*Barely had the pixels dried on yesterday’s post when I had a ping in my email saying “we’re not ducks, we’re lab rats.” My friend Tedd Roberts proceeded to argue this point until I told him “Just write it as a guest post.” He did. I’d argue for this model it is still essential he tells me who’s altering the maze and recording the results. While I feel like Manny in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress that “I don’t know who is cranking, I’m just glad he doesn’t stop cranking.” if someone is actively experimenting with me, then I want to break out of the maze and bite him. Okay, okay, I’m willing to take for this that like we are a self-taming species we’re also a — perhaps unwittingly — self-experimenting species. IOW we’re so sharp we cut ourselves. Frankly, I’d very much like to hear more from Doctor Roberts about the ways our nervous system faces and adapts to change. I think it might bring some light to what seems to be irrational behavior on the part of vast sectors of publishing.*
Not Ducks, but Lab Rats
by Tedd Roberts
As a follow-up to Sarah A. Hoyt’s blog yesterday, in which she predicts that in the very near future we may find ourselves following in the mold of Donald Duck – one day a beautician, the next a janitor – I thought of a counter proposal. Those who know me may recognize the theme, and no, this isn’t going to be one of “those” posts…
In reality, we are all Lab Rats.
When I mentioned this to Sarah, her first question was “Who, then, is the experimenter?” While this is indeed an interesting question, both from philosophical and metaphysical viewpoint, it is not the primary focus of this blog. Rather, consider with me the viewpoint of the common laboratory rat:
“Day 1: I was put in a large wooden enclosure. There are walls all around. I smell cheese somewhere. I can scurry around some of the walls. Usually I find more walls, but sometimes there are openings. It took a while, but I found the cheese. It was good but there wasn’t enough. Now I’m thirsty.”
We, as lab rats, have just encountered our first maze. There are many different types of mazes, and many different purposes to the test, but the lab rat does not know any of this. It only knows that there is a maze and there may be cheese at the end.
“Day 2: I was put in a large wooden enclosure. There are walls all around. I smell cheese somewhere. I can scurry around some of the walls. Usually I find more walls, but sometimes there are openings. It took a while, but I found the cheese. It was good but there wasn’t enough. Now I’m thirsty.”
“Day 5: I was put in a large wooden enclosure. There are walls all around. I smell cheese somewhere. – Wait, I’ve been here before. If I turn left, right, right, left, then make all rights I will get to the cheese.”
Now we have familiarity with the maze and can find the cheese faster. From an experimental context, we have demonstrated that lab rats have memory. Once we have performed the same task a few times, we learn to do it faster, more efficiently. We do it better.
“Day 10: Whoa. This is different. I tried my usual path and there was no cheese. I can smell it, but I can’t find it. I’m hungry.”
Now the maze changes. If we are flexible, if our “memory” does not impair us, we can adapt and eventually find our cheese.
“Day 11: Back again. No cheese, but I can smell it. Maybe I’d better keep searching…”
There you have it. We are lab rats in a changing world. Each day we truly do not know if the maze is the same one we ran yesterday. If it is, our memory can help us run the maze faster. But if the maze is different…
Memory can be a help and a hindrance. In neuroscience we have a term for persistent (sometimes pathologically persistent) memory – it is called perseveration. Animals and humans with damage to certain areas of the brain lose the ability to alter or even over-write memory. They keep doing the same old task without being able to change to perform the new task. The ability to change is called “behavioral flexibility” and it is a highly appropriate topic for Sarah’s, Kris Rusch’s and other posts about changing strategies in publishing.
A popular saying among some groups such as the Baen Barflies is that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Likewise, insanity is doing different things and expecting the same results. Yet sometimes we have to change strategies in order to get a better result, as in the transformation from traditional to indie publishing. I’m not an “insider” to this phenomenon, but I certainly recognize the signs and symptoms from behavioral psychology.
