TGWTG Nostalgia Chick / Lindsay Ellis / TheDudette - aka Hotdogs in face girl

[maguyver16]

Two reasons:

1. She grew up as a hick in the Appalachians, and wants to bury that under "legitimacy"

2. Her career started as the gender flipped version of the Nostalgia Critic, and she has been running from out under his shadow since then. Winning a "prestige" award would be an accomplishment that NC has not won, thereby finally making her "better" than him. (Hint: it won't)

But why does she still do stuff with PBS? What's the point?

 

[The Husbando Collector]

But why does she still do stuff with PBS? What's the point?

Methinks it has to do with still trying to come across as legitimately well read and part of her unappreciated wordsmith schtick. After all, if she's on PBS's payroll, then that must mean she's the next Tolkien or Jane Austen because she talks about books on a sparknotes level you guys!

 

[Water-T]

Methinks it has to do with still trying to come across as legitimately well read and part of her unappreciated wordsmith schtick. After all, if she's on PBS's payroll, then that must mean she's the next Tolkien or Jane Austen because she talks about books on a sparknotes level you guys!

Precisely. PBS gives her the same cachet it did to Bob Ross, Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street: accessible and educational, yet fun and approachable. Everything Wine Aunt is not!

 

[AnOminous]

That people hate Twilight isn't just because it's bad, but because it was massively successful, and directly led to hordes of imitators that were often worse, and dragged down much of the surrounding genre with it. AKA the Nickelback effect, that Nickelback sucks so badly they more or less killed rock and roll's presence in popular music.

I think Nickelback and Twilight and HP for that matter have some of the same traits. It isn't that they're some heroic level of being noxiously terrible, but they're just competent enough and technically proficient enough you don't instantly change the channel when they come on, so you end up listening to/reading this kind of crap way more than you should have.

Jenny Nicholson also has a Hugo nom this year for Best Related Work and there's been very little said about it vs when Lindsay was nominated for the same category, it was a big deal because she was first.

I think it's fairly simple, Jenny Nicholson is just not very hatable while Lindsay is.

 

[Water-T]

I think it's fairly simple, Jenny Nicholson is just not very hatable while Lindsay is.

Agreed. I gave her videos a try, and while a little longer than they should be, she seems very sweet and approachable.

Lindsay looks like she'd stomp on the dick of any man that gets within a 10 foot radius that can't advance her career or pay off her exorbitant bar tab.

 

[The Husbando Collector]

Agreed. I gave her videos a try, and while a little longer than they should be, she seems very sweet and approachable.

Lindsay looks like she'd stomp on the dick of any man that gets within a 10 foot radius that can't advance her career or pay off her exorbitant bar tab.

or whom doesn't look like gaston or any other fictional character that she's thirsted over before like the femcel that she is.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Precisely. PBS gives her the same cachet it did to Bob Ross, Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street: accessible and educational, yet fun and approachable. Everything Wine Aunt is not!

But she thinks she's those things and that should make them real.

 

[Nod Flenders]

Agreed. I gave her videos a try, and while a little longer than they should be, she seems very sweet and approachable.

Lindsay looks like she'd stomp on the dick of any man that gets within a 10 foot radius that can't advance her career or pay off her exorbitant bar tab.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm no fan of Jenny, but for some reason I can't hate her. Lindsay, of course, is so easy to hate.

 

[thegooddoctor]

As much as I want to gag saying this...

They're not wrong Lindsay is a worse writer than damned near any of them.

I refuse to believe an editor ever looked at her most recent book, because that is a page 1 rewrite. If that came to me from my publisher's slushpile, it would have gone straight into my trashcan, with a form rejection sent out a minute later.

Much of the Hugo incrowd may be BAD writers... but Lindsay is literally only there because a publisher thought she would sell books based on name recognition. She's not a bad writer BECAUSE SHE'S NOT A WRITER.

I’m honestly shocked the book really turned out as badly as everyone says it is? Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media, can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history. Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is.

