Do you consider a book based on its popularity?

I think you're generalizing too much, JBI. Americans aren't necessarily readers of bad books and Canadians readers of highly literary books. There are readers of good and bad books in each country and good and bad authors from each country. For example, I read a book by Anne-Marie MacDonald, a Canadian, and it was terrible! She might be okay as a poet, but she's a terrible novelist. Yet Canadians read her.

I really don't know any American who runs out to buy a book just because it has an Oprah sticker. The Oprah sticker is transparent to me. If the book's bad, I'm not going to read it, period. If it's good, the Oprah sticker doesn't bother me in the slightest. And I never pay any attention to who wins the Pulitzer, but I do care who wins the Booker. Most American readers I know don't care a bit about the Pulitzer. We know it's given to something "popular" or "trendy" at the time rather than something truly good. I'm always curious about who wins the Nobel, but I don't put much stock in it. For example, there's no way Orhan Pamuk deserved to win. He won for political reasons.

Toni Morrison is an American who writes bestselling books and they are among the best written in the world. Some people may not like them, but they are masterpieces. If a book is a bestseller, naturally the publisher is going to proclaim it as such, bad book or good.

American writers are such a mixed bag or literary and commercial because there are so many more American writers than in any other country. We have some of the best, e.g., Morrison, and some of the worse, e.g., Dan Brown.

Now, if we want to talk about the truly elite readers of literary books, we have to talk about the French, the Germans, the Italians. Continental Europe. For my money, the most literary writers are the Irish - then and now - and some of the Eastern Europeans, the Czech and the Polish, especially.

P.S. I read "The Kite Runner" hoping for a good book, but I thought it was dreadful, just dreadful writing. However, in all fairness, Khaled Hosseini did return to Afghanistan in September 2007 as good will envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Probably a "publicity return," but I can't judge his motives. That would not be right. I'm no mind reader.

That isn't really my point. In general, Canadian popular fiction doesn't strive as well as American, simply because the bulk of publishers putting it out in Canada are American, and favor American authors. A Dan Brown would have a much harder time becoming a Dan Brown in Canada, because quite simply, there isn't the marketing power here. Originally actually, Canadians used to try desperately to get published by American firms, in order to actually see sales.

Canadian readers, for the most part, in the mainstream, are very similar to American readers. There are difference, but on the whole, quite similar. Canadian literary fiction readers however, are very different, and that is my point. Canadian literary fiction on the whole seems to be more accessible, in terms of difficulty of prose, but by no means simpler, in terms of content.

In terms of Oprah, it has been proven she gets books sold. It has been proven time and time again, with authors going from obscure to best-seller over night. There are even Oprah editions of books, which support this idea. There are clearly people who go out and buy the Oprah book, perhaps you don't know any, but there certainly are. There are sales figures to prove it.

In terms of most literary readers, when it comes to novels, I hear the Swedish read the most books. When it comes to poetry though, there are thriving oral poetry traditions at work in many places in the world, and that has to be taken into account.

When it comes down to it though, if we are speaking Canadian-American, if a Canadian wants to be a bestseller, chances are he has to get published by an American. If an American wants to be a bestseller, he needs to be published in America. See the problem? Why would a publisher go through the trouble of dealing with Canadians, or put forward a book that deals with Canadian issues, or Canadian context.

In that sense, the American literary perception of Canada has been forged. Generally, American publics like their Canadian books to show a sort of wilderness, and harshness. Americans don't particularly like Canadian books to deal with Canadian things, they want Canadian books to deal with American perceptions of Canadian things. It's a colonial perspective. The American public is attuned to American tastes, and the American tradition, if anything, makes sure that the notion of America is in the centre. How does a Canadian break through? The only way is to play into the colonial/orientalist fascinations of the hegemon.

Ironically though, Canadians own the largest Romance publishing firm in the world. But even so, what really distinguishes a Canadian romance from an American. Americans like them more, from what I've seen (though we read our fair share), and American writers are more organized in the way they write them. It is easier to print those, given that more than 11x as many are coming into publishers, than to print Canadian ones.

In itself, the soul of Canadian writing ultimately cannot be bestsellers, because the vast majority of the great books are put out by smaller presses, who simply have virtually no ground in the States, and very little internationally.

American bestsellers dominate Canadian bookstores more than Canadian bestsellers. You guys have 11x as many people, and much larger presses, who can get books out cheaper, and faster. You also have better advertisement, and larger sales figures because of your large home representation. That is why, as a general rule, American bestsellers tend to be worse than Canadian bestsellers, because Canadian bestsellers, according to American markets, aren't even bestsellers to begin with.

