Great column, especially the part about books. I love your take on the changing habits and attitudes of the audience and how authors must change the way they write if they expect to attract readers. There is no reason at all why we cannot adapt - the dinosaur trad pubs be damned.
You have a talent for reading the zeitgeist and responding accordingly. You've been doing it awhile, I can tell.
Love the creator/audience bullet points. I hope more creators suck it up and take them to heart. Edwin Schlossberg’s prescient 1998 book, “Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century,” talks about meeting the audience where they are, but with skilled writing, production, etc., audiences can be elevated to have greater expectations of the medium, with the result that "great art is what challenges us to see ourselves and each other more clearly" and stresses there should be interaction to allow the audience to become part of a conversation, which was pre-social media at the time. So, the hook still reigns supreme to get the audience interested, then spoon feed unexpected devices, plot surprises, etc.; but the starting point is always knowing the audience and where you'd like to lead them. What might appear to be a creative manipulative sell-out, is really, as you say, adapting to the times and using your creativity to still be you, telling the story you want to tell, while obtaining a more enlightened audience—one you have elevated, through a few hours of escapism to a better understanding of humanity, and that's a win-win-win for the arts, the audience and the creator.
I am reminded of a time a young friend (Gen Z) of mine was driving a group of us somewhere, and, naturally, she was in control of the music. It felt like she never let a song play for even a minute before changing the track (except when someone put forth that he could sing along well to some of them).
I am going to assume this applies to others of her generation (or maybe it is just a Swiftie thing), but it is disheartening. It is not "skimming" but was like she was just trying to get emotional hits by a quick reminder of it. It is a behavior I cannot fathom and will never produce anything in support of, because it suggests a lack of value for the media.
I value what I create, stories and more, and want it to be valued by others. Of course what I want is irrelevant when it comes to the actions of others, but I cannot feed a behavior I find contrary to what I want. Adjusting the structure to keep things interesting and being more aggressive about removing what is not necessary, that is fine because I can be bored by my stories too and want to avoid that for others. But I cannot write for emotional hits and will happily tell people who want that kind of experience that my work is not for them. I welcome them to a try, but if it does not connect with them, I hope they find what will.
To be fair to my friend, I know her academic habits better than her media consumption behaviors, and based on those habits it is very reasonable what she did on that drive was the exception.
"I suffered through the two hours of ICK that was The Talented Mr. Ripley, I can sit through a dumb dirty cop movie on Netflix."
I too suffered through The Talented Mr. Ripley, and for that alone I cannot suffer through Matt Damon.
"But we all know what going to the movies actually means in 2026: $16 tickets, $20 in concessions, an hour of ads and trailers before the film even starts, someone’s kid kicking my seat, someone else checking their phone every three minutes, and the constant awareness that I’m trapped for three hours with strangers who may or may not know how to behave in public."
16$? Try 25$ for the matinee in the Chicago suburbs, 30-40$ in the city if its a new film since Lowes and AMC merged. Anything after six o'clock feels like buying a dirty hoe to fuck on a sticky, carpeted, soiled backseat that has had thousands of tricks ass crack on and being charged a premium. I also haven't been to the movies since Daybreakers, which was an absolute waste of a vampire flick and William Dafoe and I got those tickets for free, because they couldn't get anybody to pay for that dreck so AMC had people giving them away on the street and I got 4. Nobody wanted to go to the show after that - popcorn and drinks being 30 bucks THEN plus sit through a shit movie.
"His point: you don’t have to dumb it down. But you do have to acknowledge your audience in terms of what they’re willing to give you."
Pete Davidson has called this out several times and has said he's been boycotted for mentioning this. Let's see if the same happens for the dumb luck wonder twins (and one can hope).
"For years, traditional publishing has operated on a set of unspoken assumptions: novels should be 80,000-100,000 words. They should have three acts, internal monologue, scene-setting description, backstory delivered through memory or flashback. They should feel like investments—substantial objects that signal their importance through heft."
In fairness, this was the olden model from 1975-1999, because they wanted more pages in the pocket paperbacks. Even Sidney Sheldon bitched about it, because his later works were dragged out to make the word count. Since 2001, most want 60K words, and that's for a softback, roughly 230 pgs.
"Meanwhile, the most popular creators in “reader spaces” are skimming books, complaining there’s “too many words” in them, focusing on the aesthetics of sprayed edges and book covers, and counting the required tropes in a novel instead of patiently waiting for subtle themes to come together across 500 pages."
I got through a 800 pg book called Roots when I was 12. 12!!! And in two hours, no less. Yeah, fuck them. They don't enjoy reading. They enjoy content, and the fact that they grew up lacking the ability to write their names means they can't read well.
"They’re reading fanfiction that updates in 2,000-word chapters. They’re devouring web serials. They’re finishing books in a weekend because the book let them. It didn’t pad itself out to hit an arbitrary word count that makes it look serious on a shelf."