She can make good videos, but she definitely comes off as often condescending, extremely egotistical and unlikable at times, her new e-game in recent years has definitely made her far more fart sniffy towards her audience no doubt, maybe inflating her own sense of her own writing skills. But how exactly did she manage to get her book published if it’s of the level of quality people say it is? Do the Hugo awards really have such a low standard of quality? The book has also been reviewed with an average of 4 1/2 stars by over 2.7k Amazon ratings. Now I know that isn’t the most reliable sign, but enough people seem to like it that it has some sort of appeal or quality to its writing that maybe it isn’t so terrible?

I’m not white-knighting Lindsey Here because I know she can be a huge idiot and her writing is not brilliant, but it’s eels a lot of the criticisms here almost seem like snobbery. I’d honestly like to see any kiwi here try publishing an actual novel and then tell me how easy it is to write gold. Having any novel published and be successful is an achievement in itself. So much of these criticisms seem to come from a place of Intellectual dishonesty and not serious criticism, lots of people do like it so maybe consider it’s a matter of tastes?

 

[Random Internet Person]

I’m honestly shocked the book really turned out as badly as everyone says it is? Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media, can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history. Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is.

She can make good videos, but she definitely comes off as often condescending, extremely egotistical and unlikable at times, her new e-game in recent years has definitely made her far more fart sniffy towards her audience no doubt, maybe inflating her own sense of her own writing skills. But how exactly did she manage to get her book published if it’s of the level of quality people say it is? Do the Hugo awards really have such a low standard of quality? The book has also been reviewed with an average of 4 1/2 stars by over 2.7k Amazon ratings. Now I know that isn’t the most reliable sign, but enough people seem to like it that it has some sort of appeal or quality to its writing that maybe it isn’t so terrible?

I’m not white-knighting Lindsey Here because I know she can be a huge idiot and her writing is not brilliant, but it’s eels a lot of the criticisms here almost seem like snobbery. I’d honestly like to see any kiwi here try publishing an actual novel and then tell me how easy it is to write gold. Having any novel published and be successful is an achievement in itself. So much of these criticisms seem to come from a place of Intellectual dishonesty and not serious criticism, lots of people do like it so maybe consider it’s a matter of tastes?

I think the idea is her book deal came out of the fact that she just got it because of the recognition of her YouTube channel. And that the book’s quality doesn’t really match something of the image Lindsay tries to project herself of as this great intellectual analyst of pop culture.

And the parts where she tries to completely bury her CA past to show how she was ALWAYS the type of person that makes the videos she currently makes, that too.

 

[Two Gorillion Dollars]

Ellis admitted that a friend of a friend who worked at St Martin's Press asked her for any manuscripts she had. It's a lesser achievement if you don't need to write it, hunt down an agent, endure rejection after rejection at the query letter stage, get lucky and send off sample chapters, endure rejections at that stage, get lucky and get asked for the complete manuscript, endure rejections at that stage, get lucky and sign an agent, wait for the agent to shop it around, hope you picked an agent who can actually sell your work and get you a good deal, hope a publisher wants it (this is where Ellis entered the pipeline), edit it to what the publisher or agent thinks will sell better (something Ellis admits didn't happen), wait for the publisher to release it, hope it sells well to enable you to keep working with that publisher, pray you don't write something that turns Twitter people against your book, and do any of the thousands of tasks one needs to do to get published. Yes, writing a novel is hard but Ellis has been able to saunter up Easy Street. Amazon does have the book at 4.4 but Goodreads is a better barometer of what readers think of any given book (especially the Tumblr/Twitter/BookTwitter crowd who make up the spine of the book reading audience these days.) On Goodreads, both of her books have lower ratings and most of the most upvoted reviews are extremely critical. You can also compare the difference in numbers between Axiom's End and the sequel where the sequel has about 10% of the ratings and reviews of the first. Lots of people who bought the first book have no interest in the second.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

I’m honestly shocked the book really turned out as badly as everyone says it is? Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media, can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history. Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is. ..

Please don't take it personal but your comment is woven into the tapestry of this thread, and every time I see it I just don't understand. She's never struck me as anything close to an intellectual. She's an opportunistic jackal feasting on the poisoned carcass of pop culture. Her biggest feat was being there in YouTube's formative years.

As annoying as they sometimes are, Red Letter Media - especially Mike and Rich - offer equally insightful critique with none of the pseudo intellectual commentary this chubby pig dishes out.

