/lit/ - Literature

>>22610181
The music industry is the same

>>22610181
Are you a straight white male? Is your novel about anything other than race, gender and sexuality? If so, don't expect to be published in the the first place. Might as well just establish yourself as an independent writer if you have a unique voice worth hearing

>>22610194
>Are you a straight white male?

No

>Is your novel about anything other than race, gender and sexuality?

Unironically, no.

Things aren't like what you believe they are to be.

>>22610181
>>22610194
its not even about that. you guys are just mediocre. if you were worth it, youd have found the right agent, but all your potential agents correctly identified you as generic.

>>22610206
Most writers and artists only tend to be successful after they're dead

>>22610206
walk into any bookstore and tell me if 99% of new releases are "worth it"

>Chad Fucks Submissive Whore: The Novel #925843
>Shitty self-help garbage for NPCs
>Forgotten sitcom star reveals darkest secrets in memoir read only by 40 year old housewives
>YA fantasy novels mixed with monologues about racial oppression

>>22610181
At least you got something finished. You should be proud of yourself for that.

>>22610216
Literally walked into a bookstore just the other day. Grabbed a couple of books and read the blurbs. Literally, all of them were totally different books that were nothing alike. If you think the majority of books are what you described, then you haven't gone outside in a very long time

>>22610218
Thanks but I finish just about everything I begin so it doesnt really feel like anything more than something i normally do.
I shouldn't self pity on this board but I have nobody else to vent to about the industry and publishing. I hate it a lot. I feel like crying and/or shooting myself but that wont solve anything

>>22610209
no most of them tend to be unsuccessful period. only a few select become successful postmortem, but dont kid yourself

>>22610181
>Its like nobody cares about you at all

What a zoomer mentality. Of course they don’t care about you they care about money ie what products they can acquire and make the most profit on. You’re selling a product stop being so thin-skinned and desperate for validation.

>>22610181
That looks like a comfy apartment. Aside from that though, have you tried contacting your agent and asking for updates?

>>22610181
>you're very disposable
there are millions like you, anon. of course you are.

>>22610273
True

>>22610181
You just have to stay motivated and inspired. The "industry", whatever that means, will be what YOU make of it. I doubt Homer or Cervantes or Shakespeare or Melville were worried about "the industry" when they were writing. They were simply reacting to their environment, being guided by their native genius, and leaving their heart on the table every time that wrote a page.

>>22610206
yeah, because nothing generic and mediocre gets published anymore, right?

>>22610362
>I doubt Homer or Cervantes or Shakespeare or Melville were worried about "the industry" when they were writing.

How would you know that?

>>22610181
you're a good kid and an even better writer

Anon haven't you learnt?
In order to make things happen you have to PAY your agent
$500 minimum to make them interested
A few thousand to get a book edited
A few more thousands to deal with unforeseen problems, not their fault and not your fault but just the nature of the industry

>>22610407
Because Melville died a peniless drunk. Because Homer probably lived in the desert as a recluse. Because Shakespeare had the support system and nation behind him and that inspired him (not industry standard or wealth). Because Cervantes lived most of his life in poverty and obscurity.

>>22610436
>Because Shakespeare had the support system and nation behind him and that inspired him

He wasnt born with that backing you know

>>22610445
I know: he earned it.

>>22610448
Yeah so the point is maybe he worried about the industry beforehand. You dont know that

>>22610181
>Its like nobody cares about you at all
Yes, that's how it is. At least until you really prove yourself. You need to be proactive. It's the same everywhere else.
t. film industry guy

>>22610436
Shakespeare was literally working for a professional theatre company. He was a shareholder in that company. He was industry all the way. A professional writing for money, producing product for his company to sell. And he was very happy to sue anyone that tried to take a buck from him.

>>22610181
>it's almost like the gaping maw and endless gullet of capitalism does not weep for a single cog not being in use when it has endless supply of desperate and ambitious people trying to claw their way over a pile of collapsed husks to jump to its maw next
anon the industry only cares about you when it can peel money out of you or use your creative works as a medium to push their own bullshit to the masses
welcome to late stage capitalist dystopia, and no communism doesn't work any better just look at what they morphed into in russia and china

>>22610181
Just write more stories and books.

