The Publishing Industry
erikhoel.substack.com
erikhoel.substack.com
In a perfect world, gatekeepers should be neutral observers of an external reality, expert cherry pickers who would detect and promote the best; in the real world, they influence and shape reality.
"MFA" is much talked about in the article but never spelled out. It means "Master of Fine Arts" and is like an MBA for aspiring artists -- or, put it another way, a kind of training camp on how to pass the gatekeepers.
In another article [1], the same author discusses whether MFAs have "swallowed literature". Indeed, having all wannabee authors go through the same training can result in uniformization; and worse, it can produce "perfect candidates" who lack substance.
The best writers are inspired by the life they lived and the tragedies and successes they went through. When every novel sounds like a story from the New Yorker, with perfect language, perfect syntax, and perfect, respectable morals, we have a problem.
[1] https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/how-the-mfa-swallowed-litera...
> Faulkner didn’t finish high school, recent research shows Woolf took some classes in the classics and literature but was mostly homeschooled, Dostoevsky had a degree in engineering. Joyce did major in literature, but even he entered medical school (before leaving), and also failed multiple classes in his undergraduate days. Not one of these great writers would now be accepted to any MFA in the country.
I'm not sure what the modern equivalent would be, but clearly doing the usual round of agents etc wouldn't be it.
Joyce got almost nowhere until he was promoted by Ezra Pound, who was a Significant Figure on the literary scene.
I don't know about Faulkner, but Dostoevsky also came from a scene and - after some really bad times - made an impression when Crime and Punishment was serialised in a magazine.
So I don't think the MFA issue is the problem. The issue is more that literary scenes don't really exist any more, in the sense of groups of people who all know each other and have common values.
The 2022 publisher pipeline is very much just a content creation business with no higher aspirations. The gatekeeping steps - MFAs included - mostly exist to extract cash from the hopeful, not to curate quality.
> On average, these MFA programs are sending a generation of aspiring artists into debt for often zero financial return. Before MFAs, starving artists simply didn’t have any money. Now, starving artists have massive debt.
But that's not true of the other gatekeepers? Publishers make money if books sell. Ditto agents. Blurb writers work for free (in general). If they don't curate quality, they certainly think they do.
This is a very good point. It's especially striking in visual arts; we used to have groups of more or less young people obsessed with certain ideas and aesthetics. They would meet up in old Parisian flats, write manifestos and plot against their rivals. Nowadays it's all about individual genius. I'm not making a judgement here-- it simply seems we've lost a sense of community attached to this (which certainly relates to the broader social fabric too).
I guess you could say furries are an art movement in this regard. Though they meet up sometimes (I guess), when they do it's not really the same thing. They communicate through a Discord server; it's no longer a public forum, it has become an echo chamber.
If you self-publish, you have to anticipate the tastes of readers. There are millions of them; you have to reach the right ones. The best and the worst are out there, and sometimes the best for one genre are not the right readers for your book. Hit the wrong crowd, and you'll (arguably deservedly) get lackluster reviews.
As a no-name self-pubber, you'll also have to price your first book low--which itself is tricky, because the most price-sensitive readers are not the ones you really want... at some point you run into the boos from the cheap seats problem... so there's a fine line, in discounting, between rewarding early adopters (which you must do) and courting readers who won't be invested enough in your book to generate desirable word-of-mouth, and who might leave lousy reviews.
Ultimately, if you self-publish, you're betting on readers--you're betting on people with no status (nobodies like you and I and 99% of authors; mostly under-25, 75% female) but who are (of course) just as smart as the literati, and who actually read. They will push your book, but they're not influencers or "book buzz" people, so it will happen slowly (the best you can hope for is a slow exponential).
Or you can aim for trade publishing. In that case, you're betting your career on a small number of expensively educated and overly connected people who haven't read for pleasure--haven't read deeply at all; reading for work at a 45-minutes-per-book pace doesn't count--since... well, since they were under-25 nobodies with no social status.
If you do trade publishing, you have to give up on the idea of "great literature". Don't write books you love; write books people will show to their bosses, because that's what you need to get through... a manuscript that people aren't afraid to show to the next person up the chain... and it takes several decision-makers to give your book the nod to even have a chance at playing.
And yeah... MFA fiction is quite a plague. If you write enough books that nobody reads but lots of people claim to read, you can get a prestigious job where you teach other people how to write books that nobody will read. Where have we seen this before?
Before that, it had been refused by all the publishing houses I sent it to (10 of them); and the experience was rather unpleasant. There are no agents in France (the market is too small); authors send their works to publishers, on paper (nobody accepts electronic versions), and then wait between 1 to 4 months for a response. Negative answers are just a polite "no" with never any justification, or ideas for improvements, etc. (Positive answers, I don't know.)
