Happy New Year
"Americans do not buy books they can read at one sitting; they feel cheated. A thick book, solid as a piece of furniture, one you can set aside to read some day— namely, never— guarantees success there."
— Anthony Burgess, British author
Given the pressure to reduce costs, something had to give in the formerly genteel world of book publishing, and it’s not the publishers…
Many mid-list authors have fallen victim to increasingly sophisticated, widely available sales data, according to agents and publishers. Publishers can now assess every author’s lifelong sales thanks to such services as Nielsen Bookscan in the United States and BookNet Canada.
And once reduced to pure numbers, those track records determine the fate of proven writers looking for cash advances to begin their next books…
The upheaval is such that an author like Dan Brown “would never get published now, because his first three books sold nothing,” Bukowski said. But as everybody knows, Brown’s fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, has sold more than 80-million copies.
Even when they agree to publish the fourth book of a mid-list author, publishers today hedge their bets by paying minimal advances based on past sales of the author’s work.
"People who want to censor books aren’t really censoring books; they are censoring people.. The censor is trying to predict the reaction of a potential reader to a book. But we have found that you just can’t predict that."
— Gordon A. Sabine, journalism professor
"…I believe that a writer has an adversary relationship with his publisher… If someone has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they’ve gotten good at it, and they’re expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong."
— John Irving, author
"The true literary language is the language of direct confrontation with reality on ultimate issues, an attempt to converse with readers about things which are vital and therefore menacing."
— Andrei Sinyavsky, author
"There is a shortage of readers. We’re publishing more books than we can pay attention to. It’s like an infantry charge— thousands of people go over the top, but few make it. We send more writers over the top than all the rest of the world. It’s wasteful, but there it is."
— Kurt Vonnegut
Seriously, do you know of any other novels that are listed under both “Christian Books and Bibles” and “Erotica”?
Anyway, thanks to the Ninja Pirates for putting Angel on their list of top 10 indie books to give or receive this holiday season. Also for calling it “a work of literary fiction; a true love story in more than just the physical sense.” (Not Biblical erotica.)
"When (writing) a book is done, you hold it in your hand and say, ‘There’s a piece of me,’ and that’s great. It just might be the best piece of me."
— Elia Kazan, motion picture director, author
"All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will— they are silent when you wish to think."
— Will Durant, author, historian
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