Narrative and its place in our world

[Raven]

So,

Narrative. . .

We've been listing fantasy authors. There have been so many good books written. As the book of Ecclesiastes says, "of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body" (12:12). When I walk into a bookstore these days, though, I hardly know what to look at. Especially in the fantasy section, all the colorful book covers with the artwork that all looks the same -- none of it seems to capture my interest or promise anything unique. I normally don't buy anything like that from a bookstore, and when I walk into a used bookstore, I often look for classics. I've read the rest of James Fennimore Cooper's Leatherstocking series, as well as a number of maritime books such as The Sea Wolf in the past year or so. Lately, Game of Thrones has made a big impact in terms of the fantastical genre, though I haven't read them myself. Of course, Harry Potter within the past twenty years has been huge. In both cases, the books were turned into film/television media. I even think that in both cases, the awareness on the authors part that the works would be turned into film media changed the way the books were written. I've been a performance storyteller for a few years, which is another form of narrative art, and then there are video games which are another form of narrative art, though I don't really play video games anymore. . . It seems that the world of narrative is expanding, especially when we include the different forms of multimedia narrative. And yet, I find that things are multiplying and diversifying at such a rapid rate that it is hard to identify any significance. It seems there are simply tons and tons and tons of television shows, movies, video games, comic books, and even print books. The proliferation of narrative seems huge. Certain works rise to the top, like the Harry Potter series which was a huge phenomenon. The recent success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an example of how much the narrative universe of Star Wars has impacted our culture on a wide scale. We still have "big" stories that influence our culture. Still, it seems like things are becoming more fractured, and any appeal to mass audiences typically result in an reduction in quality -- the butchering of the Hobbit by Peter Jackson is an example, I guess.

Narrative has become big business. Novel writing is still a form in which an individual artist has control over the narrative, but I'm not sure that the dominant future of narrative rests in novels even as much as in video games. And such endeavors as video games, due to complexity, are the result of big business in order to reach any significant distribution. Even movies that reach any significant distribution are not made by an individual so much as a team and an industry.

So how does this change the stories we are getting? Is the future of storytelling collaborative, or will it still be driven by individuals like J.K. Rowling, for instance?

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

I think there's still a place for tradition. These new forms may even be used as a form of marketing for the original sources.

As for the rise, it may be just another bubble, and when that pops, everything else will keep rolling along as it always does.

I can't say for sure, hence why my response is rather short.

[Raven]

Your comment about the new forms being a form of marketing for the old is interesting. I suspect the Harry Potter movies did cause people to read the books. I saw one of the movies before I started the books, I think, so in that sense the movie did market the book to me.

I would be really interested to see a graph or other visual representation of data that shows the increase in number of books written/published/available to readers in the time span from the invention of the printing press to the present. The growth within the last 100 years has to be exponential. Google has estimated that there are 129 million or so books in the world, and this article kind of goes through their criterion: http://www.pcworld.com/article/202803/google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html

Apparently, anywhere from half a million to a million books are published in the US each year depending on who you read, book sales are decreasing, whereas the number of books published is increasing. This article outlines some of this: http://outthinkgroup.com/the-10-awful-truths-about-book-publishing/
That article also discusses how publishing companies are wanting authors to do more of the marketing, I think. . .
Here's an article with some stats in the first paragraph: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorgan/2013/01/08/thinking-of-self-publishing-your-book-in-2013-heres-what-you-need-to-know/#184dfd1729f4

This article discusses whether we have too many books: http://publishingperspectives.com/2014/10/many-books/#.Vt-cfI-cHIU
There were 28 million in print in English in 2013 it reads.

So, with all that overwhelming information, I have a few further questions.

The primary problem with self publishing is that you have to market your own book and that is very hard. You have to have a platform from which to do it, i.e., an established name or brand.
The secondary problem with self publishing is that it does not have the feeling of authenticity and legitimacy that comes with a traditional publishing house.
But even so, traditional publishers are very interested these days in authors who have ready made platforms so they have a leg up in marketing. Obviously, big name publishes a book easier than a no-name.
But these are somewhat side notes to my main questions.

With so many books, such an abundance of possibilities in the world, who or what is constructing our canon? In our other thread, we are listing fantasy authors. In a sense, we are constructing a canon, a list of people worthy of being read. Out of all the millions of books, we chose that handful. In our culture, film and other media are operating in a similar way. The Harry Potter movies incited me to read the Harry Potter books. In a sense, bookstores both used and otherwise, as well as libraries, create canons of literature that is worthy of being on the shelves. The book I self published would not likely qualify, partly because it is obscure and self published, I'd suspect. I self published it and had it printed on demand to be sold through my own performance platform at my concerts. It did well, in my own small scale way, and overall I am happy about it. But of course, it is no wide-spread thing.