>>22610194
Mediocre straight white males will never get picked up over exotic identities. However publishing is a business and won't be able to resist a genuinely talented, experienced author. Solution? Whine less, write more.

>>22610209
Common yet brain-dead take.

>>22610227
Is it your first book? You should seriously check your expectations. Writing is a long term career. Sorry but your first book probably sucks shit and the industry has no reason not to treat you like a used diaper. No gold? No rainbows? Throw it out.

>>22610201
Not white male
Story explicitly about race

Yep we've got a modern author in our midst.

>wait my reading comprehension mistrad the second question
Triple confirmation

>>22610224
I walked into a bookstore having a sale last month. 90% of the books were shitty YA romance novels and the rest were a mix of self help books and ghostwritten autobiographies.

>>22610181
How did you even get an agent?

I went to a lit conference this summer where I pitched multiple novels in-person and had a half dozen agents express interest. So I sent follow-up emails with the samples they requested.

Fast forward 2 months and nothing. Not even a receipt email saying they'll look into the work. No response to the follow-up emails I sent 6 weeks later either.

Fuck this industry. I spend time and money on that conference when I could have stayed at home and got the same result.

>>22610224
I actually read contemporary books and he’s right. You have to dig to find something halfway interesting under the pile of that samey shit. It’s no conspiracy or secret what they push either they’re happily trumpeting that message out as part of their corporate plans for fuck’s sake.

>>22610840
The Nobel laureate some weeks ago was a straight white catholic male you retard. Yes, it’s harder if you’re a normal guy, but the industry is a lot more fucked than you think it is. You need to be a chosen roastoid yuppie and even then you’re totally disposable. Getting “good” doesn’t work either because almost nobody is able to identify good.

>>22610995
I went to two bookstores this weekend and I couldn't find any books that seemed to have any counter-culture vibe.

The conformity of art in 2023 helps make everything so boring. Just turn on the radio, it's all the same sounding shit. Where did bands go? Where did actual non-perfect voices go?
>2023
The algorithm guides people to the media those in charge want people to see. Why do you think some people are so heavily banned while others are given huge platforms...

i can identify good

>>22611154
it's more than some algorithm, it's the way the internet normalizes us
once upon a time, if you interacted with (other young) people from another school, you were meeting characters.
that can't quite develop the same way now

>>22610181
Yeah sucks to suck right?

t. mega successful published author, my agent is a hot babe just sucking my dick every day

>>22611173
Thank you for your valuable contribution.

>>22611166
That reminds me of when, in grade 7, we went to play soccer against another school... we got our asses kicked so hard because we never played by any rules, we didn't even have a goalie. It was a free-for-all, so when we played a team that had actually been coached on how to play, they whupped us like 8-1.
>2023
I do not even meet any interesting people at all anymore. Everyone is a robot working their 9-5 job and bitching about their mortgage or sports. NOBODY is interesting at all.

>>22611240
>I do not even meet any interesting people at all anymore. Everyone is a robot working their 9-5 job and bitching about their mortgage or sports. NOBODY is interesting at all.
How does one avoid this fate? I want to meet interesting, intellectually motivated people, not homeless drug addicts btw.

>>22610181
maybe write a book about it

>>22611268
The people I meet are generally upper-middle class, business owners, and millionaires.
>2023
All boring as fuck. One of the women I know is a stunningly beautiful woman with a father who is worth north of 50+ million dollars. She is always in a shit mood and has no hobbies other than trying to be a Kelowna Kardashian and she fails at that miserably because even as fake as fuck as Kelowna people are, people are still not entirely shameless here. (Mostly, but not entirely.)
>the secret to making friends
You don't make friends sitting across from someone, but side-by-side. You make friends by doing things with people. Since COVID, people have withdrawn, hobbies have less enthusiastic people and everything is seen through a political lens. Not to mention how people truly stick among "their own kind" and you have an even smaller pool of peers to hang out with. Of course, being into the arts while being a free-thinking 4channer is also extra difficult, as the entire arts scene is rife with wokeism social-hierarchy shit that demands you ALSO support putting tampons and maxipads in the men's restroom. If you hesitate to agree, you're a far-right nazi case closed.
>2024
A return to hipsterism is necessary for Canadian culture to survive, but everyone is so atomized and demoralized, and there are so few "affordable" neighbourhoods that could become bohemian, the end result is going to be a completely conformist Canada with all the culture coming from top-down through your phone algorithm. We are mostly already here.