For my next book I don't think I will even attempt trade publishing; why print so many copies, send them via post, and wait three months. I'd rather spend the time and money on getting early reviews.
I understand the appeal of traditional publishing when the full power of an established house pushes a book everywhere and gets lots of press; but if you don't get the full treatment there is little point nowadays.
I have noticed that the most sure-fire way to become a board game designer in the space seems to be #1: volunteering all of your time manning booths at conventions for publishers until you're offered a job with them, and then work for them for a bit and eventually get a shot at one of your designs, or #2: starting a board game review and promotion channel, becoming friendly with publishers that way, and then eventually transition that into a job working for one of them (I've seen it happen to about a dozen people I know personally, but I can't really do the same, I already have a well-paying day job and I'm trying to do this on the side, not as a full-time vocation).
So the easiest path to being a game designer is to not be a game designer but do something adjacent, then eventually you're given a chance to be a game designer.
The most recent proof of this path to success is Roy Cannaday, who edits and stars in videos for the largest board game channel, The Dice Tower. He built up a name for himself over several years by making videos, and that let him get his own game, Last Light in front of other publishers, found one willing to go for it, and it found major success in crowdfunding (raised $500k, which is a major success even for popular designers...and also more than the previous three Kickstarter campaigns by the same publisher combined) in part because everyone knew who he was from his videos and it was talked up by other people who have made it in the industry. And this is his first design.
Thankfully I don't think there's an "MFA" equivalent. There's no prestigious board game design school to go to :).
There's also the Kickstarter route (i.e. the self-pub equivalent), but that has it's own set of pitfalls, especially now that shipping containers have quadrupled in price in the past two years. And also it's an order of magnitude more work than just designing and pitching to publishers.
The one game I did get signed was kind of by accident. I knew an established game designer through a friend, and had given him a prototype that I had only playtested a few times and asked him to play it (and a couple other games) and give me some feedback. Turns out six months later he decided to form his own small publishing studio and said "The more we play this game the more we liked it, can I sign it?"
Which again leads more evidence that it's who you know, not how good or polished a game is. I've got other prototypes I think are stronger designs that have gotten a lot more time and attention that I haven't been able to convince publishers to even take a prototype to evaluate, including one that was a finalist in a game design competition that also won a slot in an online pitching event to pitch to 30 publishers at once, and no interest.
The article did help give me some ideas for how to increase my chances, and it's become pretty clear I need to start writing articles and start putting them out there, maybe do my own substack. Probably should start making more videos also but I really don't have time to edit those.
And also don't let not having got past the gatekeepers yet get to me. I kind of let that happen a bit since I've tried for six years and several of my friends have had much better luck than I have had, in less time (but they did have more focused and dedicated effort towards it), but I need to get over it and not let it sabotage my efforts.
It's true that shipping costs from China have kind of exploded, but you can find manufacturers in the US or Canada for small series / prototypes; and there are always slow routes that cost less.
I think it's worth trying if you have something that you know works.
I was hoping I could not have to worry about that and just use a publisher. I might actually have been further along if not for the pandemic. I was starting to build up my network a decent amount but then all conventions stopped happening with the pandemic and that killed all my momentum.
Some people converted their games to digital versions (using something like Tabletop Simulator) and kept pitching virtually, and I did a little of that, but not enough. For a while it was all I could do to just to keep the family afloat during the first year of that pandemic, as we lost almost all of my wife's income.
I am considering maybe doing a crowdsale through TheGameCrafter at some point, as they can handle the manufacturing and distribution easily, but it'll be more expensive for the end user and they get an order of magnitude less sales than on Kickstarter. But it could be more manageable for the time I have, and require no upfront cost.
Another thing that's started happening more on Kickstarter is people putting up Print and Play Roll and Write games, where you don't need anything manufactured and shipped, and some of them are doing well. I'd have to design a roll and write game first before I can do that though :).
I'm also planning to start going to board game conventions again this year, so maybe I can start rebuilding my network again. It's looking like I'll only have time to go to one, though, and it's not the best one for pitching games (that one is in a few weeks and I won't be able to take the time off from work to go to it, also the main game I want to pitch isn't quite ready for pitching yet).
Honestly it just seems like the board game industry is in kind of a messy situation right now, so my focus has shifted a bit. I can code video games, so I'm more focused on making video games again lately (which can easily explode into a ton of work and effort that way also, but at least I don't have to worry about the mess of physical manufacturing and self-publishing is super easy). It's looking like in some sectors there might still be a way to have a fairly simple game and make some good money, such as in the VR space.
My point was just that sometimes, it's worth it to just ignore the gatekeepers and go straight to the public, esp. when you're an expert and you have a good offering. But it's certainly complicated.