Mass Secession: How indie creators can starve corporate media

Indie creators have a massive advantage over their corporate-driven counterparts If they quit being metaphorical islands.

If there’s one thing I learned from working in corporate media, it’s that the writer is the vessel for management’s narrative. That means so much of the work you’re seeing these days may or may not be from the writer’s viewpoint, but from their directors’, their directors’ directors, and, ultimately, the board of directors.

It was something I sniffed out in seconds during my days at a mainstream media company, one looking to become the global leader in sports and entertainment, if that clues you in.

The unease began when my two directors—the division director and senior director—all but insisted that I be completely subservient to them. At that point, even on a sports and entertainment scale, it drove home the notion even further that your so-called conspiracy theories aren’t so theoretical at all—they’re closer to fact than you may otherwise want to believe.

Whether that’s corporate sports writing, traditional publishing for books, Hollywood, you name it, these narratives exist. They’re all carefully curated to hijack your attention and keep your attention glued to your screens.

Take it from someone who’d been to the meetings, and even talked extensively with a senior director who not only encouraged us to keep readers glued to their screens because of the content we were writing, but for them to stick around long enough to click ads and buy something meaningless. You know what those ads look like if you browse the internet regularly.

Bucking the gatekeepers one niche at a time

Writing fiction that doesn’t ask for permission to exist is one way, and it’s long since become my specialty. But it’s a one-track way of thinking if I’m doing little more than sharing my work with you, first in e-book and, come the end of February, hard copy.

And there are some damn good indie and small-press authors out there who don’t fully follow the script. Tracy Lawson’s Resistance Series is one of my favorites, and it’s one libertarians will devour. Ditto for Kate L. Mary’s Beyond Trilogy—I’ve actually engaged in newsletter swaps with her.

Enjoying this rant against corporate media from an indie creator who saw through their B.S.? Keep reading this article at The Rogue Scribe, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Scribe for even more awesome content.