Despite its conveniences, the 21st century does have weak points, at least to many. One of these is the drift of all life toward corporatization. Many people object to a world in which what ought to be made with passion is increasingly made with passion for nothing but a product's profitability. An exception to faceless corporate publishing, independent book publishers reflect the tradition of boutique houses each trying to find their own voice.
When it comes right down to it, the distinction between independent and conglomerate owned publishers is clear. The first has as its ultimate authority a person who entered the industry out of a passion, or at least interest, in books and reading. This offers just a little hope that final decisions about books will reflect that genuine interest, bringing to light the best manuscripts submitted to the marketplace and not just the likely fastest sellers.
Many of those who run these houses are graduates of our country's Master of Fine Arts programs. These programs have the traditional role of carrying on the teaching of the craftsmanship needed for the finest work in various arts. Conventionally, these graduates might have hoped for careers teaching their art as a college professor or perhaps high school teacher. This would pay the bills while the degreed artist grew steadily more renowned among his or her peers.
As the number of MFA graduates has grown, the limited number of teaching positions has come to many to spell the end of the old dream of a cushy teaching career. Meanwhile, outside academe but just barely, the size of audience for nearly all the fine arts is in a generational free fall. It grows clearer to each graduating class that the very infrastructure of fine arts needs support.
Increasingly, MFA graduates recognize the business of art as at least as urgent a problem as its teaching. There has long been a sense that the classical music audience has been declining, but the decline has become a free fall in this century. MFA programs keep adding new courses that teach the business of being a publisher.
Much of the difficulty comes from the online world. On the one hand, it has made arts available at the click of a mouse. On the other, it has proved difficult to monetize online work, and without monetization there is no way for artists and poets to make a living.
Some have warned of a possibly enduring result of modern electronically enhanced, big budget art, a result that should warn of a possibly grim future. There is evidence of a general fraying of the attention span, a decrease in the patience to focus. The grand, slow pacing of 1960s and 1970s films, those remembered for their cinematography, is lost on many young people. A three movement symphony simply has no chance to win someone with such over-stimulated nerves.
21st century technology takes, but it also gives new opportunities, some with great potential. Indie publishers might like to hearken back to the 1920s, and its heroic little magazines. Meanwhile, the future of the arts might belong to the self-publisher, building his or her book entirely online, who might not even have an MFA.
When it comes right down to it, the distinction between independent and conglomerate owned publishers is clear. The first has as its ultimate authority a person who entered the industry out of a passion, or at least interest, in books and reading. This offers just a little hope that final decisions about books will reflect that genuine interest, bringing to light the best manuscripts submitted to the marketplace and not just the likely fastest sellers.
Many of those who run these houses are graduates of our country's Master of Fine Arts programs. These programs have the traditional role of carrying on the teaching of the craftsmanship needed for the finest work in various arts. Conventionally, these graduates might have hoped for careers teaching their art as a college professor or perhaps high school teacher. This would pay the bills while the degreed artist grew steadily more renowned among his or her peers.
As the number of MFA graduates has grown, the limited number of teaching positions has come to many to spell the end of the old dream of a cushy teaching career. Meanwhile, outside academe but just barely, the size of audience for nearly all the fine arts is in a generational free fall. It grows clearer to each graduating class that the very infrastructure of fine arts needs support.
Increasingly, MFA graduates recognize the business of art as at least as urgent a problem as its teaching. There has long been a sense that the classical music audience has been declining, but the decline has become a free fall in this century. MFA programs keep adding new courses that teach the business of being a publisher.
Much of the difficulty comes from the online world. On the one hand, it has made arts available at the click of a mouse. On the other, it has proved difficult to monetize online work, and without monetization there is no way for artists and poets to make a living.
Some have warned of a possibly enduring result of modern electronically enhanced, big budget art, a result that should warn of a possibly grim future. There is evidence of a general fraying of the attention span, a decrease in the patience to focus. The grand, slow pacing of 1960s and 1970s films, those remembered for their cinematography, is lost on many young people. A three movement symphony simply has no chance to win someone with such over-stimulated nerves.
21st century technology takes, but it also gives new opportunities, some with great potential. Indie publishers might like to hearken back to the 1920s, and its heroic little magazines. Meanwhile, the future of the arts might belong to the self-publisher, building his or her book entirely online, who might not even have an MFA.
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