Paul Raven on the Genre Ghetto

Filed by: Darren on May 23, 2007 at 8:10
Filed In: Publishing

If you've been following the conversational thread that was kicked off by the On Fantasy... entry I posted the other day, you might also be interested to read Paul Raven's take on the 'Genre Ghetto' meme over at his Velcro-City Tourist Board blog.

Paul makes the very valid point that folks like us - genre fiction bloggers and blog-readers - probably have an overly-optimistic view of the health of the genre, as we're likely to be far more aware of the wealth of new talent on offer than the average genre book-buyer in the high-street might be.

And as it's the average etc. who gets to determine - through those all-conquering forces of supply and demand - just what gets published and therefore determines the availability and depth of the genre fiction field at high-street level, the question then becomes: how to avoid a situation whereby the interesting stuff published at the margins becomes marginalised even more, to the point of non-viability.

Paul argues for a more effective adoption of the technology available; which I totally agree with, hence all my recent talk of the need for increasingly sophisticated and trusted information filtering mechanisms (blogs, review websites, author recommendations of other author's work) to help the more discerning reader find the good stuff in the first place and then make an informed purchasing decision.

Paul also argues that:

"...mainstream publishing is a monoculture. Genre has always been somewhat of an independent annexe to it, and I think that in the long run its future survival is dependent on that becoming more the case than less...

He's saying that we dwellers-within should pick up the ghetto, carry it out of the city, then circle the wagons and start our own township out on the plains. Again, I'm all for that, although to be honest I was under the impression that this was pretty much happening already.

And I have always thought that there's far more mileage for genre publishers in concentrating on talking to genre readers and genre fans, than there is ever likely to be in any attempt to persuade some minute fraction of the mainstream readership to come on down to the ghetto they're so scared of and take a look around (we promise not to mug you while you're here - honest...) More on that in later posts, workload allowing.

Anyway, Paul's is a damn good contribution to the ongoing debate. Well worth a read.