It’s literally what it says – a table of any size you happen to have, on which you throw a random assortment of ancient dog-eared friends, shiny new acquisitions, and in our case, books unpacked from deep storage that we haven’t seen for decades – in itself quite a pleasure.
This is not for the TikTok folk, there’s little to no prestige in it. It’s mostly just for you.
And what a thrill it is… There they are, in all their dusky allure, inviting you to pick up, flip through, and move on when you feel like it.
It’s analog-style browsing, and it feels so frickin’ good for your mind!
Do you have a book table? And what’s on it today, pray?
Yes – that’s what I’m calling it.
I’ve been aware of the impending signs for a while now. However, it’s taken a lot of thinking, a lot of private discussions and, not least, many useful conversations in Huddles to really work out how all the pieces fit together to make this an historic inflection point for the “traditional” publishing business.
The year 2025 is when we will see the “traditional” publishing model begin to break down and be reconstructed as something entirely new.
It’s a bold claim.
But it’s going to happen. In fact, it has to happen.
Many in the publishing industry may not yet appreciate this. The business has often been slow to recognise necessary change: I’m thinking about the resistance displayed towards British publisher Allen Lane when he started the paperback revolution nearly a century ago with Penguin Books; or more recently with the advent of e-books and how unprepared many were (a few publishers seized the opportunity and spectacularly succeeded: particularly British publishers Anthony and Nicolas Cheetham).
So yes – “Publishing Year Zero” may sound scary to some.
Truthfully, I’m a bit scared by it.
But in every crisis there are plenty of opportunities. So let’s not lose heart.
Here are some powder-keg challenges we need to face this year:
We Need To Accelerate Author Income It’s now down to scandalously low levels. Everyone’s aware of it; but no-one is doing anything really effective about it. In the absence of a fix, authors will walk, maybe run, from traditional publishing towards something more lucrative. Who could blame them?
We Need To Actively Defend Authors’ IP Why bother paying for an audiobook when they’re freely available on YouTube! Harry Potter? Check. Agatha Christie? Check. Danielle Steel? Check. Stephen King? Check. The list goes on. It appears that the industry currently can’t – or perhaps won’t? – protect authors’ IP. The messaging to consumers is clear: we don’t value authors’ work enough to defend it against piracy. And if we place no value on it – why should consumers?
We Need To Win The Attention War Young people are turning the page on reading. While Big Tech employs psychologists and neurologists to devise sinister new ways to keep us literally addicted to the social media hamster wheel – how is our own industry responding? I see nothing of significance yet. This must be the year we fight back against parasitical media that – wholly unlike books and reading – devours your attention while giving you little nourishment in return.
Now for some advice.
This is very important: no author should be resigned to having their work stolen by ChatGPT or any one of a growing number of alternative AI operations; nor should they willingly agree to a derisory one-off payment for perpetual (i.e. length of copyright) use.
In 2024, we saw HarperCollins achieve a licensing fee of $2,500 per title for LLM usage allegedly from Microsoft’s CoPilot model (details are sketchy) and (again, allegedly) for a duration of three years.
Bravo! This by itself is a significant first step, since the rest of the AI crowd are still publicly declaring that they should be entitled to freely pirate your writing to their hearts’ content – hey, it’s “transformative fair use”, right?
Wrong.
Let me remind you, these are the same folk who are currently jostling to become the world’s first trillionaires. Yet they’re not prepared to toss us a few crumbs from the fine linen napkins on their private starships.
This means war, mes concitoyens! The publishing industry needs to go for the jugular, hard and fast. There is oodles of dosh sloshing into AI at the moment, and authors need a share of it. If we fail to achieve equity on this for authors, then even more terrible things will occur.
After all, aren’t translation rights just another “transformative fair use”…? Capisce?
We need to see the rapid development of a sub-rights market in AI usage. Just like syndication, translation, film & tv rights and more. Competition amongst AI owners will ensure a reasonable market fee for such use. Licensing terms should be short and – crucially – there must be effective monitoring to keep the AI owners honest.
The technology for this already exists.
Let’s get serious about this, people.
It was John Donne who admonished us that “no man is an island” (I assume he included all gender identities else it doesn’t make sense). Writers in particular need to heed Donne’s wisdom.
Consider the persistent trope of the solitary author in a lofty garret, heroically struggling against near-insurmountable odds for creative actualization. Somehow, this has become an accepted metaphor for every writer’s journey: lonely, isolated, friendless and forlorn. What nonsense.
The truth is, you cannot develop the craft of writing without considerable contact with other writers. Sometimes, this is achieved by the magic of writing itself, which allows your mind to connect with another’s across space, time and even mortality. But also, writers need regular and sustaining contact with other writers: for cross-pollination and mutual support.
Writers are rarely, if ever, in direct competition with each other. Those who collaborate with their peers are more likely to thrive in every way, especially in challenging times like these. That’s what Litopia excels at, of course.
Yes, it’s going to be a tumultuous year. But together we will seize every opportunity that presents itself: and have a darn good time doing so.
My best for the year
Peter
]]>Yet in a world that increasingly seems to fetishize cruelty, revenge and malice – as attested by our ever-degenerating political discourse – how can the sensitive person protect themselves?
The coming period will not be easy on our minds or souls. So let’s get some self-defence measures in place.
By far the most significant mega-trend in the coming year will be the continuing and unwelcome rise of authoritarianism, both internationally and sometimes even locally.
At its root, the authoritarian drive for power stems from profound personal insecurity and unchecked paranoia. From much reading about authoritarians, and from a few disagreeable direct experiences, it is clear to me that authoritarians commonly have a secret, dreaded fear. At heart, they believe themselves to be weak and powerless people.