The lab rats that yield the greatest scientific data are those with behavioral flexibility. The ones that learn a maze, run it quickly and efficiently, but then are able to change strategies and learn a new maze or a new task quickly, and no less efficiently. Such flexibility is not inherent in the lab rat, it must be learned, and like the lab rat, we all learn by *doing*. PhD candidates learn this quite early. Frequently we find ourselves completely changing our field from grad school to post-doc, from post-doc to first faculty position. Unfortunately we often specialize, and change in direction becomes difficult and traumatic. If only we could remember what we once knew as students! Still, many of us are able to make subtle or even fundamental changes even late in our careers.
While I’ve been talking of lab rats in the concrete sense of experimental subjects, and “Lab Rats” in the metaphorical sense of those performing the experiments, the lesson is applicable to us all. I have watched my father reinvent his job and specialization even into his 80’s (yes, he is still working at age 82). He is happy and quite flexible, able to make his jobs fit himself, just like the lab rat in our picture above.
It’s not a bad thing at all to be a lab rat. After all, there’s cheese at the end of the maze!
Update: Doc Roberts has expanded on this here: http://teddysratlab.blogspot.com/2011/10/value-of-repetition.html
According To Hoyt 
Good one.
Sometimes, lack of flexibility is the outcome of learned helplessness. If the lab rat encounters barriers to the cheese too often, it will give up.
of course giving up can be a survival skill. Someone seems to have left it out of my mix. This is troubling.
quote: Likewise, insanity is doing different things and expecting the same results
I take issue with this, there are frequently many different ways to get to one result. some ways may be more efficient than others, and it’s usually true that if you are picky enough the results are not ‘identical’ (after all, the process you go through has side effects), but if you are looking for ‘equivalent’ results there are frequently many ways to get to the result.
Actually, that is not correct. See my blog today at http://teddysratlab.blogspot.com for rebuttal.
Specifically:
http://teddysratlab.blogspot.com/2011/10/value-of-repetition.html
Out of Cheese Error – REDO from Start!
Gotta get out of those late night Terry Pratchett binges.
Seriously though, you’re right. I’ve changed profession a number of times. Each time I gained something. I started working in the Parks Department of one of the local cities. It was a summer job, but got me some money. Then I worked as an automobile rust proofer. Then I worked at a plant that printed Harlequin Romances and telephone directories, then I worked in the parts department of a forklift manufacturer, then I worked in the parts department of several forklift dealers, working my way up, then I worked in sales at a catalytic converter manufacturer.
Then my body fell apart, so I started writing full time. I’d been writing my entire life, and several of the jobs had included writing. I’ve written a lot of ad copy in my time, and a lot of filings for government agencies.
Point is, that in today’s world where the economy changes from day to day, rather than from century to century, the Disney style as Sarah described it is much the norm. You have to be flexible, because carriage whip maker may not exist as a job tomorrow. Or rather it will because humans never through out any technology, but there may not be enough paying jobs to keep you employed.
Wayne
Not sure I like the analogy–rats in mazes imply a huge hand coming down and changing the barriers–where in real life, the giant hands are trying to hold the barriers in their usual place against some upheaval. Either way, it’s creepy, and all I’d want to do is bite the hand.
Yes, I would be the rat that gets euthanized.
I’d probably manage one glorious escape and be free for all of ten minutes.
The analogy breaks down when you pull back from the scene a bit. Now you see lab, maze, rat and scientist. The scientist is trying to test a hypothesis, i.e., learn something about the rat. The publishers Piers A so aptly calls Parnassus aren’t trying to learn anything about us writers. Or readers either, for that matter. They’re just making sure we all stay in the maze.
yes. It’s a French absurdist play. There’s no reason for us to be in the maze, but they’ll keep us here anyway. Charming, eh?
Actually, the experimenter is seldom trying to learn anything about the rat. Frequently the researcher knows everything they need to know about the rat, but is looking at how an external influence changes what is known. Thus the rat is not a variable, but a known control.
Me, I just think “Why can’t I be one of the lucky lab rats with a winning lottery ticket at the end?” Then I would buy the maze and have the scientist run through it. :p
I would shout this sky-ward, but you know… they’ll just put me in a straight jacket. As is I keep muttering “Money won’t spoil me, I swear.”
