IWSG: What Needs to Change in the Publishing Industry

It's not only the first of the month but the first Wednesday of the month! So it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) monthly blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. 

Challenges

There've been a couple challenges I've had to deal with in my writing, especially in preparing my newest book of short fiction, "Bad Apps", for publication. That's been especially the case with finding a designer for my book's cover, in which I was about to hire one last week until there was a disagreement with the pricing. You can read that in more detail in my latest blog post outside of IWSG which I published (can you believe it?) only last night! So, that was kind of my other writing challenge that I had: my blog posts' schedules got backed up and so I've been trying to cram in both. I think a lot of it had to do with some bad sleep I was getting during the past week although that's improved, fortunately. 

My post from yesterday also includes my monthly Book-To-Movie review where I review a work of prose science fiction or fantasy and its movie adaptation. So, you may want to check it out, especially if you're into the speculative genres! 

IWSG Question for July

Each month, the IWSG blog hop offers an optional question to answer or for inspiration for writing on a relevant topic. This month's question is:  Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry? What I think can change about it is that, at least in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, big publishing houses can publish better work. 

For the last 10 years, it's seemed like major publishing houses have only put out speculative fiction that contains exploitive or shock-disgust scenes in it even when those scenes don't integrate with the story. It's become too much like Hollywood in that it can be great in it's entertaining aspect and, Hollywood aside, even in some cases it's intellectual or philosophical aspects, it wants to drop a stupid shock or disgust bomb on the reader! And why do they do that? Because, at least in my opinion, major publishing houses cater to mass consumerism like most of big business. They seem to have gone the way of profit more than culture and intellect lately. 

There are some great writers in the genre today but, in the last decade, it seems like the major publishing houses have been forcing them to their own motives for profit over quality work. I talk about this in an earlier post using a specific example of a Jeff VanderMeer book that I tried reading a few years ago, so you might want to check that out. 

The other thing I think can change about the publishing industry for science fiction and fantasy, especially horror, are the quality of book cover design. Major publishing companies need to get away from the over-sophistication of their books' covers and start using serious genre artists to make them. Lately, although this seems to be changing a bit in horror, the publishing industry seems to have been favouring photo-stock-based covers over covers made by hired artists who do their own work specifically for the book. Just as example, I've seen too many horror book cover illustrations that are either minimalist and so just barely reflect the genre with a very light indication of some monster or dark entity; or they depict nothing more than something like a bouquet of flowers against a black background. Come on! What an insult to many of us horror fans! 

It's similar with science fiction book covers. Again, just as an example, a science fiction novel's cover will show a farm house instead of a spaceship (or without one, considering the UFO/farm trope), or a human instead of an alien! That's why anytime I read new speculative fiction I try to check it out at the library first, and if no library in reach has a copy, then I may sacrifice 20 bucks and purchase a paperback version of the book. So, I think the publishing industry has to be true to the culture of the speculative genres more and not try to intellectualise their appearances on their covers. 

What do you do when you have trouble finding the right designer for your book's cover? What do you think the publishing industry can improve on? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts:  Rebecca Douglass, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Cathrina Constantine, and Jacqui Murray! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series  of novels!  

Until next time and, for those of you in the US, have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July and remember to celebrate our freedom to write and read what we want!