Fantasy Books: Commercial Success does not equal Literary Success.
Practically every week I have someone sending me emails asking why their beloved Goodkind, Eddings, or Salvatore are not on my best fantasy books recommendation list. Invariably, these people mention the above authors’ commercial success as criteria for why they should be on the list. This outlines a common assumption among readers: commercially successful books are always good books.
Let’s explore this idea.
Let’s first look at the close cousin (perhaps child) of the book. Yes, I’m talking about movies. I’m sure you can pull more than a few movies out of the air that were met with smashing success at the box office but were vociferously panned by the critics. Let’s see, The Matrix sequels come to mind as do the Star Wars prequels. Then there’s anything by Adam Sandler – I won’t even go there. This same principal applies to video games. Some terrible video games have become commercially successful.
I call this the “hype effect.” Hype is one of the biggest driving forces behind the commercial success of entertainment products (music, books, games, movies, etc). If the author is has found commercial success with previous works, there is an expectation that the author’s new work will match or even exceed the previous level of commercial success. It’s a given that people also expect the quality of the new work to be on par if not higher.
Why? Perhaps this expectation results from the whole “feature” rich product culture that we live in. Each successive product we buy offers expanded features over the previous version – buy the new edition of that digital camera and get a couple more megapixels that will guarantee a clearer photo. We buy into this whole marketing hubbub. It’s not too much to believe that we book lovers are mapping these expectations into the world of literature. A book after all is a consumer product, just like that digital camera. Instead of more megapixels, we are offered, though cover blurbs, book covers, and hyped press releases an even greater reading experience then the last one.
Certain authors have acquired a bookstore presence – bookstores give priority and key shelf space — to books written by these authors, which in turn make it easier for customers to see and buy the book, which in turn lead to more sales, which in turn lead to more publicity, etc. The average genre reader will not read reviews before buying a book; he or she will simply wander in to a bookstore and buy a book based off the impression gained from the book cover, author blurbs, and book description.
“But what about the quality,” you say. Won’t a well-written book meet commercial success? Not necessarily. There are far more poor, highly talented authors out there then there are rich, lucky ones. For every Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown living in New York penthouses and drinking $100 cups of Indonesian coffee, there are another ten thousand authors who would be delighted to even make half of what a high school student makes flipping burgers.
Writing a good, bestselling book is often a combination of talent, luck, and more luck — as most authors will tell you. So be careful when assuming the “best-selling” tag means a book is good one– it’s often just another marketing gimmick used by publishers.
Very true, also applies to series, often people tend to just spew out the last few books of their series because they achieved some sort of popularity.
Another thing is, most people don’t know how to appreciate quality, might sound harsh but it’s the truth. And I know at times I could care less about it. As long as we’re entertained us regular people do fine.
The exception for me is books, bad litterature can’t entertain me anymore.
Comment by Ragnar — May 28, 2009 @ 3:39 am