There is a philosophical argument holding that Life is a series of tests of adaptability, the most adaptable species winning. Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God explored that thesis; although the universe does not require deity(s) it is obvious that any entity existing self-consciously in all 27 dimensions (or are there 36? 42? Call the number TBD) of M-Space would assuredly be god-like to us barely 4-dimensional life forms.
In the current nomenclature of the perpetually job-seeking is the phrase “transferrable skills” — tricks learned in one career that are employable in other trades. Perseveration would be the opposite, an inability to recognize that your new trade isn’t the same one you were plying previously, no matter how similar it seems, e.g., publishers who think that if they just shout louder and use larger carrots and sticks …
Yes, but mostly JUST larger sticks.
“It’s not a bad thing at all to be a lab rat. After all, there’s cheese at the end of the maze!”
…and I’m lactose-intolerant….
(Story of my life: Go through all the rigmarole, only to be told at the end, “Oh, sorry, no — you can’t.” And people wonder why I follow Bart Simpson’s maxim: “Can’t win — don’t try”.)
bah. Your cheese is what you want it to be. (Oh no. Postmodern cheese. I’m going to be ill.)
OK. you get the peanut butter.
Actually, what interests me is that the publishers–and the imploding bookstores–actually are exhibiting behavioral inflexibility: like the rat that cannot attempt to find a route to the cheese’s new location, they are refusing to be flexible enough to survive changes in the market and in technology. (For example, Amazon is doing rather better than, say, Borders, because it has flexibility…and admittedly also because unlike my local B&N, if I go there asking for a book that’s newly-out and not mainstream, Amazon gives me a price & ETA of arrival if I order now instead of a blank look.)
This actually has its implications overall–when it comes to matters of efficiency, especially of repeated actions, even small changes add up with time. This is part of why, while multiple routes certainly could get you the same overall result, they’re not the exact same.
To work off an example given in the original post–let’s say that that publisher’s judgement on what is the next sure bestseller is poor because of changes in the speed in which the market shifts. This does grant them the charitable assumption that they’re right about what would make a ‘sure bestseller’–if they got it out the door fast enough.
If the market has become one where the popular taste changes faster than you can get the book onto the market, chasing the next bestseller is no longer the optimal strategy for bringing in money: the price of inefficiency has gone up. That said, the result is still the same, in theory–unless you really messed up, somebody’s going to buy at least one copy–but the profit decreases.
There’s two potential responses to this: You could go for reliable sellers instead of chase bestsellers (smaller pieces of cheese of relatively consistent location vs a huge piece of unreliable location) or find a way to get that ‘sure bestseller’ out the door faster, which–by cutting out lots of middlemen–is a niche rather well-filled by indy publishing.
As a side note, I’m not quite certain why the first strategy–which used to be a pretty common one in print, as works of something highly dubious quality but cheaply produced and sold–died on the whole. From what I understand, the model itself still works quite reliably…it’s just not used really seen outside the romance genre. (Surprisingly, some of the old cheapies–pulp novels, penny dreadfuls, dime novels, what have you–are still readable…in the same way old B movies are still enjoyable: yes, cheese, but highly hilarious cheese!)
I’m sure examples of ways lack of flexibility can doom a company are rife out there–one of the largest changes in the past century is the speed with which things do change increasing–but hey, I figure publishing is the one most people here would be most familiar with in some way.
My theory on why the strategy went out of fashion has to do with the comodification of reading as a ‘prestige hobby’ at least in the minds of the producers. From talking to editors/publishers (Baen excepted, natch) I got the “well we don’t mind if we DISCOURAGE the wrong sort of person from reading us” as well as “Our business is to educate people.” OF COURSE their business is to make money. But it became far too easy to sell the “bestseller” strategy to the huge conglomerates who own the houses and at the same time to use these “important” books to preen in front of liberal-arts-graduate peers. This became obvious to me, when publishers (again, Baen excepted) and three of my agents (the fourth less openly, but I think she tried too. Eh. Feeling. I’m not saying she did) did their best to push me to “literary” fantasy, even though that pays less than practically any other spec fic subgenre. But, you see, it has prestige. And I can do it, easy as falling off a log. I just don’t enjoy doing ONLY that. In fact, if it’s more than, say, 1/6th of my output I get a bit upset — upset defined as “Dang near suicidal.”