you want to be part of the entertainment industry. first it's moronic
. second the industry has standards and the standard procedure is nepotism.

>>22611296
how do i live in BC as a broke writer? do the people working at grocery stores have to take a trainride into the city, or what?

>>22611296
Interesting. But why hipsterism? I would argue that hipsters were just as much affected, algorithm-brained consoomers as any of these people.

>>22611305
10 years ago a bartender could make $1000 a weekend and you could find a decent studio apartment, actually pretty stylish, for like $1,000 or so in downtown Vancouver.
>hipsters
Your average hipster was taking home like $3000-$4000 a month doing various jobs. I dated a woman who wrote for a local magazine, bartended and had minor roles in local TV and film, and she would average like $2000-$5000 a month and she shared a 2 bedroom with another women for around $1000 as her share of the rent. Keep in mind, these people had like 2 part-time jobs and maybe a side-hustle and had tons of extra cash.
>2023
I've been working various jobs and meeting people in the Kelowna area, and I can say there are so few actual hipsters here. The people you'd mistake for hipsters are generally all living at home, where you can't be a hipster and live at home, it is just not possible. However, in the "hipster" neighbourhoods in Kelowna, which is generally north of the cop shop and to the west of Glenmore, east of Water(Boomer) street, nobody can rent any 1 bedroom for less than like $2000 a month. You cannot have a bohemian neighbourhood if young people need a full time, 9-5 job just to afford rent while also having no extra spending money.
>2010ish
Hard to describe to people just how much cheaper life was, but I ran with friends and dated women who had extra money at the end of the month while renting downtown and not even working full time.
>living as a broke writer
I knew a girl who wrote, but she was into some weird lesbian fan fiction shit so I didn't really click with her, but she did 2-3 gay weddings a month and with that money, working 2-3 days ( plus edit time ) she would pay her rent and have extra left over. I know she didn't make shit off her writing as of the mid 2010's, but she could be today and I wouldn't know.

>>22611333
Hipsterism was the greatest anti-corporate movement in my 45 years on this planet. The algorithm had not been perfected while hipsters were a cultural phenomenon.
>serendipity
The best way to describe hipsterism is to relate it to the word "serendipity", the meaning that is lost on a chin-to-chest society. Algorithms by nature do not allow for serendipity.
>2023
How many people will use their phones or whatever to look up what to do on a Friday night on the town?
>2010
Any day of the week you could walk outside of your place in downtown Vancouver and wander to see an art show, catch a street performance of some band, see a band at your local pub, and wander around and bump into the many friends that live in your same neighbourhood.

Even in your building, there were enough hipsters that people would leave their doors propped open, so that people on the floor could wander in with a drink in hand and discuss the latest music, or what's going on for that night... you know, asking your local friends rather than your fucking phone.
>hipsterism
You'll notice there will never be any real discussion of this culture, or if there is, it is all mockery. Maybe we need to mock it ironically to bring it back in style, because the alternative is this hyper-corporate dystopian hellscape where EVERYTHING is exactly as you expect it to be in 2023.

Hipsterism was just as much about being authentic as it was about being unironically fake. You can't be authentic without also admitting that you're being a try-hard, faking it until you make it, but the faking it "in your own way" is what made things so cool. Even if you were a dork, you were a dork in your own $10 vintage clothing way.
>2023
Vintage clothing is now the biggest fucking ripoff

>>22611305
Not Jason, but when i was living in BC i lived on a boat. You can buy old sailing boats for under 10k that provude enough space to live on, and from that point on dock fees only cost around $300 a month.