I'm not saying you or anyone else is wrong in enjoying her stuff, but I just don't think it's ever been particularly clever.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media, can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history. Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is.

Why do some people keep making this incorrect talking point? She’s not the bottom tier of YouTube but there is not anything remotely intelligent about any of her takes. It’s at the level of a sophomore in high school who read the book the night before a book report is due - except she gets a six figure income from simps so there’s no excuse for her sophomoric views on, well, anything.

 

[Shidoen]

Isn't she the one who reviews communism nowadays?

 

[nigga that crab pollack]

Lindsay strikes me as a very particular archetype that was dying out by the late 2000s. People with a chip on their shoulder about being in the Midwest, who grew up before the internet, who craved a cultured and cosmopolitan lifestyle. That was almost entirely out of reach for Midwesterners until the internet, they had to depend on Npr, PBS, and new York Times bestsellers. I had grown up being on the internet, so this is pretty much the millenial/zoomer generation gap since I was exposed to the glory of euros being faggots online

I cannot help but look at her and imagine all of the garage sales I went to and the things that my friends older siblings had from that era, purchased by people desperate to gatekeep themselves from the unwashed hick masses. When you spent the first twenty years of your life glorifying PBS it would be hard to admit that it's irrelevant now

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Lindsay strikes me as a very particular archetype that was dying out by the late 2000s. People with a chip on their shoulder about being in the Midwest, who grew up before the internet, who craved a cultured and cosmopolitan lifestyle. That was almost entirely out of reach for Midwesterners until the internet, they had to depend on Npr, PBS, and new York Times bestsellers. I had grown up being on the internet, so this is pretty much the millenial/zoomer generation gap since I was exposed to the glory of euros being faggots online

I cannot help but look at her and imagine all of the garage sales I went to and the things that my friends older siblings had from that era, purchased by people desperate to gatekeep themselves from the unwashed hick masses. When you spent the first twenty years of your life glorifying PBS it would be hard to admit that it's irrelevant now

The only thing Lindsay craves more than alcohol is acceptance from Legacy Media. Despite the meteor in plain sight, Lindsay idolizes these dinosaurs, to her detriment. She is part of the New Media that is displacing Legacy Media but all she wants is to be reviewing books and movies for The New York Times or NPR. Problem for her is that there is a long waiting line and the fact that she’s not a relative of someone plugged into that world with an Ivy League degree, it will never happen.

She knows it too but will take whatever she can get. She “peaked” when she got her book deal and her PBS series. Of course, her book deal proves why she never should have received one and her PBS series has a pee oh cee co-host who quickly threw her under the bus when she was getting canceled. I’d be sympathetic but she’s made over a million dollars from simps and has not exhibited any real growth in the decade plus she’s been doing this. I understand why she’s a lush.

 

[Boston Brand]

I’m honestly shocked the book really turned out as badly as everyone says it is? Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media, can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history. Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is.

She can make good videos, but she definitely comes off as often condescending, extremely egotistical and unlikable at times, her new e-game in recent years has definitely made her far more fart sniffy towards her audience no doubt, maybe inflating her own sense of her own writing skills. But how exactly did she manage to get her book published if it’s of the level of quality people say it is? Do the Hugo awards really have such a low standard of quality? The book has also been reviewed with an average of 4 1/2 stars by over 2.7k Amazon ratings. Now I know that isn’t the most reliable sign, but enough people seem to like it that it has some sort of appeal or quality to its writing that maybe it isn’t so terrible?

I’m not white-knighting Lindsey Here because I know she can be a huge idiot and her writing is not brilliant, but it’s eels a lot of the criticisms here almost seem like snobbery. I’d honestly like to see any kiwi here try publishing an actual novel and then tell me how easy it is to write gold. Having any novel published and be successful is an achievement in itself. So much of these criticisms seem to come from a place of Intellectual dishonesty and not serious criticism, lots of people do like it so maybe consider it’s a matter of tastes?

Let's take this one by one shall we? Mind you, I do this out of love, not mockery.

"I'm honestly shocked the book really turned out as badly as everyone says it is?"

Clearly you haven't read her books then.

