schlock books

[Anonymous No.15230071]

I'm curious who reads these things. large quantity published, exceedingly generic, one gimmicky niche repeated over and over, extremely low quality. pic related is just one example. there are a lot of little niches that get hundreds of new books a year, seemingly there are thousands of nearly identical books for these niches. Who reads them? how can the market for them possibly be large enough to warrant the sheer quantity of them?
>female masturbation material: usually either historical esp. european setting (dukes, princes) or contemporary (eg 50 shades of grey); cover has either a woman in a historical dress or a shirtless man. the harlequin romance paperback type garbage, but it's still being written in bulk in modern times
>detective novels (hardboiled for men, agatha christie -esque for women), especially set in the 1800s or 1920s-40s in america or england
>war CoD-like tripe, but the most prolific are 'pacific theater' (WWII against japan) or nazi-shooters, there are dozens and dozens of them
>ultra-generic /sffg/ -- easily hundreds of nearly indistinguishable wish fulfillment rags pumped out every year
Yet I've never met anyone who actually reads them. Are there schlock otaku who fund this industry? Is there some miserable 50 year old woman who buys literally hundreds of bodice-rippers every year? Are there boomers with stacks of dozens upon dozens of books about some quirky hardboiled fighter pilot in WWII shooting down japs? explain this phenomenon. do people enjoy reading the same thing over and over again?

[Anonymous No.15230080]

money laundering

[Anonymous No.15230081]

Just think about it. This is an entire industry. Hundreds of people derive a living off the profits from this.
>cover artists
>cover models
>writer
>editor
>publisher
Someone is buying them. Where are these mysterious schlock otaku?

[Anonymous No.15230088]

[Anonymous No.15230091]

>>15230088
>as unforgettable as a stabbing
Is this the new tour de force?

[Anonymous No.15230095]

[Anonymous No.15230101]

>>15230071
You've never met anyone who ADMITS to reading them. There are a lot of people out there stupid enough to enjoy trash books but ALSO smart enough to know that they should have better taste. Midwits, basically. So they're embarrassed, and they hide what they read.

It's like how women were embarrassed to admit they liked Fifty Shades of Grey because they knew it was trash. But they sure read it anyway, those millions of copies didn't buy themselves.

[Anonymous No.15230117]

just mill around searching by genre or by keyword and look at the sheer quantity of these things.

[Anonymous No.15230128]

One of the most frightening thoughts I sometimes have is that my mind naturally filters out multiple levels of human chaff. Some of them are simply offensive, but some are so offensive that I can only even believe they exist when I'm focusing directly on them. The second I look away from this actual human garbage, my unconscious mind (which had previously been screaming in pain) wipes its existence from my active knowledge. It doesn't do the usual thing where it plugs the new information into my worldview to procedurally update it, like "hey, I guess 40% of human beings are actual unconscious chaff, and another 30-40% are almost as bad." It just erases it, so I can go on living the lie that they aren't this bad.

On some conscious level, if I focus really hard, I can go, oh yeah, I know these horrible pieces of shit exist. But that isn't the same as the reflexive knowledge, which I should have by now if it weren't so painful to integrate it, that the vast majority of people barely qualify as conscious.

The people who read these books are closer to animals than human beings. Their consciousness is a single undifferentiated stream of habits and preferences already decided before they left childhood. If you have to live around truly poor people for a while you'll realize how bad it is. Even now my mind is scanning for ways to describe how bad they are, and I can only come up with analogies like "imagine an employed adult with the brain of an 8 year old that is really excited to see the next Avengers movie." That's who reads these books.

[Anonymous No.15230131]

>>15230101
You're telling me normalfags have hidden schlock stashes? It's literally the same book written over and over. How many books about urban warlocks does someone need to read?

[Anonymous No.15230202]

>>15230128
your post is too high quality. i've been infected with the schlock mind now.

I forgot a schlock niche--the female oriented YA fantasy series. the more poorly founded in reality, the better. horses who can run 100 miles in a single day, skinny 10 year old girls who can use a full war bow and hold the draw for 5 minutes straight, economies where a shirt costs 100 solid gold coins.

