The Commercialization of Content

How the glut of publishing has annihilated audiences hungry for deep content.

This post follows up on my previous post, “Confessions of a Ghostwriter: Thoughts on Quitting Publishing, Writing Books, and the Life of the Mind.” If you haven’t read it, you might consider doing so.

After reading my post, a good friend emailed me and posed some tough questions about the publishing world. He asked if the reality of the publishing world we all live in, in which we must sift through commercialized content (fiction, television, film, Christian resources), has created audiences who no longer thirst for deep wells of thought.

To explain this better, let me tell you another publishing story.

When I Was Told No Audience Existed for Deep Books

In 2022, I published The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine with Zondervan Reflective. My publishing experience with Zondervan Reflective was wonderful, and the editing process invigorated me as a writer.

The Beauty Chasers took nearly five years to publish. And it went through at least four iterations. And by iterations, I don’t mean general edits. I mean, wholesale changes to the book itself.

After receiving my Ph.D. (2017)—my research explored beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis, a subfield known as theological aesthetics—I prepared a book proposal titled Where Beauty Begins. This first iteration focused more on C.S. Lewis’s thought of beauty as apologetic. I spent months preparing the proposal. My agent shopped it to at least 16 publishers (give or take). All but one rejected it. Nothing new, there.

The one publisher who did not reject it asked if I’d consider revising the proposal to remove the focus on Lewis. I agreed and resubmitted it. And they rejected it. It’s okay; you can laugh. I did what they wanted, and then they said, “No thanks.” Puzzling, right?

The book was eventually signed by a well-known American academic press that was signing authors to straddle the fence of academic and general audiences—think Brazos Press and Zondervan Reflective.

It was a long, drawn-out process of submitting and revising. But here’s the kicker.

During this process, one publisher said they loved my work but lamented that there was no audience for a book like this.

When I told my wife what the publisher said, she was stunned and saddened. I wasn’t stunned. I guess I knew the publisher had a good point; a book on beauty is not very “commercial.” But I knew it in my own head. I’d never had that thought confirmed by a publisher.

My friend who emailed me knew of my challenge shopping The Beauty Chasers, which led him to ask me if the glut of publishing, meaning the over-publishing of Christian books, had led to the watering down of content. It’s a good question—and a hard one.

I won't tackle all the nuances of this problem in this post. Indeed, it would take several months to unpack them all. Podcast series, anyone?

However, I do want to share my unrefined thoughts on the commercialization of content. I do believe that in general we as a culture overpublish. We flood the digital universe with content, we consume it on our phones and televisions, and we consume content through books and magazines (they still exist, right?). The question is, does this glut of content produce the shallowing of content? If so, what are the ramifications of overpublishing shallow Christian content?

First, let’s define commercial and literary writing.

Then, let’s explore the concept of commercialization.

Finally, allow me to digress into ranting thoughts about the cultural dance of the content creators and producers.

What is Commercial Fiction and Nonfiction?

In last week’s article, I said that James Patterson writes commercial fiction. This is not a secret. You could Google “who writes commercial fiction” and find a long list of authors.

But how is commercial fiction different from literary fiction? How is commercial nonfiction—is there such a thing?—different than literary nonfiction?

Commercial fiction is fiction written for mass appeal. It focuses more on plot and character development than on the style of writing and the themes woven into the narrative.

In literary fiction, the plot and writing style are on equal footing. Commercial fiction is less concerned with writing style. It’s about getting an entertaining story to the masses.

Commercial fiction subgenres include romance, fantasy, thriller, mystery, suspense, etc.

You can loosely apply those same parameters to commercial and literary nonfiction. Literary nonfiction emphasizes thematic nuance, a beautiful writing style, a connecting narrative, etc.

Commercial nonfiction will focus on mass appeal, approachability of content, application-driven content, entertainment, and approachability of writing style—in fact, writing style in the creative sense will not be emphasized.

Commercial nonfiction will give you James Clear, not the Ernest Hemingway of nonfiction, a writer like Marilyn Robinson.

My friend argued that Christian publishing has lost its soul because it overproduces commercial nonfiction and neglects deeper, more thoughtful books, what we call “literary nonfiction.”

The proliferation of Christian books driven by mass appeal, which are commercial books written by platformed authors and influencers with massive baked-in audiences, has made it all but impossible for writers who focus on craft and nuanced themes to land book deals.

I’m sure we can discuss whether commercial nonfiction and fiction should even exist, making the case for art to win the day. But we’ll save that for another post.