This isnt doable in Vancouver and Victoria anymore, but in smaller towns and cities its quite desirable. I was living in downtown Powell River for a while paying $400 every three months.

>>22611394
The former owner of spermshack dot com and I were chatting last year, and one of his bandmates lived on a boat in Salt Spring Island. Of course, Salt Spring island has also got fucked by the "housing crisis", and now there are equal parts RVs, small boats, and homeless people all over the Southern Gulf Islands... tons of break and enter thefts. Many people don't even report the thefts because there is nothing the cops can do.
>Nanaimo
The Nanaimo hipster scene is nothing but militant transexuals and queers, which are basically the entire art scene there. Communism coming out of Uvic renders anyone outside of the trans-commie-queer clique a nazi, so nobody is a hipster on Vancouver Island.
>Powell River
Powell River, once a haven of jacked up F150's flying rebel flags, is now a soft place full of Vancouverites who cashed out to the chinese, pushing the Powell Riverians into trailer parks and homelessness.
>B.C.
Canadian society is a giant ponzi scheme that requires a never-ending supply of bodies to keep the ship from sinking. Idealists who believe they can "be the change you want to see" are the people who end up on fentanyl and OD'ing out of utter despair when they realize they are never going to change shit when the entire country is a giant scam that requires you to conform or get fucked.
>living on a boat
Soon they will make living in RVs or boats, even if someone owns the land or waterfront, illegal. This is because the "housing crisis" is 100% intended.
>drug addicts
People who use drugs are generally quite intelligent people. Many of those intelligent people turn to despair when they start to understand just how rigged the entire system actually is, and they don't want to play the game anymore. Everything about Canadian society is finding a way to get a leg up on your competition, as the economic scheme of piling as many browns as possible into Canada has artificially increased the competition for everything.

some interesting insight.
similarly, in ~2010 i was living with weirdos in mtl, and life was good. slowly, everyone would be integrated into normie society. i held on a little longer via remote jobs (pre-covid), but now i'm considering selling my soul as well.

>>22611394
sounds great actually

>>22611438
>i was living with weirdos in mtl, and life was good. slowly, everyone would be integrated into normie society.
Tell us more, anon... the 00's and 10's were paradise compared to the completely fake Canada of 2023...

>>22611451
nothing interesting really. a bunch of nerds-- young graphic designers, writers and game devs being picked apart by their respective industries, and eventually finding something easier/comfier.
i miss living in a walkable city more than anything.

>>22611489
I knew a bunch of the people who worked at a game company in Yaletown:

https://nationalpost.com/business/local-business/independent-games-developer-shutters-yaletown-studio-150-employees-out-of-work

Heard many stories from the people in game development of how incestuous and scammy these companies are. I know other people in the gaming industry in Vancouver who work at a company that developed a hit mobile game you might have played. The woman I know at that company, when her game was a hit, she dumped her boyfriend of 10 years and hooked up with a game dev on her professional level and then he fired his team lead and put her into the position. The amount of backstabbing I've heard of in the game development industry is wild. I also know a CEO at a third game company in Vancouver and the guy has such a public woke face that he puts out on the internet but he is secretly based, because he knows if he spoke his mind at all, he'd be turfed out of the industry so fucking fast. I don't even think he runs his own social media, I think he just has some woke employee updating everything for him so he seems like a nice "normal" guy in 2023.

>>22611489
The best part about living in a walkable city is all of the activities at your doorstep and the friends you meet locally that you run into every day. Was so nice!

Now, it is just NPCs, everywhere...

>>22611510
oh yea,
it's like any corporate environment, but worse. as the industry is 'prestigious', competitive, and everyone knows everyone. bullying and exploitation is the norm.
not unlike working in publishing. whom my best friend and his wife still work in, respectively.

