celebrity

Storytelling and Celebrity

May 14, 2014 By Mark Leave a Comment

Want a nauseating glimpse into how central the exploitation of celebrity is to industrial storytelling? Here are the opening two graphs from a short piece in the New York Times’ theater section:

AMSTERDAM — Over the decades, the story of Anne Frank has been interpreted onstage in varying ways, including a version that some critics describe as too simplistic. Now a new play, simply titled “Anne,” that opened here last week presents a complex portrayal of a teenage girl: sometimes impetuous, spoiled and lonely.

In this multimedia stage production, Anne resents her mother, mocks adults and revels in her emerging sexuality. The new portrait comes nearly 70 years after her death in a German concentration camp, in 1945, and is part of a flurry of efforts by Anne Frank Fonds, the Swiss charitable foundation created in 1963 by her father, Otto, to shape her image for the latest generation.

Whoever Anne Frank was as a human being, she was long ago replaced by a brand bearing her name. Whatever she stood for or endured or had done to her, she’s now the narrative equivalent of Indiana Jones, fighting Nazis on our behalf so we won’t ever have to think too hard about where such evil comes from. Fork over your money and absolution awaits. And did you know there’s an animated cartoon in the works?

There are an infinite number of stories that can be told, but why go to all the trouble and risk of doing something new when you can haul out the Anne Frank cookie cutter and put your own spin on a proven box-office winner? Nobody will question your motives for exploiting her memory or profiting from her death, so cut all the deals you can. You know, out of respect.

Anne Franks sells. End of story.

— Mark Barrett

Self-Publishing is For Closers

April 19, 2013 By Mark 4 Comments

Until recently it was easy for the traditional publishing industry to puff its condescending chest out and hide behind pretense and bluster, but the staunch gatekeeping the industry practiced was always a shell game. Works and authors deemed unprofitable were labeled not good enough, while works and authors that could be packaged, edited or ghostwritten for profit were granted admission into the literary sphere.

As I’ve noted numerous times, the claim that the publishing industry provides cultural stewardship has always been a lie. The very fact that screams are now emanating from corporate publishing offices tells you that self-publishing is not inflicting cultural carnage, but merely decreasing revenue and decentralizing power in the industry. Many of the people who make their living in those offices continue to toe the party line despite the obvious shifting landscape, but at best that has been a delaying tactic and at worse complete delusion.

There will never be any shortage of celebrity-driven bilge in the literary world, but as many celebrities have discovered to their horror, having a bankable name doesn’t guarantee you’ll get what you want in any business. If you’re a movie star the studios will jump at the chance to produce your next genre blockbuster, but if you’re trying to fund a small-budget art film you’re going to have as much trouble raising studio money as an unknown actor with dream. The only difference is that the studio can slam the door in the unknown’s face, while they have to go out of their way to shower you with sincere and deeply felt sweet nothings. Likewise, if you’re a literary fixture or a rising star the publishing world will be happy to take another volume of whatever you’re famous for, but if you want to wander into the short-fiction weeds or publish an experimental work you’ll probably find few takers. Unless of course you’re willing to give them more of the good stuff in the bargain, in which case they’ll begrudgingly kick your pet project out the door and support it with marketing that meets the bare minimum of their impossible-to-enforce legal commitment. [ Read more ]

Snooki and the Real Writer

October 5, 2010 By Mark 9 Comments

The longer I look at publishing the more convinced I am that the most compelling reason to drive a stake through the heart of the industry is the hypocrisy of claiming critical authority on one hand while on the other reserving the right to justify any book deal on a purely economic basis. I was brought back to this theme late last week by the announcement of two deals that exemplify this hypocrisy, but in a way that may not be immediately apparent.

There was, I think, appropriate disgust at the announcement by Simon & Schuster that they had signed a deal for a first novel from Nicole “Snooki” Palazzi. If you’re not up on your pop-culture stars, Snooki is a developmentally-disabled Italian American who regularly appears on an exploitative MTV series called Jersey Shore. As a for-profit enterprise, it’s not wrong of Simon & Schuster to attempt to profit from Snooki’s celebrity, and I don’t fault the book deal on that basis. But having seen clips of Snooki communicating with the demons in her head it’s obvious that her capacity to write a coherent sentence, let alone a book, falls somewhere between the potential literary genius of metamorphic rock and small furry animals. If a ghostwriter hasn’t already been hired it’s inevitable that most of the words and all of the structure in her book will come from someone other than the credited author. Yet this fraudulent business arrangement is being funded and driven by an upstanding member of a publishing community which collectively insists on respect not simply as a money-making enterprise, but as a cultural bastion of taste and merit.

Contrast this with Knopf’s announcement last week of a $2.5 million book deal for the next novel by Kiran Desai. I’ve never read anything Kiran Desai has written, but there seems to be general agreement she can write, if not that she is an important voice. It might at first appear that Knopf spent all that money on the quality of Desai’s writing, except that’s demonstrably not the case. The deal was brokered not for a finished work, but over a four-page proposal. For all I know Desai’s next book will be unmitigated genius from start to finish, but it’s at least theoretically possible that hopes for the project may not be realized despite everyone’s best efforts. What that means is that either Knopf decided to gamble all that money on the quality of Desai’s next book, or Knopf already did the math on the market and expected sales even if the book stinks, and concluded they will make their money back and more.

