We’re all selling the ethanol buzz

When talking about the writing business with folks, one of my recurring refrains is that we don’t really sell stories to people–we sell a token of identity. It may be an aspirational identity, or one that the reader already identifies with, but even the use of the word reader in this context underlies my point.

Over the weekend I was catching up on my blog reading and was intrigued by Fast Company’s article about the way our sewerage holds markers that can be used to identify our income. It caught me off-guard with its reminders that consumption is an act of cultural identity, but the researchers noted that:

Surprisingly, (higher) income correlated with more alcohol and coffee consumption. Regarding coffee, researchers point to the intelligentsia institution that coffee has become, in which this choice of beverage is actually a statement about one’s self. You could easily say the same thing about wine, whiskey, or craft beer, too—all of which are tasty, and culturally prized delivery systems for a chemically identical ethanol buzz.

Types of writing are just as cultural coded as the types of coffee we drink and the booze we consume. Certain types of fiction are culturally prized because they’re positioned in a certain way in the culture, while others are disparaged. While it used to divide purely along genre lines, you now add in the complications of delivery method (ebook versus print), the perceitved professionalism of the creator (indie vs traditionally published vs fanfic vs blogger) and other details.

It’s never really been enough to just tell a good story, any more than a type of booze is jus delivering an ethanol buzz. There’s always a second story–an identity–that’s being constructed around what you write