I think i've either read or skimread a few schlock books when I was younger. I couldn't remember the titles for the life of me. You know how you eat a bowl of cheerios and it's like eating nothing at all? It doesn't fill you up, it doesn't satisfy you, and it has the taste of soggy cardboard? These are the book equivalent of cheerios.

[Anonymous No.15230282]

>>15230071
Middle aged women. They read more books than any demographic in America.

[Anonymous No.15230283]

>>15230088
>as unforgettable as a stabbing

[Anonymous No.15230348]

>>15230282
I really hate these fart-sniffing self-blurbs.
>indulges in the occasional hyperbole
>she's a dog rescuer, sci fi nerd, and occasional optimist
>her characters are strong, witty
>cheering on her future MLB slugger
>has three slightly-wild children
>in her previous life, amy was a software designer before becoming a Mom of Boys TM
It's like my midwestern suburb aunt felt the need to dress up her life on facebook so she read a copywriting manual and glamorized her normalfaggotness. So fart-sniffers become schlock-writers/readers. Why do people think this is okay?

[Anonymous No.15230356]

>>15230095
>One of the best mil sci-fi I have read this year" - amazon customer

Imagine having that on your cover.

[Anonymous No.15230387]

>>15230071
I read almost an entire serie of WWII spitfire pilot CoD shlock when I was sixteen. The reason being that all electronics in the house got turned off at 22:00. It staves of boredom and if you're a fast reader you burn through them

[Anonymous No.15230390]

>>15230348
You have to fill the void somehow

[Anonymous No.15230442]

>>15230282
You know when you see shit like this, all those centuries of philosophers and writers hating women starts to make perfect sense.

[Anonymous No.15230462]

>>15230442
hush now, men read and write plenty of their own schlock. like this
>>15230387

[Anonymous No.15230519]

It's just like with light novels, there's tons of them. Need to write my own one day, with stolen waifus of course.

[Anonymous No.15230542]

>>15230519
I love the ever increasing length of titles for Light Novels in Japan. Apparently the market is so flooded that people don't even bother reading the synopsis anymore so the titles have become a substitute for the back of the book.

[Anonymous No.15230554]

>>15230282
My favorite is Elizabeth Schechter.

[Anonymous No.15230560]

>>15230519
>imagine spending thousands of hours grinding fundies just to end up painting covers for schlock

[Anonymous No.15230568]

>>15230071
>do people enjoy reading the same thing over and over again?

Between the ages of 12 and 17 I read approximately 50 Star Wars novels, so, you know. It can happen.

[Anonymous No.15230680]

>>15230560
If it pays the bills why not. Plus it can free you up to do what you want.

[Anonymous No.15231228]

>>15230519
What waifus are you planning to copy?

[Anonymous No.15231256]

the book of joan
american war
and the like

the DRUMPF schlock

[Anonymous No.15231363]

>>15231256
Ring wing schlock is hilarious. Also the booming business that is Big Foot Erotica.

[Anonymous No.15231456]

>>15231363
there's plenty of left wing schlock as well, which takes itself far too seriously and presents a dignified face but is, none the less, schlock. i admit to not being well versed on it as i prefer not to think upon it all.
>>15230568
imagine giving those to your kid. it ought to count as child abuse.
>>15230542
the light novel industry is terrifying. between the imouto/moeblob-lewding and the isekai fad it's just sad on a national level. abe is running around trying to make porn illegal when the far larger stigma is the loser-as-isekai-hero LN schlock. at least it takes a real man to look at a hairy bush of a cunt and jack to it. vegetarian otaku will be the true death of his nation.

[Anonymous No.15231534]

>>15231228
Asuka from NGE.
Fran from FF12.
Yumeko from Kakegurui.
Hex Maniac from Pokemon.

[Anonymous No.15231929]

>>15231456
Maybe I'm thinking too much, but the isekai genre popularity is a sign of a societies failure to provide a path to a meaningful life. This isn't a barb against just Japan, but most first world nations. Modern isekai usually follows a general formula.

