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Gripe from the editor: The BookExpo of America

By M&C News Jun 5, 2007, 12:11 GMT

This past weekend has been a big event for publishers, writers, editors and agents, all who flocked to Manhattan to attend this years BookExpo of America. Over 35,000 people showed up, including celebs like Elton John and Alan Alda. Stephen King was even there playing music on Friday night with a few of his other writer friends. The focus of the convention was upcoming books, how to sell, sell, sell in this digital age, what will publishers do after the last Harry Potter is out, etcetera. Publishers are basically ‘on the look out’ for that next big seller, (as they always are) but I noticed, in skimming through half a dozen articles regarding the event, that there was not one mention of quality writing and the importance of it. Instead they spoke highly of bad writers like Richard Russo and Alice Sebold, both who have novels coming out. They spoke highly not about their writing, but how they were hopeful they would sell. Again, sell. I’ve always said you can fool an audience once. A bad writer posing as a literary one can, by sheer luck, gain an audience based only on likeability, if that writer has a subject matter that people ‘like’. (I stress the subjective over the objective here). But if that writer does not have the quality, future books will tank. Why? Because their success was based on luck (and like), not quality. So to the publishing industry that wants to make more money, I offer my humble suggestion: how about publishing more quality writers? How about searching for the next Mark Twain, Hermann Hesse, Willa Cather? Yes, the publishing industry is a business like any other. They need to make their money. But they are also impatient about it. It can literally take years, even decades to nurture a literary writer’s career and frankly, J.K. Rowling is unusual. I mentioned my irritation in regards to these publishers in my last article on Rowling, where I called them ‘greedy’. And that they are. For a writer who had a difficult time getting the first Harry Potter book published, now has spawned countless imitators. After Frank McCourt’s smash hit Angela’s Ashes, there was a flood of not only memoirs, but Irish writers as well, some that sold and others that didn’t. So why do publishers have such a difficult time seeing that readers will buy books when they are presented with something new, not just the latest Harry Potter or Angela Ashes rip-off? The truth is, most books that become ‘best sellers’ are forgotten. Most that are bad sellers are forgotten. No one thinks about The Valley of the Dolls or the obscure books of William Dean Howells. But no one forgets quality. In thinking of the Great Masters, just what would they think of such an event? What would Wilde, Poe, or Ibsen think? They would be bored. But that’s generally what happens when art takes a backseat to business. People become drones. But hey, hopefully there was alcohol.

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