I suppose it’s possible for an agent or publishing editor to trawl the internet looking for the next wunderkind, but to be honest, it seems like it would be easier for them just to trawl through their slush piles, something they have to do anyway. We are in a point of transition, between the old, traditional model of writing and publishing and the sorting out of the new models, insta-publish and my-opinion-is-just-as-valid-as-yours and so on. For fiction, the markets move more slowly than for nonfiction and opinion.

Medium isn’t the answer, though it’s actually a good basic model of what could work for fiction writers. I suspect that great writers have been left out of the spotlight since publishing began, not from a lack of talent or popular subject matter but rather shifting cycles of editorial understanding of what might make money and the perceptions of what won’t. Reading might not ever go out of vogue but it has and it will be again a lesser thing in the mind of the public.