"Lindsey while having many misinformed, bitchy SJW viewpoints and often produces startlingly misguided takes on media,"

No disagreement here.

"can fairly frequently make detailed and dare I say it, Intelligent, reviews on popular movies, books and cultural and cinematic or tropes and trends throughout history."

She makes YouTube videos regurgitating basic level facts anybody with a couple of film courses, or that spent a few minutes of research with Google can do. Which given she supposedly has paid researchers, makes her skin deep basic bitch hot takes all the more shallow.

"Lindsey is clearly smart in some way and has attracted a respectable audience, she’s certainly a bit more dignified and slightly less of a ‘woman’ child than Doug and anyone on his crew is."

Translation: She jumped on the internet video at just the right time to get a massive platform by default. And she's a sneering elitist toward the man and audience that got her there, despite literally making YouTube videos about children's movies and musicals for a living.

The only place she's shown any spark of genius? Marketing and making connections.

"She can make good videos,"

If that were true, she wouldn't have left film school with nothing to show for it but hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and a vocal hatred for Ryan Coogler.

She hasn't evolved her style in nearly a decade, and when she pulls $100k a month on Patreon and has a paid staff of editors, I would expect her bog standard film school hot take on Transformers to look semi-professional.

If only her opinions were semi-professional. Pick any random liberal arts major with a bad dye job and they will regurgitate the same opinions.

"but she definitely comes off as often condescending, extremely egotistical and unlikable at times, her new e-game in recent years has definitely made her far more fart sniffy towards her audience no doubt, maybe inflating her own sense of her own writing skills."

The Lindsay Ellis Problem in a nutshell ladies and gents.

Having a massive ego, visible condescension, and an inflated sense of self importance... while in a deliciously ironic twist, also being self-aware enough to realize you're only where you are today because you were damn lucky to hitch your wagon to two rising YouTube creators at the right moment, and never rising beyond being a hanger on to either one.

Self-doubt sets in... not only were you Doug Walker's bottom bitch who couldn't even pull in more views than Spoony, if Breadtube were the Beatles, you're the Ringo.

The effort to become a Hollywood director? Smashed to bits when you were immediately overshadowed by a far more talented classmate who went on to direct three Oscar nominated movies, and your efforts to Mean Girls him away got you branded a bigot and rightfully burned whatever bridges your abortion of a student film failed to build.

Trying to fly solo from Channel Awesome with your Chez Apocalypse brand? Crashed and burned within a year, and ended up falling apart worse than your child.

Twitter, where once you were the Queen Bitch in Charge? Turns out, people keep screencaps of your stupid and sometimes genuinely offensive hottakes and not even your army of Moviebob level simps can save you.

That cushy NPR job that has failed to get you anything beyond doing more YouTube videos? They already have your more diverse replacement lined up.

So you turn to spec fiction, hoping you can be a big name in a small pond... when that fails, I dunno, Soundcloud rapper?

Long story short? She's a bundle of ego, insecurity, elitism, self-doubt and alcoholism that wants to be the big star, and knows that maybe she doesn't have what it takes to get there.

"But how exactly did she manage to get her book published if it’s of the level of quality people say it is?"

Buying yourself a Hugo nomination opens a lot of doors in spec fiction oddly enough.

So does the fact that, until they started bleeding money because of the Wuhan Flu, publishers were really stupid about thinking anybody with a massive social media following was a can't miss proposition.

On paper, to your average shmuck in acquisitions, Lindsay Ellis sounds like a home run - a Hugo-nominee with millions of followers on Twitter and a successful career as a YouTuber.

On paper. All skin deep, but that would have taken five minutes of research, to say nothing of noticing her social media peaked years ago and has been declining for the past two... and boy did it show with the book sales. Her first book went from top shelf to clearance bins in around half a year, meaning her publisher took a bath on it. And they have seemingly learned their lesson that Twitter followers don't mean you can sell books.

"Do the Hugo awards really have such a low standard of quality?"

You... you really haven't seen the kind of shit that's been nominated for Hugos the past 4-5 years, have you?

Even if they weren't a clubhouse/punchline at this point, Ellis didn't get a Hugo nod for writing, she got one for a YouTube video.

