I wonder how long it'll take before someone starts doing fb/ig/etc surveillance and marketing at the individuals who have those jobs.
@jmax It's probably not cost-effective for authors (or even agencies) to do that, and in any case, the marketing team is much more susceptible to employment churn than editorial.
(It's also a form of industrial espionage and may well be illegal under some/all circumstances?)
