What Simon Cowell Taught Me

Well, mostly when I watch Simon Cowell, he reminds me not to be a jerk. I mean, IMO it's possible to be honest without being condescending or mean. I know, I know... for many people his caustic remarks are what makes the show. I just think he comes off as an arrogant jerk.

But beyond lessons in manners, his new line this season (instead of calling people cruise-line singers or karaoke singers, or theme park singers, bar band singers) is to say, "There are thousands like you doing that on the internet."

Seriously, the ones I liked best the week of the top 24, he almost universally said something like this to them: It was good, but I can see that any day on YouTube. And maybe he's right. Dunno. I don't cruise YouTube searching for indie music often.

But I found his new stock criticism really interesting, because I heard him say it not long after reading a Publisher's Weekly article (that I can't find now!!!) that compared what's happening in publishing, to what's already happened in music. And I do think the comparison is valid. And it scares me a little. Okay, a lot.

Just like it became easier over the past decade or so for a singer to be their own recording engineer and producer using their laptop, just like venues like MySpace and YouTube made it possible for musicians to act as their own record labels and distributors, it's become relatively easy these days to publish a novel. That is, there are many self-publishing options as well as a plethora of small, digital-first (or digital only) publishers.

Anyone who can get their opus down on paper (and by paper, I mean typed into the computer), can be a published novelist. Easy peasy. Not that it's easy to write a novel. I don't mean to trivialize what a huge accomplishment it is to finish a novel. But once it's written if you're determined to have it published, you will find a route to do it. (Whether you'll get paid or people will buy it is another matter.)

What I fear, somewhat, is that the already very crowded and saturated book market will become so crowded that it will become virtually impossible for any one book to stand out in the crowd, and that with so many more books published each year, the odds that readers will find or buy your book will go down dramatically. (And let's face it, even in the "old world" of publishing, the odds were pretty bad.)

Anyone who's taken Econ 101 knows that the law of supply and demand means this will devalue books. Just look at the recent battles in publishing over the deep discounts on hard covers and the pricing of e-books as evidence that I'm not the only one worried about this. And for those of you wanting an Econ 101 refresher... if demand stays constant, while supply goes up, prices will go down. (If you could find diamonds in your back yard, they wouldn't be so expensive.) And I fail to see any reason why the demand for reading will go up, simply because there are more books published... Maybe a little. But I fear the volume increase won't be enough to make up for the difference and that to get readers to try new authors the books will have to be virtually free, making it even harder than it already is to earn a living as a novelist.

And while many claim the above mentioned changes have been positive for musicians, it has to be pointed out that musicians also earn part of their living from performing. For writers, publishing is the only source of earning money from their creations. People don't go to concerts or bars to dance to the latest unknown authors reading...

But that's all doom and gloom. I could totally be wrong. I lack a crystal ball. (It's in the shop.) And on the positive side, if one believes that quality always wins out in the end and that word of mouth sells books, then perhaps nothing will change that much. The creme will rise to the top of the ever-expanding pack (vat of milk?) and the best books will still sell well, in the same way books in the traditional publishing world had to rise above the pack to be published by an old skool publisher in the first place.

And there's the real lesson in Cowell's new stock criticism: be different, be better, be unique. Don't be the same as the other thousands of books he read on the internet.