Thinking she can write because of that Hugo is like thinking an Oscar nominated costume designer can direct a movie.

"The book has also been reviewed with an average of 4 1/2 stars by over 2.7k Amazon ratings. "

Oh that? Reviews are easy to farm, hell, buying positive reviews is literally part of the marketing budget for most books that get a marketing push.

It's also a sign of how much Ellis has taken a nose dive between book 1 and book 2 - Axiom's End has over 3k reviews, The Trouble in Devine has barely 300. A more than 90 percent decline once the publisher stopped throwing their marketing money behind her... which is why she's been begging for people to leave reviews on Twitter and the like.

"Now I know that isn’t the most reliable sign, but enough people seem to like it that it has some sort of appeal or quality to its writing that maybe it isn’t so terrible?"

Again, have you READ her book? Especially the newer one? I would be legitimately shocked if an editor ever took even a brief look at it.

"I’m not white-knighting Lindsey Here"

Certainly fooled me.

"because I know she can be a huge idiot and her writing is not brilliant,"

We agree, but I have a nasty feeling there's a but coming...

"but it’s feels a lot of the criticisms here almost seem like snobbery."

She sucks as a writer. I don't need to turn my nose up to whiff this turd.

"I’d honestly like to see any kiwi here try publishing an actual novel and then tell me how easy it is to write gold. Having any novel published and be successful is an achievement in itself. "

Oh boy, is this where I get to power-level?

I'm an editor at one of the big spec fiction publishers - won't say which one, but lets just say I guarantee you've read or have heard of authors we publish, and possibly a few whose work passed beneath my pen. Maybe even one or two I discovered if you're a fan of the genre.

I go through two or three novel manuscripts in a given week, plus a fair amount of short stories - and I'm fast by industry standards. That's excluding crap we toss out almost immediately for a host of reasons, mostly that they're not in English, don't follow guidelines, or are just wretched. I promise anyone that can form a complete sentence and knows grade school grammar is better than this.

Then we dive into actual serious submissions - about another 35 percent are rejected with non-forms, though I'm more generous than most editors who usually reject closer to 45 percent, often without reading more than the first chapter... my rule is first 50 pages, skim around the rest if its a slog.

Both of Lindsay's books land about here on my scale for a host of reasons - they're generic, tread very familiar ground, she has no real voice as an author, there isn't much to the plot of either novel, and the latter novel especially is just a hot mess top to bottom, a total garbage fire that would require essentially needing to be rewritten entirely. It's also how I know an editor never seriously took a look at them, and she got this on name recognition... because neither should have escaped the slush pile, and they're around the lower end of quality for this tier at that.

That's around 85-95 percent of books so far for those keeping track.

Next tier for me is around the next 10 percent, for most editors the next 4 percent, the nonform rejection... this is usually where stuff we get from agents land, unless they've brought us a real turd. Book's solid, there's usually stuff I really like, but unfortunately, more that I didn't. I send you a couple paragraphs in the response detailing why we reject it, ways it could improve, and encouragement to keep writing and send us more.

The good news for those whose novels never make it past here? If you're getting nonform rejections you are literally among the top percentile of writers... you just didn't submit the right story, maybe it could have used more polish, hell, maybe you just had the bad luck to submit a story too similar to another we recently accepted. Another publisher or another editor may easily have said yes... or in the case of some outlets, you're too white/male/straight, so this is as far as you go.

That last group, that last 1-5 percent? I either have recommended changes and ask they resubmit, or pass it up the chain to my bosses to see if they like it and want to sign it. they usually reject nine out of every ten, at best.

This whole process can take 6-12 months per novel by the way. And you can STILL be rejected.

And a major reason I loathe Ellis is that she STARTED at this point in the process. There are authors who beat themselves bloody to get this far, and Ellis got here because some schlemiel was impressed by a Hugo nomination and Twitter followers.

After this, god willing the editors up the chain from me like your book and offer you a contract? It's still an uphill battle. You get an advance - sometimes all at once, sometimes over time, but that advance money is the only dime you'll ever see until your book turns a profit.

