The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #350 -- Fear the Future?

What is your biggest concern
about the future of publishing?

My biggest fear about the publishing world hasn't changed one little bit in the past fifteen years. It's the big houses' reliance on "epic" series that fill up the publishing schedules and leave new voices relegated to small houses where the largest percentage of readers are too lazy to look and will instead continue to take part sixteen of whatever epic series is being spoonfed to them.

I think the future of any kind of publishing of art (whether stories, music, movies, painting, mixed media, you name it, it counts) is ALWAYS dependent on new voices who bring change and growth and expansion and new ideas to the medium. ALWAYS.

It's the new voices that prompt old voices to listen and adapt. It's the new voices who push the envelop and seek out either romantic returns to old (i.e., new again) or mash-ups of what has gone before to create new out of old (something borrowed, something blue) or listening to current and changing viewpoints in culture to same something about the now, not just the then.

But with the guarrenteed sales of big, epic, "don't make me look for something else since I'm familiar with this" series, those new voices are far too often overlooked.

And if you ask me (which you did), I believe that the whole of the publishing world suffers for that.