Interesting fact about Oprah's Book Club:

"Oprah's book club's problems began in 2001 when Oprah selected Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. This work of fiction, although a sound choice up front, turned into one of Oprah's first book club debacles. At first, Franzen was open to Oprah's selection. It brought fresh eyes to his work and undoubtedly provided a fresh and abundant stream of income into his wallet. However, when Franzen's publisher reissued his book with Oprah's book club's emblem on the cover, he began to have misgivings about the entire process. Upset that the work was no longer his own, he turned against the book club and started to criticize it. After a year on the club list, Oprah decided to suspend her recommendation of The Corrections."

Kinda makes me want to read The Corrections. It's an interesting point though--just how much control do authors have over how their work is presented? And if an author is picked by the club, or if they're number one on the bestseller list, are they obligated to be gracious in the face of cheesy promotion because of benefactors' expectations of gratitude?

The only Pulitzer awards I actually look up are for History, books that on the whole I've really enjoyed. Otherwise it's just happening to read something that was selected for the Fiction award. Historically I have liked the authors who have lost out on the Nobel Prize far, far better than the ones who have won it.

Best seller lists are barometers of mass appeal. A glance at one list usually provides the likes of Grisham, King, Steele, Clancy, Rowling, et. al. So what.

Oprah Winfrey is mass appeal. She has a staff who bring her lesser known, well-written works to put her stamp of approval on. Her stamp brings the work to the masses. The masses buy it. I about choked when I saw Oprah's stamp on East of Eden. Like she just discovered it. It's really quite comical.

The discussion here, predominantly JBI's, is about marketing. The publishing business is in the business of selling books and they aren't going to make a lot of money selling Paradise Lost or Moby-Dick or The Odyssey. The fans of this web forum are a minority in the book-buying marketplace. Some of the things I've read in the past year I've had to find in used book stores because they don't publish them at all anymore.

At the end of the day, as an individual reader, read what you like. If you enjoy the classic literature generally discussed on this forum, so be it. That doesn't mean you can't have a guilty pleasure that lacks literary merit if you enjoy it. Every concert doesn't have to be Beethoven. Every film doesn't have to Fellini. Sometimes, any time, it's okay to just read something for fun.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by higley

Interesting fact about Oprah's Book Club:

"Oprah's book club's problems began in 2001 when Oprah selected Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. This work of fiction, although a sound choice up front, turned into one of Oprah's first book club debacles. At first, Franzen was open to Oprah's selection. It brought fresh eyes to his work and undoubtedly provided a fresh and abundant stream of income into his wallet. However, when Franzen's publisher reissued his book with Oprah's book club's emblem on the cover, he began to have misgivings about the entire process. Upset that the work was no longer his own, he turned against the book club and started to criticize it. After a year on the club list, Oprah decided to suspend her recommendation of The Corrections."

Kinda makes me want to read The Corrections. It's an interesting point though--just how much control do authors have over how their work is presented? And if an author is picked by the club, or if they're number one on the bestseller list, are they obligated to be gracious in the face of cheesy promotion because of benefactors' expectations of gratitude?

The only Pulitzer awards I actually look up are for History, books that on the whole I've really enjoyed. Otherwise it's just happening to read something that was selected for the Fiction award. Historically I have liked the authors who have lost out on the Nobel Prize far, far better than the ones who have won it.

---

Geez though, Montale, Quasimodo, Carducci, those happen to be three of the most central Italian poets of the modern era. On the whole, the selectors, after they got out of their funk of only choosing Scandinavian authors, generally pick good, if not great authors. They do, however, have the problem of selecting authors for their whole works, rather than one work. That makes things quite a bit more difficult, because a great many good novelists only write one good book, and put out 15 crappy ones.

Though, I am was hoping Darwish would get one - he probably would have, now that I think about it, had he lived a little longer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PabloQ

The discussion here, predominantly JBI's, is about marketing. . . . The publishing business is in the business of selling books and they aren't going to make a lot of money selling Paradise Lost or Moby-Dick or The Odyssey. The fans of this web forum are a minority in the book-buying marketplace. Some of the things I've read in the past year I've had to find in used book stores because they don't publish them at all anymore.

---

Not true. These are one of those half-truths/myths that get spread around. Publishing companies love to get their hands on the likes of Paradise Lost or Mobdy-Dick or The Odyssey or other classics because they are steady sellers.