And the rub? For most publishers more than half of authors don't earn back those advances... which means you lost the publisher money, which means you get kicked to the curb as soon as your contract is up. If you're lucky, maybe you earn back the advance, but not spectacularly - you get the occasional royalty check, and live advance to advance, always hoping you sell just enough the publisher keeps you around, so lets hope you put out books quickly. Maybe 10 percent of authors really make enough to live on, and less than a percent sell enough books to make a mint on. Those whales are the ones who publishers make their money off of to support the rest... that's going to be important in a moment.

Marketing? Hope you can self promote, because most publishers don't have enough to market every author... and why should you get any of that promotion money? You're a new author, publishers literally have dozens of other new authors waiting to take your place, so sink or swim bitch! Those marketing dollars are almost always going to go to the authors who make the company money, or maybe if one of those longtime paycheck to paycheck authors puts out something really spectacular. Otherwise? You better be pushing your own book with the kind of urgency usually reserved for storming Normandy Beach.

And a lot fail... the worst part of my job is when I tell an author, especially one who I fought for every step of the way, that we're cutting them loose, better luck elsewhere.

Yet authors keep doing it despite failure or at least poverty being nearly all but guaranteed for 99 percent of them... maybe they love to write, have a story they want to tell, or maybe they just dream of walking into a bookstore and seeing their name on a spine. I see most authors fail... but very few ever give up. And so many of them produce work that's beautiful, haunting, that sticks with me, even years later.

Which is why I have a special loathing for Ellis. Because I DO know how much work goes into a novel, much less getting one published. And I know she got special treatment, special attention, and proved utterly unworthy of either. That she was essentially offered a sweatheart publishing deal for a book that, without her connections and star power, never would have made it out of slush, was given a massive marketing push IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC, and her book still sank like a stone, the sequel is worse in terms of quality and sales, and that she's probably lost her publisher enough money she cost a half dozen aspiring authors book deals, because they banked on Ellis being a cash cow instead of a lolcow.

"So much of these criticisms seem to come from a place of Intellectual dishonesty and not serious criticism, lots of people do like it so maybe consider it’s a matter of tastes."

Her books are awful, she's a terrible person, and anyone who claims otherwise is a simp or a lobotomy patient.

I think the idea is her book deal came out of the fact that she just got it because of the recognition of her YouTube channel. And that the book’s quality doesn’t really match something of the image Lindsay tries to project herself of as this great intellectual analyst of pop culture.

And the parts where she tries to completely bury her CA past to show how she was ALWAYS the type of person that makes the videos she currently makes, that too.

Ellis admitted that a friend of a friend who worked at St Martin's Press asked her for any manuscripts she had. It's a lesser achievement if you don't need to write it, hunt down an agent, endure rejection after rejection at the query letter stage, get lucky and send off sample chapters, endure rejections at that stage, get lucky and get asked for the complete manuscript, endure rejections at that stage, get lucky and sign an agent, wait for the agent to shop it around, hope you picked an agent who can actually sell your work and get you a good deal, hope a publisher wants it (this is where Ellis entered the pipeline), edit it to what the publisher or agent thinks will sell better (something Ellis admits didn't happen), wait for the publisher to release it, hope it sells well to enable you to keep working with that publisher, pray you don't write something that turns Twitter people against your book, and do any of the thousands of tasks one needs to do to get published. Yes, writing a novel is hard but Ellis has been able to saunter up Easy Street. Amazon does have the book at 4.4 but Goodreads is a better barometer of what readers think of any given book (especially the Tumblr/Twitter/BookTwitter crowd who make up the spine of the book reading audience these days.) On Goodreads, both of her books have lower ratings and most of the most upvoted reviews are extremely critical. You can also compare the difference in numbers between Axiom's End and the sequel where the sequel has about 10% of the ratings and reviews of the first. Lots of people who bought the first book have no interest in the second.

Yup. She got a book deal essentially because she has connections, a massive social media presence, and on paper at least, a big enough audience to guarantee sales.

Even then it STILL took a Hugo nomination before she was offered a book deal... thus the theories she may have stuffed the ballot, as much Patreon simp buks as she has, 20-30 memberships to get votes is chump change.

