The Insanity Defense

Okay, so remember how I offered interviews and cross promotion and stuff? Well, one person's moved on that so far. You can see the resultant guest blog post here. It's chock full of my usual great advice, extreme hyperbole, and randomly inserted foul language. I've even been told that I've covered the topic in mustard and put it to bed. If you can figure out what that means without any help, you deserve a cookie.

Anyway, today I'd like to discuss something that's only tangentially related to Publishing. Unless you happen to be Seth Godin, in which case you probably get this sort of thing every day of the week from publishers. It's a little thing I like to call the Insanity Defense. Essentially, it's a method of "winning" every debate no matter how badly you've been outmaneuvered by claiming that the other party is crazy. This is especially easy to do if the person on the other side of the table is actually saying something new or significant. No matter how foolish "classic wisdom" can be, most people will unerringly take it over a well reasoned argument. Here's a few recent examples from my own life.

Example 1: I go to get something to drink one night and my mother is watching TV. It's a Geico commercial parodying the antique road show but doesn't really say anything about Geico until the very last second, and then it's just the name.

Me: Man, what a failure of a commercial. They didn't even try and sell us anything.
Mom: It's not a failure. All we have to do is remember who they are.
Me: Really? When was the last time you changed insurance?
Mom: Before you were born.
Me: I see, I see. And when have you ever changed because of a commercial?
Mom: Well, never.
Me: Fascinating. Do you know the difference between one company and another?
Mom: Not really.
Me: And how many insurance companies can you actually name?
Mom: Well, Geico. And Metlife.
Me: So the commercial which just ended and the one you've had for at least a quarter century. Anything else?
Mom: Allstate. And that one with the hands.
Me: That is Allstate.
Mom: Oh.
(Pause)
Mom: How about that woman with the face?
Me: The one Jesse hates? Progressive.
Mom: I think that's it.
Me: And how many insurance commercials have you seen in your life?
Mom: At least fifteen every night on prime time TV alone. Tens of thousands, easily.
Me: And you're going to defend their efficacy after everything you just said?
Mom: You're crazy. Of course they work. I mean, that's a given.

Really? It is? What if insurance sells because you're legally obligated to have car insurance if you drive a car? Just a thought.

Here's another- I was reading the Onion a week or so ago in the school computer lab before a class. The girl who sits next to me saw what I was looking at, an article with a name like "Kim Jong Un Privately Doubts He's Crazy Enough to run North Korea"

Her: What's that?
Me: The Onion.
Her: And what's the onion?
Me: It's a vegetable. Tends to make people cry. Delicious when sauteed.
Her: You know what I mean. Is that article for real?
(pause)
Me: The Onion is comprised of humorously false news stories.
Her: Well that's stupid. Why waste your time with fake news?
Me: They might be made up, but they can still be significant.
Her: Nothing fake can have significance.
Me: Didn't you used to teach a highschool lit class? What exactly did you teach them? Because I'm guessing the works of Hemmingway and Shakespeare weren't much use seeing as how they're fake and all.
Her: You're crazy.

Huh. Coulda fooled me. Indeed, I must have fooled myself. Because I thought that was a pretty infallible argument that undercut her only stated reasoning (which was no reasoning at all but a hypocritical axiomatic statement). But I must be wrong.

How does this relate to publishing? Well, I mentioned Seth Godin before. He believe the whole infrastructure is inherently broken. I wouldn't go that far. Not every author is Seth Godin. They don't have the experience or desire or following to break free. The problem is, publishers know that and assume everything will continue exactly as it has because that's how it's supposed to be. And I think they're shooting themselves in the collective foot. Unsurprisingly the people most agressive in their belief that changes are coming are A) Agents who mostly use it as a method to try and negotiate better contracts for their authors (e.g. e-book royalty rates should be higher because we don't need you to publish it.) and B) The tech crews, who are apparently the driving force behind eliminating "windowing"- releasing the e-bok after the hardcover for fear it would cannibalize sales. However, I've only seen a handful of people within the industry who look even farther than costs or methods of production or release dates. And you know what? Depending on how prominent e-books become and how well publishers shift in the future, the business might continue almost unchanged. One department's budget gets slashed and given to another. Fewer dollars on production, more on editorial or marketing. But it could also overturn the whole structure. I don't know that I'd go as far as Godin in saying that it's fundamentally broken, but I have a mental image of a time where publishers work on COMMISSION in a SUPPORT ROLE while AUTHORS retain COPYRIGHT. Naturally, most people I talk to think this is crazy. Even suggesting higher e-book royalties is crazy in their eyes. Even my feeling that sales departments are losing value as retail outlets shut down is viewed with suspicion even though it's the logical outcome and obvious parallels between companies like Borders and B&N can be drawn to FYE and Virgin music retailers. I think it's not crazy at all. And yet people tend to categorically reject not just the single most extreme end result I bothered to hypothesize, but every single element that could make it happen.

I dunno. Maybe I am crazy. Or maybe I just like to be prepared for whichever way the wind blows rather than assuming it will always be exactly the same. Either way, I beg you all to put the Insanity Defense aside, now and forever.

Join me next time in "A Corporate Fairy Tale" OR "Robin's Rules of Better Business"