While Shooki’s book is a fraud, and Desai’s book may aspire to the greatest of literary heights, the people throwing money at these projects are almost certainly doing so solely on the basis of the economics of the market segments they serve. From a cultural perspective, putting Snooki’s book out is pure capitalism, including the fact that the whole project is a lie. But so is Knopf’s bankrolling of Desai’s next project. If one is respected and one is not respected, that says nothing about why money changed hands.

It changed hands in both cases because these names will sell. In neither case was quality the determining factor.

— Mark Barrett

Celebrity, Character and Credibility

May 6, 2010 By Mark 6 Comments

There are a number of hardened memes each independent author must confront at some point in the publishing process. One of these is the platform meme, which says you have to be willing to create your own audience. As regular readers know, I equate an author’s platform with their celebrity.

Celebrity
A related publishing meme dictates that you can’t successfully leverage your platform and celebrity unless you actively engage your audience. No matter how clever your marketing is, it’s not enough to say, “Here I am!” — you also need to say, “How are you?” and “What do you think?”

There are two reasons why this engagement is deemed important. First, you must differentiate yourself from the torrent of information available to (and being broadcast at) consumers, because consumers have become experts at tuning out. Second, engagement builds the strongest possible relationship you can have with the consumer, short of asking them to move in with you. While your engagement will mean nothing to the majority of consumers, to those who are interested it may mean the difference between passing interest and brand-grade commitment.

It’s not all good news, of course. To the extent that the internet facilitates such engagement it also drives the need. While it’s literally true that the internet requires a person to opt in, as a social matter it’s assumed that everyone will do so — and this is particularly true for people who aspire to build any kind of brand awareness. Because celebrity is simply brand awareness for a person, and because celebrity brands now have the potential for direct human interaction, there is both an additional level of opportunity and obligation in engaging celebrity-interested consumers. [ Read more ]

Doctorow, Anderson and Godin, Oh My

March 1, 2010 By Mark 17 Comments

Six months ago, when I first opened up shop here at Ditchwalk, there was a riot brewing in the publishing marketplace. For all the back-and-forth about self-publishing versus traditional publishing, however, the rhetorical clash that eventually broke out last fall was never really an us-against-them-whoever-they-are revolution. Or if it was, it was only that for a few short weeks, until the industry forces manning the status-quo battlements got their mind around the fact that the internet wasn’t going to go away no matter how many ruby-slippered heel clicks they threw at the damned thing.

What really drove the chaos last fall is what drives chaos in any business. Suddenly, with only a fleeting decade’s warning, the book business didn’t now how to make a stable profit. The internet was the obvious scapegoat, at least until the recession took hold, at which point big names in the publishing business reassured the rabble that everything would be fine as soon as the recession was over.

Now, when a pricing plague strikes your village and the experts fail to stop the spread, and Aunt Sadie’s home recipes don’t work, and your prayers don’t save the people you love, there’s a natural tendency to latch on to anyone who comes by with a possible solution. Fortunately, the one thing you can always count on in such situations is that someone will come by. [ Read more ]

Your Publishing Platform Defined

January 11, 2010 By Mark 13 Comments

The Road More Traveled
If you’ve looked into the current self-publishing boom at all you’ve undoubtedly heard the advice that you must work on your platform to have any hope of being successful as a self-published writer. If you’re at all like me you probably seized on this mushy advice while also struggling to make sense of it. And struggling. And struggling…

At some point the thought may have occurred to you that while the advice is undoubtedly solid, it’s your ignorance of key terms* that makes it hard for you to seize this golden opportunity. What, exactly, is a platform, and how is it most effectively worked on?

Taking the bull by the horns, while also somehow following conventional wisdom, you equate your platform with your website or blog or personal appearances, and equate work on with writing and saying things for free so as to induce other human beings to care about you. (Over time, as you dedicate yourself to this apparently-but-not-really more robust definition of a platform, this exchange of labor and skill for attention may also convince you that you can profit by giving other things away, including the books or stories you naively intended to sell before you became so much wiser about self-publishing.)

At some much later point, when you’re lying by the side of the self-publishing road with an I.V. in your neck and blisters on your hands from crawling those last long miles, you may marvel that personal determination seems to have so little to do with success in publishing or self-publishing. While it’s certainly true that you can’t win if you don’t enter, it’s more likely the case that even if you enter constantly and do everything you’re supposed to do — including working on your platform, whatever that means — you still won’t win.

At which point, if you’re a good and decent sort, you will simply blame yourself for having failed. You will man-up or woman-up as appropriate and acknowledge that you never really figured out what your platform was, or how you could work on it. Being a decent sort, however, you won’t hesitate to encourage others to crack the code by working on their own platform, which will endear you to the next crop of earnest, hardworking fools determined to make a name for themselves with their writing. [ Read more ]