When the money is easy (and unrelated to the actual profit generated) organizations will tend to forget what their core mission is (as you note, a publisher’s core mission is to sell boo .. ahem; let me rephrase … is to SELL BOOKS; it is not, repeat NOT to “sell books that impress reviewers and critics and our peers in the industry” — another reason the industry disdains Baen.)
Just as an engineer’s core mission might be to build a bridge that stands up to its load, as opposed to one which is really truly elegant in its line and its a pity that trucks keep falling into the gorge.
Just as it was once held self-evident that governments are established to protect the rights of the governed, but we probably don’t want to start that discussion.
I will observe that organisms that are must successful with a strategy become the most resistant to change … getting us back to perseveration and the adage that a fanatic is one who redoubles his effort having forgotten his purpose.
That probably explains both why I have next to no interest in the liberal arts–and actively avoid modern literary works (if it’s older than about a century, and was intentionally written as lit, I’m gone) because my experience is that literary aspirations and quality writing seem to be mutually exclusive. This is part of why I don’t care to write for publication–and I’d not be surprised if that’s why you don’t really enjoy writing “literary” fantasy. You could be writing something vastly better, and more likely to be read a century later.
Consider who’s still being widely read of the authors writing during the early days of genre fiction’s existence–and try naming how many were trying to be literary who are being read anywhere but in classrooms.
The prestige theory actually probably would explain most of the shift, why it gets the most love–most likely it would coincide with publishing houses mostly hiring from the liberal arts pools, and not enough out of people with actual business savvy, so there’s not enough (if any) people suggesting that the prestige ‘line’ be treated as something done for, well, just that, with no particular expectation of it being profitable directly. Commodification would, alone, generate a pattern like that; there would still be some form of the pulps for markets other than the romance genre, even if the publishers would possibly not be as eager to admit ownership of those imprints. In fact, I strongly doubt the conglomerates that own the large publishers would be too thrilled at being told that the only part of the market their large publishing house is caring to provide any service at all is the high end. Have a specific line/imprint targeted at them, OK, but outright ignoring the majority of the market?
This is also driven a LOT by “theory” usually originating from “critics” like when they declared that henceforth cozies and space opera were “not real”. By commodification I meant “as a luxury good” instead of “general consumption, which it USED to be.
I sometimes wonder if the conglomerates know what’s going on. I mean, would any person in their right mind think that any editor can predict TO THE DIME how much a book will make? Wouldn’t any sane person immediately suspect fraud or control of results?
Actually in Canada it is held self evident that governments exist to serve the people, a significant difference in viewpoint.
Wayne
To Serve Man
I tend to agree, but my wife would kill me if I worded it that way.
Wayne
Um, well, I’m self published. So I’ve never dealt with the publishers.
OK, maybe I should correct that. Technically I am a publisher but I sure as hell am not traditional.
So I can only go by what I hear from other people. People like Sarah, Kris Rusch, Dean Smith, Shirley Meier, Karen Wehrstein, Janet Morris, Chris Morris, Jane Fancher, and a lot of others who I keep in regular touch with. And the stories when you add them up are pretty damned scary.
I do know several executives in the Recording Industry. They match the descriptions that you are giving of publishing executives so closely that you wouldn’t believe me. When I argued with one of them (who I won’t name to protect the guilty, but it was public on a Facebook Group, and I’ll tell you what group if you want to look), he didn’t seem to get what I was talking about.
Either that or he is a damned good liar.
Joy. We now have a minority government in Ontario.
Wayne
Just a side note. I put my futurist’s hat on, wrote an article about publishing, said nice things about you, and linked back here.
Wayne