"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." (Boswell's Life of Johnson)
Like many writers, I am adept at finding ways to avoid whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing at a given moment. This diary should have been about my attempts to get my gardening memoir in front of friends, relatives, critics, colleagues, and eventually, agents and editors. But one of the commenters on the last installment of Confessions of a Blockhead gave me something to think about: is Daily Kos a model for the publishing industry, and if so, what can we learn from it?
I'd like to pose these questions about the publishing environment here at Daily Kos:
Why do people write diaries?
Why do people read diaries, or more accurately, how do people decide what diaries to read?
How do we measure success?
Is there anything in the answers to these questions that we can apply to the publishing industry?
Why do people write diaries? Well, we can rule out money, can't we? Or can we? I've seen a number of diaries that ask for money for good causes, good candidates, or hard luck stories. I don't think it's a major motivator here, though. Most DK diarists are trying to promulgate information or opinions. Writing a diary is a great way to clarify your own thinking on a topic, to force yourself to do some actual research, or just to vent in the company of like-minded people. Some writers are issuing calls to action: signatures on petitions, or phone calls to representatives. DK is unlike the publishing world in that there are almost no barriers to publication (the once-a-day rule, injunctions against verbal brutality, and similar strictures are pretty lenient.) There are no agents, no editors, nothing between you and your audience except – what? My next question examines the barriers to getting read on DK.
Why do Daily Kos members choose to read one diary over another? I've thought about this a lot during the past few years, and I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion. Here are some hypotheses, with parallels in the publishing industry:
Diaries by famous people get read. When Keith Olbermann or Alan Grayson or Bernie Sanders show up here at Daily Kos, they get read. In the publishing world, it's a lot easier to get a book contract if you have a famous name, especially if you're writing memoir or nonfiction in your field. A famous name doesn't guarantee a good book, but it gets you out there.
Some diarists are more equal than others. Front page diarists, of course, have a built-in readership advantage. They, and other well-known DK writers, have earned their reputation by consistently posting timely, well-written diaries over a long period. This has an exact parallel in book publishing: if you like one Robert Parker or Elmore Leonard or Stephenie Meyer book, you're far more likely to pick up another.
Diarists with a background in their subject matter are inherently more authoritative, and more likely to be read. The problem is, how do you know beforehand who's an expert, or at least, knowledgeable? Teacherken has come up with a good solution to this – guess what, he's a teacher. In book publishing, you can splash your credentials all over the back page or inside flap. Credentials also give you a leg up in terms of getting published in the first place. It's part of what the publishing industry calls having a platform. At Daily Kos, I think that authority is really more difficult to establish – you have to write a lot of diaries, and you have to tell a lot about yourself, for this to be a factor.
A catchy title gets your diary read. This is sometimes true, but not foolproof. I've seen a lot of interesting titles on diaries that slowly slide below the burnt orange "Hot Tags" bar without ever garnering a significant readership. I've also seen diaries with dull-as-ditchwater titles like "HR 232.3.45 Update" get dozens of readers and recs. In book publishing, catchy titles are important. Ironically, your catchy title might grab the attention of an agent or editor, but you should be prepared to have that wonderful, perfect title changed.
Good writing makes diaries popular. There's no way to gauge the quality of writing in a diary until you decide to read it (notice that I didn't say there's no way to gauge its popularity: more on that.) In fact, with due respect to my fellow diarists, the quality of writing here is all over the board. At Daily Kos, what people have to say is more important than how they say it. In book publishing, good writing is the bare minimum for acceptance (OK, there are exceptions, but you and I don't read those books,) To put it another way, in book publishing, good writing is usually necessary but never sufficient to get published or read. This is what causes so much heartache among rejected authors, who are confident in the quality of their writing, but clueless as to what other factors are being evaluated. It probably causes heartache here at DK, too.
A good rollover preview helps draw attention. The first few lines of your diary are called out when you rollover the title. This is an opportunity to grab people's attention right away, and I'm surprised DK diarists don't make more use of it. Some even leave it blank, which is kind of intriguing, too – you have to read the diary to find out what it's about. In all phases of book publication, that first sentence or paragraph is critical – you usually have just one chance to grab the agent's or editor's or reader's attention, and you shouldn't let it go to waste.
Readers are more likely to look at a popular diary (thereby making it even more popular). This is the classic chicken-and-egg situation. All of us are more likely to look at a diary that has generated a significant number of comments and recs than one that has not. Similarly, if a book generates a significant amount of buzz – if we keep hearing about it from friends, family members, neighbors, media – we're far more likely to at least consider reading it. This allows a graceful segue into our next question.
How is success measured at Daily Kos? Let's face it: the Recommended list is the equivalent of having a bestseller. I've made it exactly once, and I really don't know why. I sometimes think that getting on the rec list, or getting a book published, or getting a book on the bestseller list, is like predicting the weather: you have some idea of what's going to happen, but it's not certain, because there are too many variables in play. It's certainly the case in book publishing.
In 2006, Henry Holt spent about $2 million dollars, in advances and promotions, on a book called The Interpretation of Murder. (I know, I know – I never heard of it, either.) Holt positioned it as the next DaVinci Code. It made it up to 18 on the NYT Bestseller list, then slowly faded out of sight. John Sterling, president of the publishing company, told the Wall Street Journal that book publishing was a "roll of the dice," and went on to say, "I still marvel that despite everything we do, we just don’t know. It’s the wonderful thing and the agonizing thing about the business.” That makes me feel much better.
The rec list aside, it's interesting to see which diaries get lots of comments and recs, and in what proportion they are handed out. If I see a diary with lots of comments and a much smaller number of recommendations, my guess is that it's controversial or contrary in a way that most DK readers don't find appealing. If the number of recs is much higher than the number of comments, I assume the diary is a fairly straightforward statement of something that many DK readers agree with. If the number of comments and the number of recs are both high, the diary probably deals with a complex subject on which a lot readers have strong opinions. You have probably developed your own heuristics for analyzing diaries based on nothing more than the title, the number of comments, and the number of recs.
For me, real success at Daily Kos is to inspire, or at least instigate, some good, meaty, civil but lively conversations. I've had that pleasure over and over again. But I'd also like the pleasure of seeing my book out there in the real world. More on that in the next installment of Confessions of a Blockhead.