Real fan fic readers though will not read a novel unless its completed, because nobody wants to read a 200 chapter fan fic, which some of them start dragging out when the paid to read click shit hit sites like Wattpad.
"The Twitter Crush is 40,000 words."
Welcome to the club of great writers. In fairness, ALL of Jackie Collins' works before Chances were that or shorter. All Of Donald Goines' works were less than that and damn near 90% of 1970s Holloway House books. Ain't no shame in that. Back in the day those were called "paperbacks". The industry's obsession with skirting indies out of trade paperbacks, removing viable Hardback options (which also used to happen to 40K books - see Jackie Collins), and making everybody go 5.5.x8.5 softback created this "40K words is a novella" bullshit.
"Traditional publishing in 2026 would never let that through the door. Not because readers don’t want it—they demonstrably do—but because the gatekeepers have decided certain perspectives are too dangerous to platform."
No, it's not getting in the door because you have no virtue signaling politics that they can put on a pedestal, nor would you allow The Twitter Crush to be over edited, have no say in the book cover, no say in the blurbs, and have it thrown out with no PR, no marketing, no advertising, and give them 70%.
"The Rip does this. It’s a movie that knows you might be half-watching, so it stays relentlessly engaging. It doesn’t waste your evening with twenty minutes of setup before anything happens. It trusts you to follow along without hand-holding, but it also doesn’t punish you for glancing at your phone."
I don't care how you sell this, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are two hack ass actors that should not have had a 40 year career. Ben AFfleck RUINED Daredevil. When he died he will only be known for fucking Jennifer Lopez and being a drunk. When Matt Damon dies, he will be known as making the most boring action flicks in the entire world, and having the best cameo ever in EuroTrip, which is where he should have retired.
"What we’ve lost is the captive audience. The audience that had no choice but to sit through your self-indulgent pacing because there was nothing else on. The audience that bought your book because the bookstore only had twelve options and yours had the nicest cover."
Well, we've lost a captive engaged audience because they are tired of being sold countless products via social media by everybody and the kitchen sink, through ads and everything else. We've lost the captive audience in a stable economy that has extra money to spend on creatives, but that's an American problem too. Europe is not having the issues that America is having with literature, because they had sense to value their books long ago.
The experience is worse than it used to be, and the alternative is better than it ever was.
20 years ago you could take the whole family out for dinner and a film for fifty bucks. Now the film tickets alone are pushing a hundred. And you have no idea if the people around you will actually let you enjoy the film or ruin the experience. Or if the film will actually be any good.
Meanwhile, the alternative used to be waiting nine months to watch it on a grainy box TV...
...and now you can watch it at home three weeks later on a 40inch flatscreen that cost you the price of two trips to the cinema. The snacks are practically free and you're guaranteed a bit of peace. Well, almost guaranteed. If it's crap, you can switch over or go read a book.
In 20 years the cinema experience has gotten way worse, and the home alternative much better.
No wonder studios are pivoting to the home audience.
Hmmm... I appreciate that you're contextualizing your project into a larger narrative about the publishing industry, but I'd be shocked if an industry-wide pivot to web-serials happens or is the cure to what ails the business.
I'm firmly in the "culture is in bad shape because of the content" camp. Whenever something excellent with a real fanbase like Dune goes theatrical, it still crushes it. Big crowd pleasing things like an Avatar movie or Zootopia still crush it. But Hollywood has been jamming things like Emelia Perez down our throats and being surprised nobody pays to see it in theaters. They've also throughly destroyed flagpole IPs like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, super hero genre, and more and those ain't coming back. Billions of profits flushed.
Anecdotally, I live within walking distance of a three-screen theater that has $6 ticket Tuesdays. It also has retro nights where they play an old film that's voted for via social media, Back to the Future kind of thing. They also collaborate with film festivals, so that's another stream of income. Humans and art are adaptable and "adaptable" is not synonymous with living on the internet/streaming and embracing the attention span of a gold fish.
I think books are the same way. The simple truth is that when I walk into an indie book store these days, the shelves are piled high with absolute femme book club-focused SLOP. If anything, a critique of this phenom is that the industry IS trying to "meet readers where they are". The biz identified book club ladies as the primary reading demographic and is hyper catering almost all of literature to them. They are chasing a reliable $1 doing the same thing over and over again versus taking risks to make $10.
I don't think the answer is New School--I think it's Old School. Identify underserved demographics (like young men) and develop that market like a team of Mad Men from the 60s. The market potential is massive, you just need the right talented crew to roll up their sleeves, take the necessary risk, and charge. Just my thoughts.
I was lucky enough to ARC Twitter Crush and I loved how there were no easy answers. You just have to sit with the story and think.
