Plagued by Mediocrity, You are the Solution ($)

The computer revolution has not yet delivered the products we deserve.

“We’re dealing with corporations who only care about maximizing profits.”
— Sloane Leong, cartoonist (Knight 2023).

Food evolved with the inventions of the stove and the pot. Communication evolved with the invention of the printed word. But the printed word can only go as far as what’s allowed to be printed. The publishing industry keeps us cooking over an open fire.

I’ve self-published six books and made audiobooks out of most of them (https://www.mindstrengthbooks.com). Three more are on the way. Writing, designing, printing, and selling are not the problem. Marketing and distribution is.

Marketing makes products noticeable, it determines what you see. Distribution makes them accessible, it defines what you can get. The internet has enlarged both of these, but the spigots are still constricted.

To carry forward the cooking pot analogy, I have a friend who’s designed a better salad bowl (https://lotusbowl.co/). To make something you can buy, she has had to design, engineer, prototype, tool, test, collaborate, produce, package, ship, and warehouse the idea.

She will put the product on Amazon, which is itself a revolution, but how would you know to look for it? The idea will be inaccessible without marketing and distribution.

Access Remains Closed

Computers have revolutionized engineering and production, but they have not revolutionized marketing and distribution. They have had a large effect, but they haven’t changed who controls these bottlenecks.

The marketing and distribution of communications is still controlled by archaic publishers and blind agents. Like the dinosaurs they are, they prey on our ignorance and work to keep us stupid. The reason literature does not change is not for a lack of authors, it’s a lack of publishers.

This is changing, but change is slow and not for the best. It puzzles me why some change is rapid and positive, and other change is absent or corrupt. Where there is pressure to change, there are predators, but that doesn’t explain the lack of progress.

To create a book, you must write it, refine it, design, format, package, and print it. Writing has been a human skill, but now artificially intelligent systems can also write, but they cannot write well. By their nature, A.I. can only achieve what’s average and what’s formulated. This means that they can produce correct grammar and derivative ideas. A.I. may take over journalism, but it won’t threaten insightful or creative writing.

I’ve contacted nonfiction, art, and game publishers. The nonfiction and art publishers produce books, the game publishers produce boxed products. In each sector there are stages of creation and production. There are obvious differences in consumer tastes, but there seems to be little difference in what I’ll call the ignorance of publishers.

Human beings are a spectacularly successful species, but this is not a foregone conclusion and it’s not an accident. We’re successful because we have evolved opportunistically, and that has happened because we’ve changed quickly and effectively.

To change in this manner, a species has to retire old ideas and structures and replace them with new, better ideas and structures. This notably does not require skill, it requires insight and agility.

A Meeting of the School Trustees, 1885 by Robert Harris

Progress, Not So Much

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