“The more people you reach the more likely it is that you’re reaching the wrong people.” –Seth Goudin
Ursula K. LeGuin has a fantastic article in this month’s Harpers, called “Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading.” The premise is this: reading was never popular in the first place. The decline is in books as exponentially profitable big business. The crossover is easy to see in other artistic mediums.
Books no longer have a monopoly on pop entertainment. Literature as an art, on the part of both authors and readers, was never popular to begin with, and isn’t going anywhere. Some people like writing or reading as art and others don’t. But publishers who rely on the next big hit are finding that the next big hit may be in a different medium.
That is from the artist’s perspective: we’ve always been a minority, even when our medium was being used as the pop medium. But there’s a business/technology side to it as well, that companies may have to pick up on. The advent of the internet is the advent of the long tail: Why make everyone buy the same product, when you can easily sell each person the product they want? Suddenly the long tail of small sales become a threat to business built around pop hits.
Theatre was once the pop medium, to the point of riots between fans of rival actors. The fact that pop media has found a new venue doesn’t mean theatre is dead. Taking the focus off big hits might even make room for more new theatre to happen. Can the long tail make a comeback once the hit-makers are gone? I think it’s something to hope for.
Art isn’t dying - the middleman is dying. And it’s about time. Just ask Radiohead and Wilco.
a clipping from an Aaron Liechty drawing that I’ll post later if he gives me permission. We’ve both been drawing all the characters from the campaign we’re in. He’s already done. This is Bill (me) the half-orc barbarian with a chain and some mean dancing skills.
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