Great column, especially the part about books. I love your take on the changing habits and attitudes of the audience and how authors must change the way they write if they expect to attract readers. There is no reason at all why we cannot adapt - the dinosaur trad pubs be damned.
You have a talent for reading the zeitgeist and responding accordingly. You've been doing it awhile, I can tell.
Love the creator/audience bullet points. I hope more creators suck it up and take them to heart. Edwin Schlossberg’s prescient 1998 book, “Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century,” talks about meeting the audience where they are, but with skilled writing, production, etc., audiences can be elevated to have greater expectations of the medium, with the result that "great art is what challenges us to see ourselves and each other more clearly" and stresses there should be interaction to allow the audience to become part of a conversation, which was pre-social media at the time. So, the hook still reigns supreme to get the audience interested, then spoon feed unexpected devices, plot surprises, etc.; but the starting point is always knowing the audience and where you'd like to lead them. What might appear to be a creative manipulative sell-out, is really, as you say, adapting to the times and using your creativity to still be you, telling the story you want to tell, while obtaining a more enlightened audience—one you have elevated, through a few hours of escapism to a better understanding of humanity, and that's a win-win-win for the arts, the audience and the creator.
I am reminded of a time a young friend (Gen Z) of mine was driving a group of us somewhere, and, naturally, she was in control of the music. It felt like she never let a song play for even a minute before changing the track (except when someone put forth that he could sing along well to some of them).
I am going to assume this applies to others of her generation (or maybe it is just a Swiftie thing), but it is disheartening. It is not "skimming" but was like she was just trying to get emotional hits by a quick reminder of it. It is a behavior I cannot fathom and will never produce anything in support of, because it suggests a lack of value for the media.
I value what I create, stories and more, and want it to be valued by others. Of course what I want is irrelevant when it comes to the actions of others, but I cannot feed a behavior I find contrary to what I want. Adjusting the structure to keep things interesting and being more aggressive about removing what is not necessary, that is fine because I can be bored by my stories too and want to avoid that for others. But I cannot write for emotional hits and will happily tell people who want that kind of experience that my work is not for them. I welcome them to a try, but if it does not connect with them, I hope they find what will.
To be fair to my friend, I know her academic habits better than her media consumption behaviors, and based on those habits it is very reasonable what she did on that drive was the exception.
"I suffered through the two hours of ICK that was The Talented Mr. Ripley, I can sit through a dumb dirty cop movie on Netflix."
I too suffered through The Talented Mr. Ripley, and for that alone I cannot suffer through Matt Damon.
"But we all know what going to the movies actually means in 2026: $16 tickets, $20 in concessions, an hour of ads and trailers before the film even starts, someone’s kid kicking my seat, someone else checking their phone every three minutes, and the constant awareness that I’m trapped for three hours with strangers who may or may not know how to behave in public."
16$? Try 25$ for the matinee in the Chicago suburbs, 30-40$ in the city if its a new film since Lowes and AMC merged. Anything after six o'clock feels like buying a dirty hoe to fuck on a sticky, carpeted, soiled backseat that has had thousands of tricks ass crack on and being charged a premium. I also haven't been to the movies since Daybreakers, which was an absolute waste of a vampire flick and William Dafoe and I got those tickets for free, because they couldn't get anybody to pay for that dreck so AMC had people giving them away on the street and I got 4. Nobody wanted to go to the show after that - popcorn and drinks being 30 bucks THEN plus sit through a shit movie.
"His point: you don’t have to dumb it down. But you do have to acknowledge your audience in terms of what they’re willing to give you."
Pete Davidson has called this out several times and has said he's been boycotted for mentioning this. Let's see if the same happens for the dumb luck wonder twins (and one can hope).
"For years, traditional publishing has operated on a set of unspoken assumptions: novels should be 80,000-100,000 words. They should have three acts, internal monologue, scene-setting description, backstory delivered through memory or flashback. They should feel like investments—substantial objects that signal their importance through heft."
In fairness, this was the olden model from 1975-1999, because they wanted more pages in the pocket paperbacks. Even Sidney Sheldon bitched about it, because his later works were dragged out to make the word count. Since 2001, most want 60K words, and that's for a softback, roughly 230 pgs.
"Meanwhile, the most popular creators in “reader spaces” are skimming books, complaining there’s “too many words” in them, focusing on the aesthetics of sprayed edges and book covers, and counting the required tropes in a novel instead of patiently waiting for subtle themes to come together across 500 pages."
I got through a 800 pg book called Roots when I was 12. 12!!! And in two hours, no less. Yeah, fuck them. They don't enjoy reading. They enjoy content, and the fact that they grew up lacking the ability to write their names means they can't read well.
"They’re reading fanfiction that updates in 2,000-word chapters. They’re devouring web serials. They’re finishing books in a weekend because the book let them. It didn’t pad itself out to hit an arbitrary word count that makes it look serious on a shelf."