What is Commercialization?

Commercialization is a term used in the world of tech and business. It entails bringing a new product to the market.

When business enterprises want to introduce a new initiative into the market, they don’t just build and release whatever they want. They pilot the idea, program, new store layout, gadgets or menu items, etc. After the pilot, they release the new product in certain markets and study the consumer’s reaction.

They scale it for mass production if it’s successful in the pilot and test markets.

Does commercialization apply to publishing? Of course, it does.

Publishers exist to publish works that appeal to a wide array of audiences. They use sales analytics and track market trends to see what resonates with people—you, the masses. It’s an economy of ideas. Well, it used to be, anyway.

The book proposal works like a marketing document in the nonfiction book world. It makes the case for the book idea, showing its relevance, audience need, and market readiness. It’s an idea proposal. Not all good ideas win. Usually, the idea coupled with a platformed author and a savvy launch initiative wins the day.

The market drives the commercialization of content. This is the reality of the world we live in.

Publishers seek books that meet a cultural need—they want a book that taps into an existing audience. They want to partner with authors who have already disseminated their message to a public audience. That author has already performed the market test. If a large audience likes the author's work, that message or story is ready for mass production.

Two good examples of authors proving market readiness come from the world of fiction self-publishing. Before The Martian became a blockbuster film, it was a self-published novel. The author, Andy Weir, sold a massive number of units through Amazon alone. In months, a movie production company and publisher picked up the book simultaneously.

The Shack sold millions as a self-published book before a publisher picked it up. The publisher 10xed it—probably 20xed it. Eventually, it was made into a blockbuster film.

In nonfiction, platforming is the market readiness test. A publisher seeks a content creator already cultivating a rapt audience with a vibrant message. This can be referred to as platforming. This means the author builds his or her audience with a specific message. That “platform” is the pilot for the content, if you will. Theoretically, when a platform is large enough, it is ready for mass production, i.e., a publishing deal.

A Tim Digression of Ranting Thoughts

You could make the case that the commercialization of content didn’t always exist to the extent it does today.

Where are all the popular essayists from bygone eras shaping the world with deep intellectual content?

Where are the days when poets were national heroes?

“But Tim,” you say, “Poets were never national heroes.”

“Ah yes,” I reply, “It seems fantastical. But it’s true!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was regarded as America’s poet. Interestingly, Longfellow’s work fell from grace as modernity passed over America like the mists of Mordor. Too much rhyming I suppose—how antiquated.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were also highly regarded as poets, public intellectuals, theologians, and artists.

I love this digression. Don’t you? :)

I often ask friends when opining around fall fires, “Where are the Lewises and Chestertons and Sayerses in the Christian publishing world?”

What I mean by that is, where is the writer who serializes letters between demons for a weekly magazine and compiles them into a genre-defying book? That book, of course, is The Screwtape Letters and is regarded as one of C.S. Lewis’s best.

And guess what? The Screwtape Letters is approachable and entertaining and gives incisive cultural commentary. I recommend it as the first read for anyone who’s not read Lewis. Lewis believed writing should be entertaining.

Where is the balance between producing content with mass appeal, pushing audiences in their thinking, and content that goes deeper?

Is the glut of evangelical publishing the publisher's fault or a by-product of a culture that emphasizes self-help, pragmatism, and utilitarianism and is drunk on the new social sciences? And by culture, I mean the greater and the Christian/Church cultures. We’re too interested in neuroscience and neuro-whatever to care about the beautiful. Too much?¹

I believe we do not have authors like this anymore because our culture, especially the Christian subculture, emphasizes specialty. Allow me to give you an example of what I mean.

When I pitched my 52-week devotional Longing for More, I had to meet with the publisher and explain my writing program to them. Do you know why?

Because they were confused. They asked my agent, “What is Tim’s writing all about? He has a cultural commentary book, a book of personal essays, and now a devotional. He seems all over the place.”

Really, it’s OK to laugh. I am laughing as I am writing.

Imagine what they’d think now that I’m pitching a YA commercial fiction novel! Have mercy!

“Tim—commercial YA fiction. Are you contributing to the commercialization of content?”

“Am I? Oh, I thought I was just being a writer.”

I share this story to give you a glimpse not only of a publishing reality—the need for authors to find a lane and stay in it but also to shed light upon the landscape of the modern audience.

We, as a collective audience, are what we habitually consume. And, when we consume Marvel movies for breakfast, Taylor Swift for lunch, and binge Netflix for dinner, our aesthetic taste gets molded into the insipid rut of pop culture.