That and, as @Two Gorillion Dollars points out, that she essentially cut in line in front of hundreds of authors of far greater talent - trust me, as someone who works editorial, I've had to reject authors who wrote chapters better than Lindsay's whole novels - is why the SFWA crowd hates her.

She was playing on easy mode, and the best she could muster was something that any self respecting editor would have tossed in the recycling bin.

I'm really looking forward to the book scan numbers once my account is renewed, because the massive leap the first book took from debut to wholesalers and clearance bin implies she took a nosedive and her publisher got hosed.

Hell, that's a HUGE part of why I hate her... I know what hoops every author has to jump through for even a shot at a book deal... how many still don't succeed. I have said before, I have had to be the bastard to tell authors we're dropping them, often due to no fault of their own, so seeing Lindsay piss away the kind of opportunity many who work their asses off never get a whiff of? Makes her a special sort of loathsome.

Please don't take it personal but your comment is woven into the tapestry of this thread, and every time I see it I just don't understand. She's never struck me as anything close to an intellectual. She's an opportunistic jackal feasting on the poisoned carcass of pop culture. Her biggest feat was being there in YouTube's formative years.

As annoying as they sometimes are, Red Letter Media - especially Mike and Rich - offer equally insightful critique with none of the pseudo intellectual commentary this chubby pig dishes out.

I'm not saying you or anyone else is wrong in enjoying her stuff, but I just don't think it's ever been particularly clever.

Why do some people keep making this incorrect talking point? She’s not the bottom tier of YouTube but there is not anything remotely intelligent about any of her takes. It’s at the level of a sophomore in high school who read the book the night before a book report is due - except she gets a six figure income from simps so there’s no excuse for her sophomoric views on, well, anything.

Like I have said time and again: Throw a rock on a liberal arts college campus, and you'll hit a dozen women just like Lindsay Ellis, offering the exact same takes and opinions as her, and occasionally far more skillfully.

Intelligence or opinion isn't what made Lindsay a name, it's because she jumped on the internet video bandwagon early, hitching her wagon to first Doug Walker and then Breadtube, and admittingly, a gift for self-promotion and making connections she's not afraid to use them.

Any one of those college feminists we hit with that theoretical rock could have had the same career trajectory, some maybe gone even farther. The reason she's stagnating now is she's at the point where platform and connections can take her no further, and she has to stand on her own talent and opinions... and has nothing unique to offer to interesting to say.

The only thing Lindsay craves more than alcohol is acceptance from Legacy Media. Despite the meteor in plain sight, Lindsay idolizes these dinosaurs, to her detriment. She is part of the New Media that is displacing Legacy Media but all she wants is to be reviewing books and movies for The New York Times or NPR. Problem for her is that there is a long waiting line and the fact that she’s not a relative of someone plugged into that world with an Ivy League degree, it will never happen.

She knows it too but will take whatever she can get. She “peaked” when she got her book deal and her PBS series. Of course, her book deal proves why she never should have received one and her PBS series has a pee oh cee co-host who quickly threw her under the bus when she was getting canceled. I’d be sympathetic but she’s made over a million dollars from simps and has not exhibited any real growth in the decade plus she’s been doing this. I understand why she’s a lush.

I am BAFFLED by that, but maybe that's because I've been part of legacy media for years. We're a slowly dying beast, and everyone inside knows it. Pay's lousy, layoffs are common, the majority are riddled with debt... hell, want an example? Tor not only forced founder Tom Doherty to retire, but a lot of their longtime big names, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, Glenn Cook, have all been told to wrap up their open series' while they have the cash to afford their advances... and because I'm sure plenty in middle management will love to kick the old white men out and use their royalties to subsidize diverse/cheaper names moving forward.

Barnes and Noble was one month away from bankruptcy during the shut down... if they had, they would have taken at least half of the trad publishers with them. One or two of the national booksellers goes belly up, a giant chunk of New York based trad publishing simply won't be able to survive, from national magazines to spec fiction houses. And we know it, thus why the Hugo crowd is probably padding their resumes to land jobs in academia. Plus, if you're an author without massive sales numbers? Pay's generally lousy, a giant chunk of SFWA more or less survives on grants, Patreon and/or welfare.

