#GameChangers

Indie Author & Social Media Bashing

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The Fallacy of Game Changers

  

As events and ideas that affect a significant shift in the current way of doing or thinking about something come to be known generally as game changing, pretenders in various fields of human endeavor have arrogated the title of game changers to themselves.

More than in other walks of life, this trend is increasingly evident in the publishing sector and the social media. The numbers game—views of a Youtube video, likes of a Facebook post, retweets of a tweet, and large followers of an Instagram account—has become the new standard by which one’s appeal and success is determined, causing random stars, erroneously considered game changers, to emerge overnight.

Courtesy of AdvicesBooks

It brings to mind events of a few years ago when the advent of innovative technology simplified the publishing process through cost-effective POD—Print-on-demand—system for paperbacks and the dawn of e-books. With it, many charlatans, interchangeably called subsidy publishers and vanity press sprouted everywhere like fungi. Despite this ignominious phenomenon, the time had come for self-publishing, and when it started to grab huge market shares from traditional publishers, the latter, afraid of losing out on the chance to ‘play God’ went to great lengths to belittle e-books and the technology that produces them. And, along with some traditionally published authors in the ‘exclusive club,’ they bashed those individuals and companies that did anything to enhance self-publishing. The Authors’ Guild, under the presidency of Scott Turow for example, disapproved, in the strongest of terms, when Amazon acquired Goodreads, citing concerns about the creation of an internet monopoly.

As it turns out today, Amazon isn’t the ‘great evil’ it was made out to be. By putting its technology within the grasp of writers, it has enabled an entire new group of successful self-published authors, who take advantage of the new situation with the realization that they don’t need publishers given the lower costs and ease of distribution. And as they say, ‘if you can’t beat them join them,’ now traditional publishers, after pretending for a long time that self-publishing didn’t exist, oftentimes viewing it as means of exploitation of writers, have joined the fray, doing the same thing they cried foul about.

In 2012, Penguin formally entered the business of scamming inexperienced authors with the purchase of Author Solutions, a reviled vanity press, for $116m. Writing in the IndieReader, David Gaughran said that the performance of Author Solutions was so poor that the press release announcing the purchase couldn’t even tout their own customer’s success, listing instead some self-publishing stars including E. L. James, who didn’t used Author Solutions to publish their work. As if that wasn’t alarming enough, Simon & Schuster opened its own vanity press called Archway Publishing, and hired the now Penguin-owned Author Solutions to run it, amid allegations that they bribed writers to lie about their scamming operation. That, unfortunately, wasn’t the only disturbing behavior by a top traditional publisher. Random House too was accused of forcing unfair terms onto writers via their new digital imprints.

Essena O'Neill

In the social media sphere, a recent event involving a certain Instagram model, Essena O’Neill sheds more light on the fallacy of game changers. Catapulted to fame by the selfie culture, with half a million followers on Instagram and a quarter of a million subscribers to her Youtube channel, O’Neill staged an online repentance that went viral but got a backlash from former admirers who called her act a publicity stunt. After benefiting from the synthetic world of social media stardom by posting seductive selfies, she is now tearfully denouncing it as a hoax and a ‘dishonest and contrived’ way of viewing beauty.

"Her problem, and that of many like her, wasn’t, 

and isn’t social media but the vain manner 

in which it is being used."

Built on hype and showiness, just like reality television, the phenomenon thrives, not on substance but on Likes, Retweets, Followers and the ability to go viral. Getting caught up in its guile or being compelled by greed to abuse oneself in an attempt to look like someone else is only part of the idiocy that regulates the game. In real life, succumbing to peer pressure is not considered a virtue and so it is with the selfie charade. Therefore, playing the victim and claiming that she was lost in the ‘Celebrity construct’ isn’t exactly visionary. After basking in this wantonness for a few years, canceling her Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube accounts and bashing social media on the way out to follow the dictates of conscience, and calling on other ‘like-minded’ people to join her in becoming, yes you guess right, game changers, smacks of hypocrisy.

Essena

Her problem, and that of many like her, wasn’t, and isn’t social media but the vain manner in which it is being used, in the same way that modeling isn’t an evil profession but the senseless way some people abuse themselves in order to fit in, is. But isn’t it curious that to pursue her new role in life as a game changer, she created a website where she appeals for financial support, relying on the power of social media to effectively bash social media? It might have been more honorable for Essena O’Neill to quit the game quietly.

The fallacy of game changers is equally evident in the self-publishing industry. As indie authors are increasingly unfettered from the exploitation of the vanity press and the hurtful rejection of trade publishers, the need for visibility and distribution has given rise to a new wave of ‘game changers.’ Claiming to have the interest of the indie author at heart, these egregious benefactors offer services, including paid reviews, aimed at giving self-published authors a high visibility in the book market. As was recently revealed in an Amazon civil complaint filed in Seattle, there are also fraudulent reviewers in the mix who ask Amazon vendors to send prewritten reviews, which they post from multiple usernames and IP addresses to outwit the company’s detection software.

“Amazon strictly prohibits any attempt to manipulate customer reviews and expressly prohibits compensated reviews,” the complaint stated. “Nonetheless, an unhealthy ecosystem has developed outside of Amazon to supply reviews in exchange for payment.”

Based on the above statement, all paid-for reviews are supposedly frowned upon. But there are several reputable media outlets and industry websites that request payment from indie authors for so called professional and unbiased reviews that are generally regarded as authoritative. Some of them have a separate page dedicated to fee-based indie reviews and others claim to offer free reviews but clearly states that such can’t, however, be guaranteed as requests for expedited (read paid) reviews are high.

"Given that the self-publishing revolution is swarming 

with charlatans, fairness would demand that 

all paid-for reviews be treated as bogus 

whether they are from powerful 

review sites charging as much as $500 for 

a ‘professional’ review or from a freelancer 

in a free-for-all marketplace website charging $5."

Now, with competition in the book market heating up, many online shoppers increasingly rely on customer reviews when making spending decisions, but just how much can such reviews be trusted if they are paid for? Given that the self-publishing revolution is swarming with charlatans, fairness would demand that all paid-for reviews be treated as bogus whether they are from powerful review sites charging as much as $500 for a ‘professional’ review or from a freelancer in a free-for-all marketplace website charging $5.

Upholding such tenets of fairness will go a long way to stop, not only fraudulent reviewers, but also certain industry gurus (whose reviews are seen as authoritative though they are paid for) from undermining the trust of book readers and tarnishing Amazon’s brand because, let’s face it, in this sea of bogus benefactors of indie authors, the real game changers, in fact, are Amazon and those book bloggers who post honest reviews (positive or negative) without collecting a dime. 

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