The typical authoritarian’s early (dysfunctional) life experience usually teaches them they are not deserving of love; so in its place they become obsessed with being respected. And if respect is not forthcoming, then they resort to instilling fear and even terror. This is what their elaborate and very public display of “power” is designed to conceal: not least from from themselves.
This “guise of power” as psychiatrist Bandy Lee aptly terms it, manifests externally through coercion, fear, and violence; if unchecked it may ultimately lead to entire societal destruction. Chaos is a necessary precondition for the authoritarian’s ascent and, sure enough, we are starting to see that take hold now.
Leaders who deliberately create chaotic conditions are hardly in short supply at the moment. They do so because they understand at a visceral level that it utterly exhausts the rest of us. A poll yesterday shows that most people are backing away from TV news: they no longer want to engage in, or even know about, the current highly toxic political environment. This is one common technique by which the authoritarian typically browbeats his community into passive acquiescence.
In relationship terms, this would be immediately recognised as abusive behaviour. And that’s exactly what it is when our leaders do it to us, en masse.
But how do we deal with it?
In an abusive personal relationship, the answer is clear – remove yourself from it. In the wider environment that’s rarely possible.
However, knowing that the typical authoritarian seeks to deprive you of your own personal agency and power suggests an excellent defence: concentrate on strengthening it.
True power (not the “guise of power” referred to above) comes from inside. Call it personal development, self-actualization, or whatever other term seems most appropriate for you. The essence is always the same: an honest but kind engagement with yourself to nurture and grow, both as a writer and as a human being.
For writers in particular, the journey of self-development is no joyride. It involves looking into some dark places and processing the discoveries. These are the same places that the authoritarian personality will never dare to examine, because they are too terrifying.
Terrible as the journey may be, the rewards are well worth it. You will find your own deepening self-awareness gives you far greater emotional contact and resonance with your readers. You will also find that as you mitigate internalised cycles of fear and hostility, your own sense of confidence blossoms, until, quite literally, nothing seems impossible.
Making a sincere commitment to “do the work” will enhance your own resilience and immunity, not just to the tribulations of the writer’s everyday life, but also to the authoritarians’ toxic miasma.
It was John Donne who admonished us that “no man is an island” (I assume he included all gender identities else it doesn’t make sense). Writers particularly need to heed Donne’s wisdom.
The insidious trope of the solitary author, heroically struggling in their garret against near-insurmountable odds, is an unhelpful and potentially catastrophic lie. We are at heart social animals and it does us no good to act as if we weren’t.
This means actively participating in healthy and supportive communities like Litopia, while avoiding those that aren’t. True personal power flourishes when it cooperates with others and contributes to others’ own development. It thrives in conditions of abundance, creativity and generosity.
In the coming times, the authoritarian mindset will seek to replace shared positive values with isolation, division, hatred and fear; for the authoritarian personality cannot prevail when his constituency is happy, harmonious and creatively fulfilled.
For everyone, these are perilous times. But for writers, they are times of great potential, too.
All my best for a surprisingly good year ahead.
]]>Litopia has the best author-privacy settings of any writing website, period. You decide who sees your work – and when you delete it, it’s gone for good.
Granular privacy controls are just one of the myriad benefits of becoming a member of Litopia, the oldest writing colony on the ‘net.
Now that Facebook has served notice on its users that it intends to feed all their personal writing into its own AI Large Language Model, it might be a good time for writers who value their privacy to leave that platform. Admittedly, the cost of belonging to Facebook (free!) is rather less than the modest annual membership fee that Litopia charges. But that, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story.
There’s a saying on the net that “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
Research shows that for the year ending March 2023, Facebook generated $226.93 for each user it has (US & Canada, data from Statista). They make this money by selling your data and by showing you highly-targeted advertising.
By adding users’ own writing to Facebook’s AI operation – without any compensation to the creator, of course – they will be profiting even more from their estimated 3 billion users.
Litopia stands apart from everything that Facebook represents. We are human-sized. We prize community over profit. We don’t sell your data – ever. And we make it easy for you to privately share your work-in-progress with selected reviewers – and when you’re done, to delete all traces.
Litopia’s Steam Room is a very discreet meeting place where you can ask for help, advice, information or – perhaps – just let off steam. Whether you want the inside track on a new agent, or simply want to vent about politics, this is the place to do it. And when you’re done – you can remove all traces. It goes without saying that the Steam Room is not accessible to non-members, nor is it indexable by search engines.
Shouldn’t you try Litopia now? We’re waiting for you!
]]>Bulb planting is an absorbing experience. You don’t look up much. Your zone of attention narrows to a few centimetres. Little else exists.
But there was something else.
It was a tickle, a slight disturbance on the back of my hand; less than a breeze but more than a falling leaf.
An itch?
No, more sensual than that.
And… moist.
I refocused from the bulb-in-question and found…
A large snail.
Gently but with great determination mounting the back of my right hand.
I could feel his mouth gently probing and exploring.
It wasn’t unpleasant at all.
At my wrist-line now, his eyestalks taking me in.
We thought about each other for a while.
He knew that I knew he was there, no question. An incalculably large animal, perhaps fierce, perhaps a snail-eater.
But he was still climbing.
Because – I was there.
Total respect, little snail. Had our roles been reversed, I would not be so plucky.
I let him conquer my right arm, a Matterhorn of the molluscan world, sliver slime trail in his wake.
At shoulder height, I balked.
There’s something odd about the idea of a man walking around with a snail on his shoulder.
Parrots, well yes. Cats, even: I’ve seen them doing that in Regent’s Park.
But not a snail. Neither of us would get the respect we rightly deserve.
Gently, I lifted him down. And he crawled away.
With a story to tell his grand-kids.
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