>MC is living a listless life. He is either a low level salary worker or a NEET
>No meaningful relationships in the real world. >Lives alone in an tiny apartment.
>He dies by either getting hit by a truck or through overwork
>Gets transported to a video game world

The video game world is key because unlike the old "modern person goes to fantasy world" stories of the 80's/90's the video game world isn't a strange and dangerous world where the MC doesn't know what is happening. Instead the video game world is a familiar world where EVERYTHING makes sense. He understands the game mechanics as soon as they are explained. On top of that if the MC isn't born the strongest ever, he quickly becomes the strongest because of his understanding of how the world works. The goals offered to the MC are usually fairly simple and all the messy morals of the real world don't exist. On top of that the MC's existence is important, unlike his real world life.

[Anonymous No.15231956]

>>15231456
>imagine giving those to your kid. it ought to count as child abuse.

I mean, I grew out of it and read actual books now. I'm still undecided whether its better for kids to read junk than to not read at all.

[Anonymous No.15231989]

The romance/erotica is a substitute for porn. Some of my friends do that. It's not like actual porn is very female friendly.

And for the rest I guess it's better to read (even if it's trash) than to watch TV all day.

[Anonymous No.15232064]

>>15231989
>It's not like actual porn is very female friendly.
Females are actually seeking out more rougher porn nowadays.

[Anonymous No.15232150]

tons of people here in la read them, even though our public library is amazing :/

[Anonymous No.15232180]

>>15232150
>tons of people here in la read them
>tons of people
>here in la
>people
>in la

[Anonymous No.15232263]

>>15230071
I often read trash books like that, they are comfy if taken with irony.
The strange thing is the huge number of girls who sincerely appreciate these products

[Anonymous No.15232300]

>>15232180
I’m only basing this off the free book boxes and free piles I’ve seen at various libraries. Always a load of bs while other places I’ve lived it seems at least more hit or miss, likely to come across something interesting that isn’t just airline fiction or whatever was on the best seller shelf that month

[Anonymous No.15232367]

>>15230071
For what it's worth, when I was around 11 years old I read at least a dozen sniper novels and Tom Clancy books along with a few clumsily written Vietnam War memoirs.
I remember even in HS the school library would mostly be filled with those formulaic genre fiction books, like Artemis Fowl or Percy Jackson. Usually these are the books kids are assigned to read in elementary school, I think so they can teach the generic plot diagram (I remember this rammed down our throats from 3rd to 10th grade). Obviously kids aren't reading much erotica or war fiction but I think public schools account for much of the boilerplate fiction market.
This is also probably why most Americans read very little and perhaps why, among other things, a large segment of the population is functionally illiterate. Kids who read essentially the same book for 10 years never develop past a basic ability, and by the time they exposed to real literary works in HS it is either too late or they don't give a shit about reading having a thousand other things to care about. I should also add that when I was in HS in a quality school district 6 years the only works we had to read cover to cover were To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, and a few plays.

[Anonymous No.15232594]

>>15231534
Seems alright

[Anonymous No.15232749]

>>15231534
fucking EXQUISITE TASTE. You're a man with fine taste in waifus. May I also suggest lulu from ff x and yomi from azumanga.

[Anonymous No.15232841]

>>15230128
damn this is epic

[Anonymous No.15233570]

>>15232263
Probably because those dudes in those books are literal alphas.

[Anonymous No.15233590]

>>15230071

I know one girl. She is very fat and pretty dumb and she inhales Amish romance novels.

[Anonymous No.15233610]

>>15232367
it's true the schooling quality is lacking, but the kids still have two parents accessable at least 2 days a week. maybe mommy should get off facebook and go teach her brats how to read a book.
>that diagram
public school wasted 14 years of my life.

[Anonymous No.15233660]

>>15230071
I work at a public library in the US

It's boomers and 90 IQ young people, lots more women than men but occasionally you will have men reading James Patterson, Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy

It took me about a year and a half to read all of the worthwhile fiction in the library, (maybe 120-150 books out of 6000). The schlock is like a tidal wave, it can't be stopped, you just get more and more. My boss is a boomer white lady and she is constantly getting this stuff and people are constantly asking for it.

