Came here to share the same piece. The original article is so far from my experience (following the rise of indie authors making millions from Kindle Unlimited and hearing from the “Whale readers” who devour books), that I knew those figures had to be at the very least questionable.
Traditional publishing seems to be in a doom spiral at the moment, endlessly proclaiming the death of reading, book buying, lit fiction and indeed authors. Compare and contrast with the world of independent authors, where lots of us are making a decent (some a very good) living from publishing and selling our own books. See Alliance of Independent Author's data - indie authors earn more, made up more than half of Amazon's top 400 last year, indie is the first choice of younger authors. Oh, and we're having a load of fun doing it too! https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts/
That kid has appeared on every social media platform I've visited this week relentlessly. God only knows what I've been doing for the algorithm to serve me that.
As one of those desperate wannabe authors who's trying to get a literary agent, while forever laughing at the futility of it all, there's always that tiny hope that we'll be one of the happy few on whom the big publishers will take a punt. The next Rowling or Patterson will be out there somewhere, if they can throw enough darts to find them.
Makes sense, Portuguese meal times tend to be around 13.00 and 20.00, Spain 14.00 and 21.00… although arranging to meet friends for coffee around 23.00 can’t help either…
Yeah, sensitivity readers sure can suck, but so can authors. The quote: "Around the same time, in Canada, there was sonar confirmation of a lot of unmarked graves around former residential school sites."
First off, it was not "sonar" but ground penetrating radar (GPR, of course); it didn't "confirm" anything but - as per the words of the anthropologist GPR operator who did the work - "soil movements;" the search was not for "unmarked graves," which one can readily find in any church graveyard in the Canadian West, the search was for surreptitious graves. Oh, and by the way, not one body has been recovered in any of the alleged grave sites.
This has been well documented by several news organizations and other publications including Quillette, The National Post, and Bari Weiss's The Free Press.
I didn’t read it as him supporting that narrative, more saying that it was thr reason why people were anxious. incidentally, Naomi Klein's book on "how come people fall for conspiracies" has her basically regurgitate the maximalist (unsupported) version of this story. blind spots, huh
I agree; I don't know if he supports the narrative. It is really weird however, to live in a country where this kind of sentence just gets tossed off, and in such a garbled manner. Isn't Naomi Klein the author of a book about how drooling, rabid Capitalists operate via a dictum stating "Never let a catastrophe go to waste." And yet that was the master ethos of the Progressive Nomenklatura in Canada after the Residential Schools "scandal;" that's when the woke went to town. Have a good weekend Helen.
I wrote about the weirdness of the Baby Reindeer TikTok and Twitter stalkers this week, as well as Zoe Williams’s article claiming 7m have been stalked, which seems wrong (but maybe it’s true given the relentless pursuit of the real stalker). I do think Gadd’s decision to use words from her actual tweets is… odd.
I checked the ONS figures, and that is indeed the total reports of any incident since the age of 16. However, it's only broken down into domestic/partner/cyber, which doesn't give you much help understanding the severity of the incidents.
Thank you for checking the ONS. Being only a very shit sort of (ex) journalist, I couldn’t get my head around the ONS figures at all. If those figures are correct, it seems like a decent proportion of the population at any given time are apparently off stalking someone or other. Presumably some of them are serial stalkers or it really is a bigger occupation than plumbing.
A comment in a forum for survivors yesterday: "My stalker is actively back after 8 years. He contacts me every year by email but I never respond. Strangers think it’s my fault. I have managed to start life over and built a support system since I left him. But being afraid he’s going to find me and finish what he started just sucks. I feel like no one believes you until it’s too late." I would be interested in knowing her story, even though it's outside the media spin-sphere. I would guess it would lead us to different conclusions about stalking in general than the ones expressed here, or apparently portrayed in the show.
I think there is an issue with lack of understanding, the optics of what it looks like from outside the situation. Real fear, fear caused by many types of abuse including stalking, does not necessarily make us think more clearly. Trauma practitioners identify the 4 F’s of acute stress responses to danger, two of which are freeze (do nothing) and fawn (try to please or appease the perpetrator to reduce or deflect conflict). A person responding to danger by freezing or fawning is not being complicit, even though it might look like it from the outside. In the US, 1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
This is a good follow up to the “no one buys books” piece
https://open.substack.com/pub/countercraft/p/yes-people-do-buy-books?r=1g4uc&utm_medium=ios
Me: <opens hopefully>
The first paragraph: “ Much of the overall thrust of Griffin’s article is right:”
(I think it’s definitely fair to point out that the quotes were all given to bolster a particular narrative.)
Still, it's good news about Piers Morgan....