>>22611436
>>22611438
It’s so much worse in America. Genuinely I don’t understand how Americans can be so fucking stupid that they allow shit like this to happen every day without even caring. I can’t even really relate with the whole hipsters thing as a form of cultural non-conformity because in America they were very much conformists even back then. The left is a joke, I met with a woman yesterday who was telling me how celebrities are starting to stop flaunting their wealth online because we’ve achieved class consciousness and have been mocking them for it. I take it from your posts that you don’t hold left wing beliefs and who can blame you but I can assure you that for the genuine leftists the situation is as bad as your own. Every day I have to listen to basedbrain Destiny-style “takes” like that which are like being stabbed in the kidneys. A few of my genuinely leftists friends and I have come to the conclusion that serious engagement with politics is a dead letter for the left as all of the popular institutions have pivoted to race and gender struggles to remove class as it’s own distinct struggle thereby introducing divisions into class struggle itself. Politics has become an aesthetics for 90% of Americans and that’s usually the first step of outright fascism struggling to be born. Our period in history will likely go down as one of the most ideologically crazed and suffocating of history. Every day I pray for nuclear war.

>>22611533
>Our period in history will likely go down as one of the most ideologically crazed and suffocating of history. Every day I pray for nuclear war.

>>22611531
>as the industry is 'prestigious', competitive, and everyone knows everyone. bullying and exploitation is the norm.
not unlike working in publishing. whom my best friend and his wife still work in, respectively.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Canada_sub/comments/179iayk/ndp_convention_enforces_gender_parity_by_making/

Canada is obsessed with following the woke shibboleth, everyone acts and thinks the same now. It is so bizarre to even socialize because it is so predictable now what views people hold, it is everything that everyone gets through their phone screens.

We have to put down the phones. Retvrn to hipster.

>>22611533
i'd like to tell you you're just catching a lot of collateral from being online too often. grifters being amplified at a whim, disproportionate to how things really are.. but for some time now it's been dangerous feedback loop.
the bipartisan mindset (ego) has obviously been weaponized in the last 10 years, and it's truly affecting people.
not trying to lecture anyone on shit they already know, just emphasizing that.. i wanted to ignore it forever, but normies have been swept up in a way that's affecting my way of life. so, i agree (to some extent)
>>22611567
funny you mention it. just yesterday, we got talking about this sort of thing-- he was going off about if/when he finally makes a lead role, people are going to assume mandated diversity (he's brown). he works insane hours and does a great job, but he'll be questioning it

>>22611590
>weaponized ego
i mean, it's always been weaponized, but now with the help of data and algorithms.

>>22611567
>https://www.reddit.com/r/Canada_sub/comments/179iayk/ndp_convention_enforces_gender_parity_by_making/
is this real life

>>22611602
These are the types who are choosing which books to publish and promote in the mainstream...

I hate women.

>>22610181
How did you get the agent ?

>>22610201
They are actually. What do you know?

>>22610773
Good ones don’t either. I don’t know why it’s so hard for you people to accept that publishers largely are not in the business of publishing quality literature but rather in publishing propaganda. How is it not conceivable to you that the latter is more profitable?

>>22611142
Baby boomer and a well-known liberal propagandist despite being nominally Catholic. If you think you’ll get a fair look on that basis, you’re just naive.

>>22611142
Guarantee that "straight white catholic male" does not write anything that dissents and I GUARANTEE he bowed his head to BLM and praises all of the right talking points. It is all fake and gay.

>>22611533
America refuted class struggle in the 19th and 20th centuries. If you couldn’t get into college or make a good living as a tradesman, it was your own damn fault. Yeah, you were taken advantage of by owners of capital. So what? Such is the way of the world. Carpenters and plumbers bought mansions in America and still do. Meanwhile, blacks have pretty uniformly failed to secure so much as a remedial education. The left is retarded but it’s absolutely right to laser in on race over class. Even cultural boundaries are drawn a long racial lines and not class. It’s one of the primary markets of distinctness across peoples. If you’re still pushing for class consciousness you’re just an idiot. Sorry.

>>22611683
my white privilege has me convinced that the 'systemic' nature of racism/sexism (re opportunity) is an aftershock of times past. these things also plague communities of any race. overcorrecting for it, unnatural meddling, may cause unforeseen consequences.
not exactly disagreeing.. only suggesting that things are being misattributed. something like that

>>22611738
>overcorrecting for it, unnatural meddling, may cause unforeseen consequences.
Take a look around Canada, have things become better here in the last 20+ years?

