@RUTGERS.ARPA:boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (03/06/85)
From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA > From: Randall B. Neff <NEFF@SU-SIERRA.ARPA> > [this just shows that the sellablity of a book is the name of the > author, not the quality of the book. If King was famous for the > quality of his writing, then the five Bachman books should have made > Bachman also famous.] There's a faulty piece of reasoning there. While it's true to a degree that a books salability has more to do with the author's name than the book itself, it mostly has to do with the publisher's promotion of the book. Contrary to popular belief, "best-sellers" are made, not born. If you look at trade journals, you will notice that many, if not most, publishers treat "best-seller" as a distinct genre. They say, "We're going to market this as a best-seller," with impunity, as if the sales of the book had been pre-determined. That the Richard Bachman novels didn't sell like hotcakes, like Stephen King novels do, it's because NAL didn't promote them as anything special, they didn't have especially large print-runs, and basicly, no one knew they existed. If NAL promoted Richard Bachman the way they promote Stephen King, Bachman might well have been famous. And if this happened, the cover would have been blown long before now; "Bachman" could never have been in the limelight like King is without ever showing himself. The name of the author sells the book, but it's the quality of the book that gives the author his reputation. If King's books were all turkeys, no one would be buying them regardless of how they are promoted. Well, OK, many best-sellers *are* turkeys, but what I mean is, if King's first three books really bombed, no one would want to read the later ones. Plus, with the exception of THINNER, the Bachman books were all paperback originals, which are generally ignored by the reviewers. Secondly, it's not strictly true that it's an author's name that sells books. It's his *reputation* that does it. Is this unusual? After so many very good novels, Stephen King has the reputation of turning out well-written, spine-tingling chillers. Anyone going into a bookstore and seeing THINNER by Richard Bachman sitting next to THE TALISMAN by Stephen King and Peter Straub is most likely going to choose the latter, because he feels sure that he's going to enjoy it, knowing how good the previous books by those two are. As for the former, he's likely to say, "Who the hell is Richard Bachman?" and will not be sure that he's going to find the investment worthwhile. But when folks find out that Bachman is actually King, then the chances that they are going to enjoy THINNER dramatically increase because of King's reputation for turning out a good, scary novel. Tell me, if you went into a store and saw a new novel by Robert Heinlein and a new novel by Anson McDonald [this is presuming that: (a) you are a Heinlein fan and, (b) you are not already aware that Heinlein has written stories under the McDonald by-line], which would you pick? If you pick the Heinlein, why? Is it because of the name? And then what if you had heard that Anson McDonald was actually Robert Heinlein? Would you go right back to the store to pick up that McDonald book? The other thing to remember is that the mainstream world is not like the sf world. We (sf fandom) are a tightly knit group, and book and author recommendations travel around pretty quickly, so a really good book by an unknown author is going to get more attention than a similar book in the mainstream world. There's no network like it in the mainstream market and so the authors are completely at the mercy of reviewers and their publisher's publicity department. If no one knows your book exists, it doesn't matter *how* good it is. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA