Attention All Writers!!!! Or Readers!!!!!!

[cateye515]

What makes some writers more famous than others? the less famous can be just as good at writing as the popular ones so what is it that sets them apart? :confused:

[RobinHood3000]

I think the initials make C.S. Lewis sound more highbrow. Plus, C.S. Lewis is a theology scholar--the Christian sector of his audience is HUMONGOUS.

[Nightmare9870]

Can these authors be compared fairly? One wrote detective stories and one wrote mostly fantasy books. They don't really have a lot in common.

It has something to do with all the things mentioned in the poll. If a book is written at the right time and everyone talks about it than it will get popular.

It also depends on luck. The first Harry Potter book, in my opinion at least, isn't a lot different from any other fantasy book on the shelf but it's incredibly popular.

[mir]

yeah, some authors just get a lucky break - the right person reads their book, the right book club chooses it at the right time. it's like the livestrong bracelets that were so insanely popular a while back - it's a fad; they weren't any more beneficial to a good cause than many other things, but they got picked up on.

[PeterL]

Mir is right. In many cases popularity is a matter of luck.

[Pendragon]

I think Nightmare9870 is correct in saying there can be no fair comparison of the two, since they wrote entirely different styles. C.S. Lewis created the fantasy world of Narnia, John Dickinson Carr at lest three different detectives, each with there own style:
Doctor Gideon Fell: Master of the "Locked Room" or "Impossible Crime" mystery.
Henry Bencolin: French Prefect of Police who seems to know the answer from the start and works to prove it.
And Sir Henry Merrivale: A somewhat eccentric guy, who has very odd ways of arriving at an answer.

Narnia may have sold more copies, but Dickinson wrote more novels

[Union Jack]

Nightmare, what is the name of the painting in your avatar?

[ShoutGrace]

I think the initials make C.S. Lewis sound more highbrow. Plus, C.S. Lewis is a theology scholar--the Christian sector of his audience is HUMONGOUS.

Isn't C.S. Lewis most widely recognized for his apologetics works?

I understand that the Narnia series is a favorite of many, though I myself have only read three.

I have, however, read Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, and The Abolition of Man.

Unless the thread is concerned with the comparison of only the Narnia series with Carr's works.

[Nightmare9870]

Nightmare, what is the name of the painting in your avatar?

It's called The Abduction of Psyche by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

[mono]

yeah, some authors just get a lucky break - the right person reads their book, the right book club chooses it at the right time. it's like the livestrong bracelets that were so insanely popular a while back - it's a fad; they weren't any more beneficial to a good cause than many other things, but they got picked up on.
I agree with mir.
Not claiming that a lot of famous authors have no talent, as most of them do, but a majority of them, I have no doubt, happened to have the right person read their book, at the right time, in the right place, composing the right kind of trend in literature that sells the most at the time, or has the most potential.
Of course, I have read many great works by relatively infamous authors, but does everyone necessarily desire fame? Most writers of any era, I would like to think, write as representatives of the common thought of their time, mainly encorporated through imagination of plot. More infamous authors must not always deviate from this trend, but, perhaps, the right people at the right time . . . have not read their works yet.

[cateye515]

Can these authors be compared fairly? One wrote detective stories and one wrote mostly fantasy books. They don't really have a lot in common.

It has something to do with all the things mentioned in the poll. If a book is written at the right time and everyone talks about it than it will get popular.

It also depends on luck. The first Harry Potter book, in my opinion at least, isn't a lot different from any other fantasy book on the shelf but it's incredibly popular.
okay compare John Dickson Carr to Poe...others already have Poe is really famous but John Dickson Carr isn't as well known

[mir]

I agree with mir.
Not claiming that a lot of famous authors have no talent, as most of them do, but a majority of them, I have no doubt, happened to have the right person read their book, at the right time, in the right place, composing the right kind of trend in literature that sells the most at the time, or has the most potential.
Of course, I have read many great works by relatively infamous authors, but does everyone necessarily desire fame? Most writers of any era, I would like to think, write as representatives of the common thought of their time, mainly encorporated through imagination of plot. More infamous authors must not always deviate from this trend, but, perhaps, the right people at the right time . . . have not read their works yet.

and also, the really good authors get picked up on after a while anyways, even if they're not a trend to start with. but a lot of the famous ones are famous because the DEVIATE from the trend - like Lord of the Rings, which should be a genre all by itself - or because they make you think, like 1984. and i still think that authors write mostly for themselves, and publish because they hope there's someone else out there who may connect to what they're saying.