Mother of God, is this the end of the mid market?
Frustratingly broad piece in the Economist that both Sabina and Tom linked on their Tumblrs. I posted my own two cents over on Tom's comment thread - a response to his commentary and to a comment by Mark - and I'm pasting the two cents here as well. I do think the decline of the mid market is significant where it happens (and potentially bad; e.g., can knock a Cassie or an Ashlee out of the business), but the questions really need to be: Which mid markets, where, and to what effect?
Agree with what Mark and Tom are saying, though, having delved into the piece, I'd say that the other bit that Tom quoted is far more important to the piece and, if true, to the world: that the midmarket cultural product is disappearing; that you've got niche markets and blockbusters and nothing in between. This is sort of what happened to the movies starting in the '60s when television stole the mid market - eliminated the middle budget movie, that is - and I think it made the movies a lot worse, though I certainly haven't thought through why it made the movies worse. But the mid market is where a Don Siegel movie starring Richard Widmark or a Robert Aldrich movie starring Burt Lancaster earns its bread and butter, and that's what got wiped out. In music, it means that people like Christina Milian in r&b and Deana Carter in country have nowhere to go if they don't hit big, unless they can find their way into a niche, which could well involve doing something other than what they'd been doing. Of course, they may want to do something else anyway, and Carter's first album for Vanguard was much better than the one she'd made previously for Arista. But to prosper at Vanguard, she may well end up having to go towards either the Neko Case market or the Rosanne Cash market, which would likely dull her down into someone's bad idea of prestige. Her second album for Vanguard was dulled down, a set of covers in subdued, tasteful settings that smothered her personality. (And for all I know that's exactly what she always wanted to do, and the subdued tastefulness emphasizes what she thinks is best in her personality.)
It's not a given that the middle will always be better: depends on the genre, the artists, the circumstances, what the niches seem to be demanding, what the larger markets seem to be demanding, etc. Also, different niche markets act differently, which brings us to the first passage highlighted by Tom. It's not written with precision; or it was edited poorly. "The audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot." Well, that's only partially true; it's composed of people who read a lot of novels, or, if they don't read a lot of novels, they read a lot of that obscure book's type of novel. Whereas a novel by Dan Brown will be read by (1) people who don't read a lot but did read The Da Vinci Code, (2) people who read a lot but not a lot of books, (3) people who read a lot of books but not a lot of fiction, (4) people who read a lot of novels but don't normally read mystery thrillers, (5) people who don't read a lot of novels except that they do read a fair amount of mystery thrillers, (6) people who read a lot of novels including a fair amount of mystery thrillers, (7) people who read a lot of mystery thrillers but not a lot of other types of novels, and (8) people who read a lot of mystery thrillers and a lot of other novels too. By the way, I'm probably somewhere between (2) and (3) in the amount of books, and a (5) when it comes to mystery reading (which means that I do read a fair number of books but most of the fiction I read is mysteries and/or thrillers). A problem in the passage is that the Economist writer isn't distinguishing among different behaviors in different niches. Is Mary Gaitskill an obscure writer? Well, not to people who read trade paperback fiction, who would have at least heard of her, but she would be to the average person on the street, or the average guy browsing my local branch library. But ten of the twelve copies of Veronica in the Denver Public Library system are checked out at the moment, so the book does have an ongoing constituency, even though the novel is a couple of years old.
But are readers of trade paperback fiction, which is generally marketed as "quality," especially willing to read non "hits" within trade paperback fiction? I'm counting books like Veronica a hit but not counting Mary as a superstar in the way that a Pynchon is. My guess - emphasize guess - is that someone might be swayed by a good review to pick up a trade paperback that's far more obscure than Veronica, or one that a librarian has put on special display. But my guess is that a reader of mystery thrillers is more likely than a reader of trade paperback fiction to pick up a mystery thriller simply because it's a mystery thriller. So an obscure mystery thriller might be read by someone other than a reviewer, whereas a truly obscure trade paperback is less likely to.
But are mid level mystery thrillers also on the wane, leaving the market split between those who are hitting relatively big and books in quickie paperback series with anono-authors that don't have to sell much to break even? The Economist article is too broad in that it's implying that the middle is dropping out everywhere, that this is an overall result of diversity. But since there are different "middles," middling popular successes and middling niche successes, the article - which seems to be implying that anything in a niche is obscure - is applying a one-size-fits-all analysis to what may be disparate phenomena. If Dan Brown hadn't hit big he'd still have had a niche, where he might have done nicely; whereas Christina Milian and Deana Carter have no niche, from what I can tell.
What about indie and MySpace bands? Are they in the same boom-or-nothing situation that I'm postulating for trade paperbacks? Back in the mid '80s I was thinking of the crowd for Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü consisting of explorer sorts, who'd make it a point to look for other bands in the musical neighborhood, whether there was a buzz for those bands or not, going for indie cassettes, even. Of course, I might not have been right. In any event, what about the crowd for Animal Collective and Radiohead? Are they going for the less-known too? There doesn't seem to be a cheapo indie market equivalent to the market for, say, cheapo horror thrillers.