Yes that and some of the sales numbers were a different perspective I thought
Came here to share the same piece. The original article is so far from my experience (following the rise of indie authors making millions from Kindle Unlimited and hearing from the “Whale readers” who devour books), that I knew those figures had to be at the very least questionable.
It sounds like the book publishing world is similar to musical theatre - people making bets and hoping they have a Hamilton on their hands.
Traditional publishing seems to be in a doom spiral at the moment, endlessly proclaiming the death of reading, book buying, lit fiction and indeed authors. Compare and contrast with the world of independent authors, where lots of us are making a decent (some a very good) living from publishing and selling our own books. See Alliance of Independent Author's data - indie authors earn more, made up more than half of Amazon's top 400 last year, indie is the first choice of younger authors. Oh, and we're having a load of fun doing it too! https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts/
That child's seagull impression is remarkable.
That kid has appeared on every social media platform I've visited this week relentlessly. God only knows what I've been doing for the algorithm to serve me that.
As one of those desperate wannabe authors who's trying to get a literary agent, while forever laughing at the futility of it all, there's always that tiny hope that we'll be one of the happy few on whom the big publishers will take a punt. The next Rowling or Patterson will be out there somewhere, if they can throw enough darts to find them.
Makes sense, Portuguese meal times tend to be around 13.00 and 20.00, Spain 14.00 and 21.00… although arranging to meet friends for coffee around 23.00 can’t help either…
My most Floridian opinion is that 6pm is the correct time for dinner.
Jacobin has never been pro identity politics! The authors they publish have viewed identity politics as a distraction, or just “luxurious suffering.”
Yeah, sensitivity readers sure can suck, but so can authors. The quote: "Around the same time, in Canada, there was sonar confirmation of a lot of unmarked graves around former residential school sites."
First off, it was not "sonar" but ground penetrating radar (GPR, of course); it didn't "confirm" anything but - as per the words of the anthropologist GPR operator who did the work - "soil movements;" the search was not for "unmarked graves," which one can readily find in any church graveyard in the Canadian West, the search was for surreptitious graves. Oh, and by the way, not one body has been recovered in any of the alleged grave sites.
This has been well documented by several news organizations and other publications including Quillette, The National Post, and Bari Weiss's The Free Press.
I didn’t read it as him supporting that narrative, more saying that it was thr reason why people were anxious. incidentally, Naomi Klein's book on "how come people fall for conspiracies" has her basically regurgitate the maximalist (unsupported) version of this story. blind spots, huh
I agree; I don't know if he supports the narrative. It is really weird however, to live in a country where this kind of sentence just gets tossed off, and in such a garbled manner. Isn't Naomi Klein the author of a book about how drooling, rabid Capitalists operate via a dictum stating "Never let a catastrophe go to waste." And yet that was the master ethos of the Progressive Nomenklatura in Canada after the Residential Schools "scandal;" that's when the woke went to town. Have a good weekend Helen.
I wrote about the weirdness of the Baby Reindeer TikTok and Twitter stalkers this week, as well as Zoe Williams’s article claiming 7m have been stalked, which seems wrong (but maybe it’s true given the relentless pursuit of the real stalker). I do think Gadd’s decision to use words from her actual tweets is… odd.
I checked the ONS figures, and that is indeed the total reports of any incident since the age of 16. However, it's only broken down into domestic/partner/cyber, which doesn't give you much help understanding the severity of the incidents.
Thank you for checking the ONS. Being only a very shit sort of (ex) journalist, I couldn’t get my head around the ONS figures at all. If those figures are correct, it seems like a decent proportion of the population at any given time are apparently off stalking someone or other. Presumably some of them are serial stalkers or it really is a bigger occupation than plumbing.
A comment in a forum for survivors yesterday: "My stalker is actively back after 8 years. He contacts me every year by email but I never respond. Strangers think it’s my fault. I have managed to start life over and built a support system since I left him. But being afraid he’s going to find me and finish what he started just sucks. I feel like no one believes you until it’s too late." I would be interested in knowing her story, even though it's outside the media spin-sphere. I would guess it would lead us to different conclusions about stalking in general than the ones expressed here, or apparently portrayed in the show.
I think there is an issue with lack of understanding, the optics of what it looks like from outside the situation. Real fear, fear caused by many types of abuse including stalking, does not necessarily make us think more clearly. Trauma practitioners identify the 4 F’s of acute stress responses to danger, two of which are freeze (do nothing) and fawn (try to please or appease the perpetrator to reduce or deflect conflict). A person responding to danger by freezing or fawning is not being complicit, even though it might look like it from the outside. In the US, 1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
I wasn't familiar with Edouard Louis, but that was an extraordinary read. Thanks so much for sharing it.
delightful!!
A pod of dolphins vs the GOP - bring it on!