Real fan fic readers though will not read a novel unless its completed, because nobody wants to read a 200 chapter fan fic, which some of them start dragging out when the paid to read click shit hit sites like Wattpad.
"The Twitter Crush is 40,000 words."
Welcome to the club of great writers. In fairness, ALL of Jackie Collins' works before Chances were that or shorter. All Of Donald Goines' works were less than that and damn near 90% of 1970s Holloway House books. Ain't no shame in that. Back in the day those were called "paperbacks". The industry's obsession with skirting indies out of trade paperbacks, removing viable Hardback options (which also used to happen to 40K books - see Jackie Collins), and making everybody go 5.5.x8.5 softback created this "40K words is a novella" bullshit.
"Traditional publishing in 2026 would never let that through the door. Not because readers don’t want it—they demonstrably do—but because the gatekeepers have decided certain perspectives are too dangerous to platform."
No, it's not getting in the door because you have no virtue signaling politics that they can put on a pedestal, nor would you allow The Twitter Crush to be over edited, have no say in the book cover, no say in the blurbs, and have it thrown out with no PR, no marketing, no advertising, and give them 70%.
"The Rip does this. It’s a movie that knows you might be half-watching, so it stays relentlessly engaging. It doesn’t waste your evening with twenty minutes of setup before anything happens. It trusts you to follow along without hand-holding, but it also doesn’t punish you for glancing at your phone."
I don't care how you sell this, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are two hack ass actors that should not have had a 40 year career. Ben AFfleck RUINED Daredevil. When he died he will only be known for fucking Jennifer Lopez and being a drunk. When Matt Damon dies, he will be known as making the most boring action flicks in the entire world, and having the best cameo ever in EuroTrip, which is where he should have retired.
"What we’ve lost is the captive audience. The audience that had no choice but to sit through your self-indulgent pacing because there was nothing else on. The audience that bought your book because the bookstore only had twelve options and yours had the nicest cover."
Well, we've lost a captive engaged audience because they are tired of being sold countless products via social media by everybody and the kitchen sink, through ads and everything else. We've lost the captive audience in a stable economy that has extra money to spend on creatives, but that's an American problem too. Europe is not having the issues that America is having with literature, because they had sense to value their books long ago.
Theatres are getting squeezed from both sides.
The experience is worse than it used to be, and the alternative is better than it ever was.
20 years ago you could take the whole family out for dinner and a film for fifty bucks. Now the film tickets alone are pushing a hundred. And you have no idea if the people around you will actually let you enjoy the film or ruin the experience. Or if the film will actually be any good.
Meanwhile, the alternative used to be waiting nine months to watch it on a grainy box TV...
...and now you can watch it at home three weeks later on a 40inch flatscreen that cost you the price of two trips to the cinema. The snacks are practically free and you're guaranteed a bit of peace. Well, almost guaranteed. If it's crap, you can switch over or go read a book.
In 20 years the cinema experience has gotten way worse, and the home alternative much better.
No wonder studios are pivoting to the home audience.
It's all they've got.
Exactly. It’s just a different world now and short of a technological cataclysm there’s no going back
Hmmm... I appreciate that you're contextualizing your project into a larger narrative about the publishing industry, but I'd be shocked if an industry-wide pivot to web-serials happens or is the cure to what ails the business.
I'm firmly in the "culture is in bad shape because of the content" camp. Whenever something excellent with a real fanbase like Dune goes theatrical, it still crushes it. Big crowd pleasing things like an Avatar movie or Zootopia still crush it. But Hollywood has been jamming things like Emelia Perez down our throats and being surprised nobody pays to see it in theaters. They've also throughly destroyed flagpole IPs like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, super hero genre, and more and those ain't coming back. Billions of profits flushed.
Anecdotally, I live within walking distance of a three-screen theater that has $6 ticket Tuesdays. It also has retro nights where they play an old film that's voted for via social media, Back to the Future kind of thing. They also collaborate with film festivals, so that's another stream of income. Humans and art are adaptable and "adaptable" is not synonymous with living on the internet/streaming and embracing the attention span of a gold fish.
I think books are the same way. The simple truth is that when I walk into an indie book store these days, the shelves are piled high with absolute femme book club-focused SLOP. If anything, a critique of this phenom is that the industry IS trying to "meet readers where they are". The biz identified book club ladies as the primary reading demographic and is hyper catering almost all of literature to them. They are chasing a reliable $1 doing the same thing over and over again versus taking risks to make $10.
I don't think the answer is New School--I think it's Old School. Identify underserved demographics (like young men) and develop that market like a team of Mad Men from the 60s. The market potential is massive, you just need the right talented crew to roll up their sleeves, take the necessary risk, and charge. Just my thoughts.