>>22611752
our GDP is way up, man. that has to be good for someone.

>>22611768
There are only a few things I've noticed:
>more luxury cars
>more luxury condos
>complete death of Canadian culture
>12,500+ overdose deaths in B.C. since 2016
>massive increase in white homeless people

>>22611788
lol, yea. i was living in london (on) for a little while, and it's like a insane, smallscale version of this

>>22611902
You'd think some of our literature would reflect the massive changes in this country over the last 10-20 years?
>muh cbc books
Absolutely nothing remotely relevant. Let's see the next 10 books about le ebel whyte man and le noble savage!

>>22610181
go work as a janny some where and just write for the love of the game

>>22610181
Welcome to the real world
People idolize being creative but all it really means is being taken advantage of
The artist hates the businessman but the businessman rules the world

>>22611350
>>22611368
>>22611240
>>22611296
>>22611154
kill yourself

>>22612667
Projection

>>22612684
cringe

>>22612693
More projection

>>22612710
your book is shit and you should kill yourself

>>22612726
Which one?
>captcha g0y m4

>>22612795
I've only read your shitkickers book, and it was shit
If I wrote a book that shitty, I would kill myself.

>>22612837
Cool so what happens when Ken goes to return his shoes after the bike fight?

>>22610181
Why are you trying to get traditionally published? If you go the self publishing route, you'll make more money than all but the top 1% of published authors, and you'll have more fun too. Trad publishing is dying.

>>22613093
Probably a bot post

>>22612795
these fucking AI abandoned warehouses with etsy commercial pop art and neon neoretro decorations are made by a lame satan worshipper... they give of low frequency moloch vibrations

>>22611676
>Guarantee that "straight white catholic male" does not write anything that dissents
What makes you think anon is? Not every good piece of literature has to be political.
>It is all fake and gay
Mostly, yes.

>>22610181
I'm not trying to discourage you, but the more I learned about the current state of the industry from the writers actually in it, the less I wanted to be published traditionally. That you even got an agent is an accomplishment to be proud of, since it's the biggest hurdle after actually completing the book. But the agent then has to shop it around to different publishers where the average author has a roughly 1% chance per publisher of being accepted. Odds are a bit better with smaller publishers, but there's a tradeoff in money and marketing. You get an advance of $2-10K(not even all at once) while you edit and wait the year or two for your book to actually hit shelves, then if you fail to earn out like most debut novelists you don't get royalties. That's without getting into the changes a publisher may force on you, the social media presence that's now required, or the increasingly female leaning of the entire industry.

>>22610201
White writers are rare, that's why you see so many slavic, black and asian names on book covers these days.

>>22612837
>>22612726
Awww poor little incel hates on Jason Bryan!

>>22613950
The real one was a lot of fun to live in!

>>22614918
>you're an incel!
From a guy who looks like this

>>22614987
I mean, in that photo I was 43 and a father, not exactly putting much effort into my looks!

Definitely pulled more women when I peacocked it up at 35!

My knowledge could help any incel become a total pussy-slayer.
>tip #42069
Men need to find out what smells match their chemistry and work with it. If you have body odour, no amount of money or style or status will get you laid. Stinky people are just shit, nobody wants to be around some smelly fucker.
>shower
Basic hygiene and clean clothes is like 90% of the battle. You brush your teeth and wash your body and you probably don't even need any fucking cologne.
>however
If you want to give it a try, you don't need to bother with $100+ colognes. Use a scent bank and mix and match scents.

I shit you guys not, I did this exact thing and I found a light spray of basic DIRT smell, the smell of fresh earth, had women thinking it was some expensive shit. I would jest and say it was a new experimental Dior cologne and they'd be asking me all sorts of questions and thinking it was some sort of complex scent.
>dirt
No... it was just dirt. I would pull it out at the bar and show them, and they wouldn't believe me until I sprayed it on a napkin. DIRT! Yes ladies... you like dirt.