#i mean. my quickly-written humor fics get way more hits and mass appeal than my painstakingly crafted ones

[crimeronan]

i keep reading thinkpieces and critiques of current mainstream fiction & how fandom has influenced mainstream lit and vice versa, n some of them make salient points about how fanfic does and doesn't prime a person for writing original fiction, etc. and some of them are very "fanfic has poisoned and corrupted the youths" and "we are rotting our brains" and "old man yells at cloud." and throughout all of this i just have the unshakable feeling that no matter what side of the "culture war" (if.... it can even be called that....) u fall on, these thinkpieces are typically missing two of the most important explanations for Why The Mainstream Market Is How It Is. which have very little to do with fanfic.

1. publishers are looking for books that are easy to read, easy to hype, and easy to mass produce. great insightful well-crafted works of subversive literature are not this. cute romcom tropey fluff IS this.

and perhaps most importantly,

2. most professional writers are not very good.

#please embrace 2 and it will make u feel much better. books have never needed to be good to get published. #there is an oversaturation of books that are easy to read and fun and shallow because. most people. dont like reading #most people do not like laboring to get thru a book. they buy stuff that does not require this #therefore the market for shallow fluff is 10000000x bigger than the market for the really meaty shit. #i mean. my quickly-written humor fics get way more hits and mass appeal than my painstakingly crafted ones #and i Promise theres fanfic with all the depth worldbuilding and characterization that ppl usually look for in original fiction. #conversely i Promise there are people who started in fanfic who uh. know how to... tell a story. #been thinkin about it as i poke at my original fiction draft today