In this NYTimes article, it addresses the very idea of a "niche" world just like The Long Tail speaks of.
This article is about "self-publishing" and how easy it is to do these days. Not only that, the negative connotation that was once associated with "self-publishing" is fading in an entertainment world that has its users, average people, giving us content in any form or method online.
Just as the article states,
"In this time of Twitter feeds and self-designed Snapfish albums and personal YouTube channels, it’s hard to remember the stigma that once attached to self-publishing. But it was very real."
"But times have changed, and radically. Last year, according to the Bowker bibliographic company, 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers. (A microniche, I imagine, is a shade bigger than a self.) "
All throughout this article, it just demonstrates the amazing power of the individual creator to, once again, put their work out there and even if it's small, low-profit, and barely gets noticed, it is "crafty and can beat big and branded." It's honestly very impressive to me. I like user-generated content, mainly for my own personal entertainment.
So does this make anyone credible like a writer? Not having to go through a publisher, will the users who read this content think a bit less of it? For school, formal, or historical reading, is it good people create books that may not be factually correct?
Either way, this is just ANOTHER example of how niche content is taking over, and the best-sellers may just one day come from a online shelf of "self-published" digital books. Who knows?
As IndieReader, an online source for self-published books, puts it, “Think of these books like handmade goods, produced in small numbers, instead of the mass-marketed stuff you’d find at a superstore.”
2 comments:
the internet blogging or posts are about the same as word of mouth. I mean you can take or leave what one person says. I do not believe that it is less credible if the average person says it verses an expert. But in a society where education and titles are status symbols people will only accept what someone of greater stature says.
Its not so much who said what it is more important if there has been research done to back up whatever was published.
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