Out of all those millions, how are we finding and deciding what to read? Is it industry standards or marketability, pushing onto shelves what is deemed suitable for mass sales? Is it a mixture of that and artistic merit? In what ways do artistic merit, or at least the demand created by people willing to spend money for a book for a certain reason, influence what publishers see as marketable. It has to be a loop to some degree.

Basically, how do I find a good book to read? Really. . . Because I've been having a hard time picking books to read for the past while (with hopefully a reprieve after Justin's excellent work in the fantasy authors section). In fact, one of the series of books I've worked on writing had as one of its seeds the desire to write a book that I would want to read.

Anyway, these questions are interesting to me. What do we do in a world with an abundance of books. . . Is it an over abundance as is asked in the one article? Or is the abundance good as the article quotes someone as saying.  How far we have come from the medieval world where a manuscript was a precious, hand crafted, painstakingly produced work of art. What has mass production done to our sense of quality and value of the written word?

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Well, I would say that you SHOULD write what you would want to read. If you just try to please everyone, you'll get nowhere.

Personally, I get a lot of my names from lists - that is, I look for popular compilations of what experts and fans have deemed to be the best. Normally, these titles have stood the test of time and/or have proved to be of significant influence for both the time it was written and for the future. Perhaps you can never measure how good something is except in hindsight.

As for self-publishing, the website I pointed out in a separate topic - deCOMPOSE - is run by a self-published author, and he often gives tips on the writing process. Here's a few blog posts that may be worth something:
http://mikeduran.com/2011/04/does-traditional-publishing-validate-an-author/
http://mikeduran.com/2012/03/heres-why-you-should-wait-before-self-publishing-your-novel/
http://mikeduran.com/2015/01/indie-publishing-and-the-meat-grinder/
http://mikeduran.com/2013/04/self-publishing-as-principled-cop-out/
http://mikeduran.com/2016/01/the-slow-and-steady-approach-to-building-readership/

Now this might not be what you're looking for, but you could always contact him through his email link. OR I could share your thoughts with him (I've spoken a couple times to him) and relay his message.

As for the narrative effect, that might take a bit more time.....

[Raven]

Thanks for the links, Justin.
I don't really feel like I'm looking to self publish right now -- although I may again in the future, I don't know.

What you describe is basically people, yourself included, doing the work to create a literary canon -- a collection of what's worth reading. This means that what we read is the result of community involvement not just in how it is published and/or influenced by or marketed through contemporary media but also in how we determine if it is worthy to be read, as in the case of the compilation of lists.
It is interesting that acts that could be seen as so solitary -- writing or reading a book -- rely so heavily on community.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

It's always nice to look for major online literary publications or at least sites primarily devoted to the subject. Sometimes the big book publishers will have blogs and such that point out titles worth mentioning. Personally, I also look for the literary awards, three in particular - the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award; looking at the history of the awards is also a gauge on what was popular then and now, not to mention the honors given for lifetime achievement. Science fiction may be the primary purpose in some cases, but fantasy often gets blanketed in. Now, yes, the downside of narrowing your search this way is the risk of neglecting what may otherwise be good books in their own right as well as possibly overglorifying some works (or even the awards themselves), but at least it's a starting point.

Here's the Wiki links for info on the awards; some of the references will take you to their official sites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Fantasy_Award

Then there are book series - meaning themed collections meant to organize authors who have or are standing out. One of the most influential came from Ian and Betty Ballantine in 1969, where they assigned Lin Carter the task of compiling a number of authors who had fallen out of print at the time; it remains pretty influential in putting a lot of names back into the public consciousness. Here's some information on it, as well as a couple of similar noteworthy collections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine_Adult_Fantasy_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Forgotten_Fantasy_Library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks

Also, here's a couple of the lists that I've used for reference material myself.

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/modern-fantasy-the-100-best-novels-1946-1987/
https://thestrangersbookshelf.wordpress.com/lists/top-100-fantasy-novels/

Finally, I just like to get lost in a subject. See, if you just type in "fantasy" on Wikipedia or TV Tropes, you'll find a LOT of areas to cover, including subgenres and history. The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which has its own separate Encyclopedia of Fantasy section (I've linked to it several times in the Authors topic), is practically indispensable. If you have any spare time with nothing else to do, you should try it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fantasy
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fantasy
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php