I’m not letting publishers off the hook, but to a large extent, publishers are giving the public what they want. And what we want is not very deep, not very long, and not very beautiful.

Earlier, I asked if the publisher spearheaded the glut of evangelical publishing or if it was a by-product of what the culture wants. I see it almost like a cultural dance between the audience and producers.

I’m reminded of Natalie Merchant’s 90’s hit, “Give 'em What They Want.”

“If lust and hate is the candy … give ‘em what they want.” Man, where is Natalie when we need her most?

A Final Word

As I think about commercialized content, I think of Homer.

Now, remember, The Illiad and The Odyssey were written down later. In their infancy as stories, they were told orally. Homer translator, W.H.D. Rouse says that Homer (and Shakespeare) gave audiences what they wanted and what they were familiar with while also pressing their deeper themes into their work. It was a both/and. Homer used the language of the people to tell stories about things they cared about.

But here’s something important from Rouse. In his essay “Homer’s Words,” found at the end of his translation of The Odyssey, Rouse describes Homer’s audience.

I don’t usually go for long quotes, but I have to give you this one because it illuminates the context in which Homer wrote and paints a contrasting portrait of ancient audiences versus modern audiences.

Rouse describes Homer’s audience as practical people:

“… educated by life, but keenly alive to beauty, and sensitive to fine art, living amongst fine craftsmen and goldsmiths, delighting in song, and dance, and music, with their minds full of wonderful stories of gods, and dryads, and naiads.

They lived in the country, and knew all the sights and sounds of nature and her creatures; they lived in small towns, among fortresses and walls, mansions and temples; they had order and discipline, commerce, law and debate;

they were of a keen intelligence, and eager to hear stories of foreign lands; they pondered the meaning of human life, and had already that loathing for cruelty and brutal mockery which marked off the Greek from the barbarian.

But there was nothing in them of of the prig. They were not ashamed of enjoying themselves; they at huge meals and drank bowls of wine with as much gusto as Mr. Pickwick, but they knew good wine from bad, and the good was divine—put one cup of wine in twenty of water, and the fragrance filled the room, so that no one wanted to be an abstainer.

They were full of merry jests; wit and humour pleased them, and they did not despise a rough practical joke.²

Notice how Homer’s audience was keenly alive to beauty, possessed keen intelligence, and weren’t cultural prigs. They used aesthetic judgment to discern the good and beautiful things in life.

Homer was a content creator who gave his audience the familiar, using common language while elevating the soul. I think that is a rubric for which we all should strive.

The fight for content creators lies in the very real lure of popularity, power, and money. Artists and writers are not immune to this. In the twenty-first century, celebrity and influence are characteristics of the language of culture.

Roger Scruton once observed how pop culture and fame dimmed the creative light of the twentieth-century painter Rothko. Scruton blamed the modern commercialized hype machine in the art world that likely got its fangs into Rothko, keeping him in his artistic repetition of rectangles for years. That’s what happens when your works go from selling for $200 to $20 million.³ Once we find something of some grace and beauty, the modern’s natural tendency is to mass produce it.

When we find what sells and works, we must keep the money train going. That’s what Marvel did. We loved Iron Man and now roll our eyes when another new Marvel movie gets set to extend the silly metaverse, or whatever it’s called.

What we need is time and space.

Time to be still and let silence reset our aesthetic filters and recalibrate our imaginations.

Space to step out from the flow of the cultural noise, hold up our affections to the light and see if we’ve left our souls on the altar of the zeitgeist.

Notes

1. Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays, 1st edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). See Robinson’s essay “Humanism,” where Robinson discusses neuroscience and explains why she thinks our collective hunger blinds us to exploring the unknowable. See also Allan Lightman, an avowed atheist who has held Science and Humanities chairs at Harvard and MIT. Lightman leaves room for life’s unanswered questions—the numinous. Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, Reprint edition (Vintage, 2014). See Alan P Lightman and Derek Domnic D’souza, Song of Two Worlds: A Verse Narrative, 2017.

2. Homer and W. H. D. Rouse, The Odyssey: The Story of Odysseus (New York: New American Library, 198AD), 276-277.

3. Roger Scruton, “Mark Rothko: 1961 Tranquil, Transcendent. 2008 Routine, Repetitive,” n.d., sec. unknown section, accessed May 11, 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mark-rothko-1961-tranquil-transcendent-2008-routine-repetitive-dp0fd5wbmd0