I think that the premise is that if you create something that pleases millions of people and makes lots of money, but doesn't fit the poster's definition of what's good, you have been dishonest.
Thank you for explaining, I wasn't getting it lol. My mind was like "dishonesty in writing?". But maybe he does mean something more specific, but I do not understand as it is like "dishonesty in painting". Like is it dishonest to use more red paint than blue paint? I cannot comprehend it. Maybe you're right--if so, thank you for saving my brain!
Can you conceive of a writer going along with hype that is created by their publishers? Can you conceive of advertising that makes something look better than it really is? Have you never seen a TV advert and then been disappointed when you got the product? Do you know how advertising affects the sales of products?
I know that, normally, advertising barely pays for itself. And if advertising is the worst "evil" or "deception" you can conceive of in writing (outside yellow journalism, Mein Kampf Part II, etc. of course) careers than you've got nothing to criticize. So what if some people exaggerate or downplay? It's ultimately the consumer that drives the market.
There is a mass of evidence that marketing affects what people buy. But you are generalising. Some things fail. And? I agree people buy what pleases them. And marketing affects what they think BEFORE they choose to buy it.
The biggest advertising, for things like big budget movies, usually pays for itself many times over. Why does it need to be the worst deception to matter? You said "I don't know how deception could make me a successful author." I'm just saying it could.
What's the deception? A movie with lots of guns and exploding helicopters usually has ads with guns and exploding helicopters. A movie claiming to have Benedict Cumberpatch in it usually has Benedict Cumberpatch in it. Where's the deception? YOU may be assuming that any advertisement contains the unsaid subtext, "This is a high-quality product that srwilson would approve of." But the rest of us don't assume that.
Marketing is the deception. Making something sound better than it is, even in a small degree, is a deception. I'm not making the assumptions. But if you think adverts don't have any "high-quality" subtext, then you are making an assumption. Plus, putting a product into people's mind is itself a successful way to market. If you mention something to people enough times, they do actually start to believe it is significant.
I think you misunderstand the point of advertising. It is supposed to make things look good. It's supposed to convince us that X is worth spending money on. Now if it turns out you go to the movie and then it turns out you don't actually like it? Well, the ads did their job. That's where your own common sense and judgement come into play. If the ads are trying to hype up something, and you know the people involved have a bad track record- well then there you go. Reason to doubt the ads.
So you would totally disapprove of marketing high OR low quality products, right? You disapprove of marketing anything at all? And of course advertisements don't have a high quality subtext, at least not the kind you mean. I assure you, I guarantee you, that no one who saw, say, an advertisement for Deadpool thought that it was going to be a quiet thought-provoking art film. Nobody. Not one single person.
So much this. Like with Transformers, as mentioned a little earlier. My expectations were to see a movie filled with giant robots beating the shit (coolant?) out of each other, and it delivered what it promised.
Oh, how I hope deception is a formula for success. I want to write fiction. Truth to tell, the stuff I’ve had the most fun writing is stuff I’ve made up. Please don’t tell my readers, should I ever have any.
If marketing applied equally to all available products, that would be fair. Otherwise, there should be no marketing. Then we rely on word of mouth. That's a fair method. Big marketing is very damaging to all the writers who don't have bags of money. Adverts have a "higher-quality" subtext, in that they make the product look better than it really is. Deadpool doesn't contradict that at all. The Last Jedi, however, does demonstrate that very well.
Supposed by who? The customer? Does the customer suppose that the product will be inferior to their expectation? Maybe you mean it's what the advertisers want, but it's not want the customer wants. What on earth do you mean about track record? Most people have no idea who is behind advertising when they watch it.
You are trying to inject morality into business. That's not how it works. Companies are going to do what makes them the most money (most without dipping to illegal means). Advertising is not illegal, so the bigger companies will be trying to shove their products at us via advertising. Maybe you do have a point, but that's not how the world works, and that's not how the world is going to work without some major changes. Advertising is a part of life, and ranting and railing about how the big bad companies are brainwashing the sheeple is over-simplistic and takes agency away from the individual.
If someone sees an advertisement for an X Men movie, their knowledge of the last X Men movie is their knowledge of the track record for X Men movies.
While I agree there are plenty of businesses that do not include right and wrong in their business plans, it's a short game, and probably why few companies survive past a few decades. But I'm not complaining. What great writing prompts exist in the evolution of evil.
Since when and why should marketing be qual? I would like to think I'm smart enough to still make my own decisions on which books I want to read. And just because you don't like the way a product was advertised compared to the results doesn't mean everyone shares your views. I get ads for The New Yorker and such all the time in my Facebook feed and email. I love The New Yorker. I don't think their adds are misrepresenting their product. And maybe those who do are not their intended audience. But in no way should a big publication like The New Yorker have to tone down their advertising because the small university publication can't afford to do the same. And who would police such a thing? I think your solution to what you think is unfair is even more unfair to the publishers and the masses. Publishing is not about being fair. It's still a business and always going to be a business. And I'm not saying this is the case with you or anyone else here, but a lot of time when people complain about the publishing world not being fair it's because they are struggling to break in. I think we all hope that our book deals will come with a big financial backing. And I doubt anyone who gets that thinks they got it unfairly. Success in publishing rarely has to do with dishonest practices which usually have to do with made up things in nonfiction. If you write a novel and a big publisher wants to spend a ton of money advertising your book, you haven't done anything wrong and either have they.
"Publishing is not a meritocracy." V.E. Schwab There is no limit to fairness. If marketing was limited to a certain dollar amount, rich extroverts who don't have to work and could afford to travel around to book stores would win and everyone would read their books. I'm 100% certain that publishing revenue would follow the same 80-20 rule it does now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle I guess you could make a law that an author could only talk about his book to so many people, or spend so many days traveling to talk. You could make it more fair by giving fewer days to better looking and more well spoken people. lol Authors could get a certain number of chips to give readers, and a reader only gets to talk about your book to another reader if he has a chip, but if he's good looking or well spoken, he needs more than one chip to talk. Fairness is totally doable. You just need enough data, oversight, and management.
If everything has to be equal and spending caps were put on publishers and authors, that wouldn't be very fair at all. Most of us still live in a somewhat free world. This isn't like campaign finances. This is a company or author deciding how best to spend their time and money. There is nothing unfair about it. Regulations on this is what would be unfair. But the whole argument in a little pointless. No one owes anyone a chance at success. Writers work very hard and I think it shows the literary world is doing well when they believe it decides to spend its money to bring written works into the world. Is it unfair that some musicians get signed while others don't. It might seem unfair to those who feel frustrated that it's not happening to them, but that's not the fault of publishers. They are looking for the best work they can get their hands on, and that may mean different things to different publishers. But that really is a good thing. In Iran, all books need to be approved by the government to be published. I don't know anyone who would call that fair. I much prefer the way things are happening here.
I think we can agree on the facts, but I wasn't trying to inject morality into business, simply stating the lack of it. I'm not ranting, just having civilized discussion. You do understand that nothing will change if no one discusses things, but things can change when people do. I think it's very defeatist to think otherwise. Why is it over-simplistic?
You're missing the point. I'm not suggesting a complete solution, just stating a problem. Raising awareness, you could say. Your opinion seems to be: that's the way it is, so that's that. I'm saying that doesn't have to be true. People could be more aware of how marketing works and be more critical of advertising. What's wrong with that?
Nothing's wrong with that, but that wasn't what you said. You said that marketing was all deception and that every book should have exactly the same amount of it. That's not the same thing as people being aware of how marketing works.