[Anonymous No.15233668]

>>15230095
I literally know one of the guys that co-wrote this. He was the youth pastor at my church lmao.

[Anonymous No.15233685]

>>15230071
You can learn all you need to know by going to someplace that sells these books, I recommend your local mega-walmart, and observe all the books on the shelf. You will find a thousand different varieties of romance porn (historical, modern, fetish, etc.), a smattering of books about evangelical christianity, and a whole bunch of books "written" by fox news hosts and members of the Trump family. What more do you need?

[Anonymous No.15233780]

>>15233590
>She is very fat
it's exactly as suspected. with the modern obesity epidemic no wonder the schlock market is exploding.
>>15233660
i grew up in a shitty large town/small city and the library had NOTHING of value, just schlock. it killed my love of reading for sure. from age 12-22 i read nothing at all because i thought all books were like that. then i picked up a dostoevsky novel and started coming here, now i'm in the 50+ books a year league. i'd argue schlock does far more harm than good.

[Anonymous No.15233782]

>>15230282
>>15230348
Writing your self-summary is the worst cringe in publishing. I just want to copy Pynchon and write something sparse which is neither egregiously modest or hoity toity puffing up, "Anon is a (home state) born (current state) based writer. He studied English literature at 4chan University and his work has appeared in W, X, and Y, and is forthcoming in Z." but they never let me and I get pressured to write some gay shit to sound "friendly" and "approachable."

[Anonymous No.15233785]

>>15233668
>not only writing schlock but telling people you write schlock
yikes. is he proud of what he's done? does he know he's a shit peddling midwit responsible for the intellectual regression of the planet?

[Anonymous No.15233797]

>>15233782
In queries I skip the section where they want you to write a bio, or else sum myself up in 1-2 sentences of factual information. I hate those damned things. I'm not gonna sit there and jack myself off and feel like a facetious jackass just to satisfy some bimbo.
>hoity toity
I use this and someone once told me they didn't believe it was a real word. Glad to see someone else using obscure northeastern parlance.

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.15234723]

>>15230071
>Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel – the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel – seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific. One of our subscribers to my knowledge read four or five detective stories every week for over a year, besides others which he got from another library. What chiefly surprised me was that he never read the same book twice. Apparently the whole of that frightful torrent of trash (the pages read every year would, I calculated, cover nearly three quarters of an acre) was stored for ever in his memory. He took no notice of titles or author’s names, but he could tell by merely glancing into a book whether be had ‘had it already’.

-Orwell, "Bookshop Memories"

[Anonymous No.15235844]

>>15230519
>Bone Lord
BLATANT

[Anonymous No.15236160]

>>15230519
Why are there so many in the dungeons?

[Anonymous No.15236227]

>>15230071
>do people enjoy reading the same thing over and over again?
says he, browsing 4chan.

[Anonymous No.15236231]

>>15230071
>female masturbation material
Those would be schlick books.
>>15230101
>It's like how women were embarrassed to admit they liked Fifty Shades of Grey because they knew it was trash.
>>15230131
>You're telling me normalfags have hidden schlock stashes? It's literally the same book written over and over.
Same as porn really. The same few dozen fetishes remade over and over.
>>15230071
>Is there some miserable 50 year old woman who buys literally hundreds of bodice-rippers every year?
When I worked in a charity shop there was an old lady who would come in every week. Older than 50, more like 70. She always bought a few of the steamier looking books, and donated the same ones she had bought the last week. She was spoiled for choice too, as we always had more coming in.

[Anonymous No.15236271]

>>15230282
these read like an AI wrote them. the photos could've been generated too.

[Anonymous No.15236702]

>>15236271
>adversarial neural network
>training data from erotic novels
>generate more erotic novels
>feedback from women generates more training data
>iterate process
>profit
Something like this?

[Anonymous No.15236870]

>>15236231
>schlick books.
schlick schlock?
>more like 70
>steamier looking books
at that age can she even jill it anymore? for what purpose? the woman has maybe another decade of life and she squanders it reading that.