| Author | Message | ||
     Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I was on a freelancers board this morning (my regular search for work  ) and I spotted someone who'd got rather annoyed at someone else calling writing a 'product'. So I thought this would make an interesting discussion point here ... You see, my professional background is in business management (don't all hit me at once, please) so, from that point of view, writing IS a product. I mean, you want to be able to sell your stories to publishers and your books to readers, don't you? But I'm sure most people here would consider writing to be more than a mere product. There's the artistic element, and also perhaps the therapeutic value of your own writing to you? And does it matter whether we're talking about fiction or non-fiction? Perhaps non-fiction IS most definitely a product, there to meet the needs of it's audience - ie. by providing them with information? But then couldn't we argue that fiction is also a product by that definition, ie. your writing meets my need (your 'customer') for a good piece of horror fiction? So, here's today's discussion topic from me: "Is writing a product? Discuss" | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.71 |
Caroline, I've always considered writings as "products" - I always use that term myself - see no problem with it at all.... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Yes, published writing is a product...but not just that. It's also many other things. The problem starts when you see writing only as a product. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.153.251.119 |
Zed sums it up. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
But is it a methematical product or a sum? If the end result greater than the sum of it's parts it can be called a product as the components will have been multiplied instead of merely added together... Sorry, I'm bored. My innergeek rises the fraction of a milimetre to the surface when I'm bored. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
The term 'product' can mean a number of things, but I take it that you (Caroline) mean it in the business sense, which, according to the rigorous strictures of an online business dictionary (ha), means: "A good, idea, method, information, object, or service that is the end result of a process and serves as a need or want satisfier." In that sense, writing *can* be a product (Craig's can't), but to say that all writing (or art) is a product is inaccurate and misleading. For one thing, a 'product' in a business sense is something that can be reliably reproduced -- that is, something that can be manufactured over and over again without any accompanying deterioration in quality. Writing (or art) just isn't like that. Take Degas, for example. His paintings may have been the "result of a process" but that process, when repeated, didn't always allow him to create equally compelling artwork. Similarly, a modern printer can manufacture thousands of prints of one of Degas's paintings (and without losing quality), but he'll never be able to create a print of a "new" Degas artwork, because Degas himself is dead and is having some difficulty holding a paintbrush. In my view this means that the term 'product' loses meaning when applied to writing/art. That being said, a number of popular novels seem to be written almost by numbers (and certainly from time to time to satisfy a demand in the market), and it's hard to argue that these works aren't in fact 'product.' I'm reminded of a philosophy class I took in which the teacher explained the difference between "art" and "craft" in this way: An artwork has no purpose, no function: it just *is*. If an artwork performs a function, any function, other than simply existing, it fails to achieve this single criterion and becomes merely 'craft.' A Degas work is art, then. Okay. But: A print of that Degas work, manufactured by the thousands as a product to sell in high quantities to consumers for the purpose of making money -- is that art? (And would it change things to know that Degas himself -- as most artists do -- from time to time painted for money?) And by this definition: Are the Harry Potter books art? Is a Dan Brown novel? Is John Banville creating art when he writes novels under his own name, but creating only craft when he writes mysteries as Benjamin Black? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
"Degas himself is dead and is having some difficulty holding a paintbrush. " Not strictly true - you could easily get him to hold a paintbrush - either use a bit of duct tape or jab it in so it sticks. Degas' probelm is with moving the paintbrush afterward without articial help... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
But Chris, being Hollywood-minded, the basic model is the: Screenplay. Everyone is peddling screenplays, and they're all alike in certain tangible and intangible ways; and, Screenplays are not meant to really be read by the end-of-the-line audience - that group is supposed to SEE the movie made FROM it. Though they are experiencing that same written material, in a different way (is seeing a Shakespeare play, or hearing an audio book, a less-than end-of-the-line writing experience?) In this respect, Screenplays are certainly literary works capable of being judged on any sort of artistic level, as well as "something that can be manufactured over and over again without any accompanying deterioration in quality." Like all of Michael Bay's films....  | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 81.158.78.71 |
I don't agree with Chris's philosophy teacher. Surely the purpose of art is to move people. For me art that just *is* has failed as art. I have to feel something, anything from a work of art, good or bad. But whether writing is a "product" - I think Zed's got it right. The more emotionally driven writers will bristle at the term and say "But I pour my heart and soul into my writing - how can you reduce it to a word like *product*?" but once the writing enters the commercial market where people pay money for it, it becomes a product whether we like it or not. For the people dealing with the business end of it, that may be ALL it is, unfortunately. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
>>>"Is writing a product? Discuss" I think the question presupposes the imposition of categorical certainty on an inherently ambiguous 'thing'. It demands a 'yes' or 'no' answer, which makes it a dodgy question in this context. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
ANYTHING can and will become a product in our present-day society. And if one of your products should be commercially succesful, it will almost certainly influence the way subsequent work is conceived. The artist has to eat. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Yeah, that's why the artist usually has a day job...  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.155.181 |
Or a solidly employed partner. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Aye. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
When I worked at children's and educational publisher **********, the US parent company appointed a new MD with a background in the food industry. He banned the use of the words 'book' and 'magazine' in meetings and communications: everything was 'product'. The change went together with the dropping of an award-winning children's fantasy author, whose contract was revoked because she wasn't outselling J.K. Rowling. It also went together with the vicious dehumanisation of the workplace culture, and the systematic replacement of managers who had a literary or educational background with managers who had a pure 'business' background. They made 12 people redundant and so many other people walked out that, within three months, they were recruiting for more positions than they had made redundant. Bet that went down well with the parent company. I've never known a workplace to be so utterly poisoned so fast. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.56.66 |
Solidly employed partners who are willing to put up with the artistic endeavours of their better halves are getting a bit thin on the ground over here. Even 'solidly employed' is out of fashion, it seems. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Sorry, I asked a question - then left you all to it and forgot to come back to this thread! Thanks for your interesting responses. And, yes, I did mean "product" in the marketing/business sense of the word. For what it's worth, personally I reckon writing IS a product as soon as the writer tries to sell it to a publisher or to readers direct. But that doesn't detract from it being an artform, IMO, something beyond, perhaps, a mere "product". As a writer, you put your heart and soul into producing a piece of work, and that's the quality which makes for a good story and which "sells" it to the reader, surely? And as a reader, I'm looking for something which gives me an emotional response which I crave - that's my "need" as a consumer. You, the writer, satisfy that need - it's pure marketing if you look at it that way. But writing is still more than just, say, a mass-produced factory-based product for sure. Interesting stuff - thanks!  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.203.97 |
As I suggested, it's both depending on context. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.192.43 |
Interestingly, readers can sometimes see a book as a product. I was thinking about the sense of entitlement that a number of fans had while waiting 6 years for "A dance with Dragons", the latest game of thrones book. In essence some of the fans considered their relation to the writer as a kind of unwritten contract, where the writer is expected to timely deliver a new volume. I was surprised to read about this phenomenon. |