Agree with what Mark and Tom are saying, though, having delved into the piece, I'd say that the other bit that Tom quoted is far more important to the piece and, if true, to the world: that the midmarket cultural product is disappearing; that you've got niche markets and blockbusters and nothing in between. This is sort of what happened to the movies starting in the '60s when television stole the mid market - eliminated the middle budget movie, that is - and I think it made the movies a lot worse, though I certainly haven't thought through why it made the movies worse. But the mid market is where a Don Siegel movie starring Richard Widmark or a Robert Aldrich movie starring Burt Lancaster earns its bread and butter, and that's what got wiped out. In music, it means that people like Christina Milian in r&b and Deana Carter in country have nowhere to go if they don't hit big, unless they can find their way into a niche, which could well involve doing something other than what they'd been doing. Of course, they may want to do something else anyway, and Carter's first album for Vanguard was much better than the one she'd made previously for Arista. But to prosper at Vanguard, she may well end up having to go towards either the Neko Case market or the Rosanne Cash market, which would likely dull her down into someone's bad idea of prestige. Her second album for Vanguard was dulled down, a set of covers in subdued, tasteful settings that smothered her personality. (And for all I know that's exactly what she always wanted to do, and the subdued tastefulness emphasizes what she thinks is best in her personality.)
It's not a given that the middle will always be better: depends on the genre, the artists, the circumstances, what the niches seem to be demanding, what the larger markets seem to be demanding, etc. Also, different niche markets act differently, which brings us to the first passage highlighted by Tom. It's not written with precision; or it was edited poorly. "The audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot." Well, that's only partially true; it's composed of people who read a lot of novels, or, if they don't read a lot of novels, they read a lot of that obscure book's type of novel. Whereas a novel by Dan Brown will be read by (1) people who don't read a lot but did read The Da Vinci Code, (2) people who read a lot but not a lot of books, (3) people who read a lot of books but not a lot of fiction, (4) people who read a lot of novels but don't normally read mystery thrillers, (5) people who don't read a lot of novels except that they do read a fair amount of mystery thrillers, (6) people who read a lot of novels including a fair amount of mystery thrillers, (7) people who read a lot of mystery thrillers but not a lot of other types of novels, and (8) people who read a lot of mystery thrillers and a lot of other novels too. By the way, I'm probably somewhere between (2) and (3) in the amount of books, and a (5) when it comes to mystery reading (which means that I do read a fair number of books but most of the fiction I read is mysteries and/or thrillers). A problem in the passage is that the Economist writer isn't distinguishing among different behaviors in different niches. Is Mary Gaitskill an obscure writer? Well, not to people who read trade paperback fiction, who would have at least heard of her, but she would be to the average person on the street, or the average guy browsing my local branch library. But ten of the twelve copies of Veronica in the Denver Public Library system are checked out at the moment, so the book does have an ongoing constituency, even though the novel is a couple of years old.
But are readers of trade paperback fiction, which is generally marketed as "quality," especially willing to read non "hits" within trade paperback fiction? I'm counting books like Veronica a hit but not counting Mary as a superstar in the way that a Pynchon is. My guess - emphasize guess - is that someone might be swayed by a good review to pick up a trade paperback that's far more obscure than Veronica, or one that a librarian has put on special display. But my guess is that a reader of mystery thrillers is more likely than a reader of trade paperback fiction to pick up a mystery thriller simply because it's a mystery thriller. So an obscure mystery thriller might be read by someone other than a reviewer, whereas a truly obscure trade paperback is less likely to.
But are mid level mystery thrillers also on the wane, leaving the market split between those who are hitting relatively big and books in quickie paperback series with anono-authors that don't have to sell much to break even? The Economist article is too broad in that it's implying that the middle is dropping out everywhere, that this is an overall result of diversity. But since there are different "middles," middling popular successes and middling niche successes, the article - which seems to be implying that anything in a niche is obscure - is applying a one-size-fits-all analysis to what may be disparate phenomena. If Dan Brown hadn't hit big he'd still have had a niche, where he might have done nicely; whereas Christina Milian and Deana Carter have no niche, from what I can tell.
What about indie and MySpace bands? Are they in the same boom-or-nothing situation that I'm postulating for trade paperbacks? Back in the mid '80s I was thinking of the crowd for Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü consisting of explorer sorts, who'd make it a point to look for other bands in the musical neighborhood, whether there was a buzz for those bands or not, going for indie cassettes, even. Of course, I might not have been right. In any event, what about the crowd for Animal Collective and Radiohead? Are they going for the less-known too? There doesn't seem to be a cheapo indie market equivalent to the market for, say, cheapo horror thrillers.