A few publishers are probably ready to survive, maybe even thrive - Baen Books comes to mind, they've been digital sales focused for decades, have an enviable business model, have a loyal author base and big fanbase, and critically, are the rare publishing house without any debt - but the rest of us? I'm gonna fiddle my fucking heart out, but I know damn well I'm in the Titanic's dance band.

Comparatively, New Media, while still having some massive kinks to work out, shows massive growth and promise. Ever hear of 20Booksto50k? Massive movement in self-publishing that boasts a staggering number of success stories. Granted, some of its clearly not applicable - there's only so much room for say, gender bender erotica or political gag parodies - but there are enough people pulling down six figures form Amazon that its hard to ignore, and a lot of them are doing really interesting stuff. They're also proving dozens of decade old trad publishing "facts" are mere fiction - to name one, there is still a HUGE market for traditional fantasy or pulpy sword and sorcery, that clearly isn't being met by trad publishers focus on ASOIAF style dark/subversive fantasy, urban fantasy, YA fiction and Woke crap.

It's not perfect - I still tell aspiring authors to try writing short fiction to the trad magazines first to hone their craft for a reason, and godforbid Amazon ever decides to kill the golden goose - but New Media is the future.

Thus why I'm baffled why Ellis, who literally made her name in New Media, so consistently wants to trade her massive web platform into table scraps from trad media. Her book's a garbage fire, but she definitely would have made more than her advance dropping them on Amazon. All her efforts to get pity spots on NPR, the occasional puff piece article, even a book deal... all that time and effort would have been better spent growing her presence online, especially since that platform has begun to crumble from neglect.

I know she thinks she needs to prove she's "not just a YouTuber", but it's damned odd to see someone trade away a gold mine for fool's gold in real time.

 

[TokiBun]

Has anyone noticed she’s calling herself an ex-youtuber on her Twitter? What could that mean exactly?

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

We’ll need to bookmark that post the next time one of Lindsay’s simps come in here and accuse us of being mean haydurs. Very well said @Boston Brand

As to why Lindsay wants acceptance from Legacy Media? Likely due to her inferiority complex of growing up in Tennessee and not growing up a cultured New York socialite with an Ivy League degree. However she barely puts in an effort in, so even if those circles were to ever take notice, they’d see her low-effort content and rightfully write her off. Now Lindsay is being watched like a hawk due to her near-cancelation. She has one more book in her contract and that’ll be it for her. As the pressure to promoted “melanated voices” grow, PBS will ditch her too. Her future is hanging on by a thread at the moment.

 

[Ninon42]

Has anyone noticed she’s calling herself an ex-youtuber on her Twitter? What could that mean exactly?

View attachment 2800102

Now that's interesting. The leading theory on the subreddit is that she's moving to Nebula and that does seem the most plausible IMO. She hasn't released a video since October 21, discontinued the $10/mo tier Patreon level, podcast roughly every other week and new one due out today. Nothing on Patreon, Instagram or Twitter.

Okay, my working theory is that she is going to work on content creation with Curiosity Stream (CS). According to her book bio, her MFA had a documentary focus

and the Hobbit Duology was described as a documentary (and her student abortion doc the A-Word as well). Though she describes herself alternately as an Internet comedian, video essayist and writer, she clearly self-identifies as a documentarian. She's been involved with Nebula since it started and her agent Dave Wiskus is one of its founders along with the management organization Standard. Curiosity Stream has had a package partnership with Nebula for a while now where if you buy a sub to CS, you get free access to Nebula too. For those blissfully unaware, CS is a subscription VOD streaming service with tons of documentaries and Nebula is for YouTube producers to get away from Susan's shackles.

In September 2021, CS announced that they had purchased a minority stake (30-40%) in Nebula, solidifying the link between the two streaming services. CS has 20 million subscribers and has Nebula 350K, but CS is making bank with an expectation of $71M in revenue for 2021 according to their Q3 2021 financial report. What nice synergy, for one of Nebula's biggest names to transition (lol) to it's new stakeholder and bring her New Media following to staid legacy media subjects. If correct, it's honestly a win for Lindsay. I could be giving everyone involved way too much credit but the one thing Lindsay loves as much as legitimacy is money and CS has it right now. Or she could sulk and drink herself into a stupor.