First, because a lot of this material is no longer protected by copyright you don't have to pay anybody royalties or advances; the Odyssey, of course, would be the exception as you'd have to pay translators for more recent translations. Secondly, classics have steady book sales. They make money. Maybe not millions each year, but they are a reliable product. Plus each time a movie version of a classic comes out sales skyrocket again and make a lot of money. But from what I have read Classics make a decent amount of money in sales. Part of this trend is related to the fact that we read these books in academia, so students across universities are the ones buying a lot of these classics, but nonetheless, the point is that the classics still sell fairly well.

I got the impression the discussion was really geared towards contemporary works that aren't necessarily considered classics quite yet.

Quote:

---

At the end of the day, as an individual reader, read what you like. If you enjoy the classic literature generally discussed on this forum, so be it. That doesn't mean you can't have a guilty pleasure that lacks literary merit if you enjoy it. Every concert doesn't have to be Beethoven. Every film doesn't have to Fellini. Sometimes, any time, it's okay to just read something for fun.

---

Exactly!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by papayahed

haha, reminds me of bands, sometimes if a band has a small amount of fame it's ok, they're cool but once they get really popular all the old fans call them sell outs.

---

exactly like that!

Thank you for the explanation, JBI. That clarifies things, and I do agree with you. Well, with what I know. Some of the things I was unaware of.

However there is a difference between a best-selling dude with longevity (Such as Christie or Tolkien) and the summer boom that sells because that given topic was the fashion of the season and the companies are going to seek for those scripts.
Anyways, the market today is very different from the market 50, 60 years ago (If I am not mistaken Faulkner was a best-selling dude, making the top 10 in USA a few times), because the size of the market, the mass communication is much more structured. Also the greater opening for different groups have kind of desintegrated the critical sense (the label of the Nobel had a bigger effect in the past, i am sure.), today people listen and have how to list to non-specialists, and while this is very nice and all if we think about freedom, it also make the public more easier to be classifcated and became a target of marketing strategies. But since there is no way we can randomizer the options, the popularity may be as wrong as anything else or as right as anything else because even the classics are living in age where the first edition of a book gets the label of "Instantly classic"...

I'm not so sure it did, I just think the way publishing has changed effects stuff more. Periodicals have changed their representation of books. There has always been mediocre popular fiction. I just think now, the text has come to dominate too much, with the shift from periodicals, and changed the way we see the novel, as a form.

Either way, I'm a poet, and a poetry reader. Name one living best-seller poet. I can only think of 3 poets who really lived off their royalties handsomely, they being Pope, Byron, and Longfellow. Everyone else just has other motifs.

As a thought though, perhaps the commercial obsession of American culture has led to a liking of only things that sell in mass amounts. That's an interesting notion, but I don't know if I have the proof to support it, or really get beyond that. I'm not a Bibliographer after all, and I am well aware that there always has been mediocre literature, just not in book form so often.

It is not about the quality of the text, of course there will be always the bad, the ugly and the good... The market is today more defined, you have the right formulas, the right market, the right marketing strategy,etc. The Mass Media sophistication is considerable and the chance of the change is not small, there is just a tendecy to not have wide-effect and belong to his own place. I think it is very hard to have some big movemment, a cultural shift because "underground" culture is already a place in the market with an underground group. Also, we never had as much readers, as much options, yet the educational-promotional tendecies are limiting.
I would agree that we have many readers of periodicals and the writers have been working to produce for the public used for this kind of reading. But in south-america there was never such obssession with novels, short stories are more important and they also do not fit in the moderm day periodical production. Once upon a time the writers of periodicals are the great writers, but the segmentation and definition of public target changed everything.
I would exclude Byron from this list, after all the guy have other sources than poetry to sustain himself. But that is a bit strange, of course lots of poets also got money teaching or even turned in Senator like Yeats, and yeah, I doubt we can say they got rich because of that. But then, there is really only sense to talk about a culture of best-sellers with the XIX century shift and poets and poetry are losing space there for the romances and all. Poetry, at least good Poetry, is not easily sold indeed.
I would say that an interesting point is that until the 50's people had not a great notion about mass communication and marketing strategies. Researches to determine the right product with the public target were only developed after that. Lets remember that Hollywood only discovered the Summer hit with the Copolla-Spielberg-Lucas generation and Hollywood is usually one step ahead of publishing houses when trying to nail a great audience. This (obviously related to american commercial obsession) certainly cause a great influence in "what is popular"...

You made some great points, JCamilo.

Whatever the means of promotion, I'm not going to begrudge an author his success even if he publishes a bunch of popular rot that panders to the mindless fascinations of an apparently shallow public. I also don't really concern myself with those who read these books; each to their own, I figure. I know a lot of people who read trashy fiction because it helps them unwind after long and difficult days, and that's their right.

JBI, sure there's a lot of crap hedging the shelves with neon lettering, but at the same time the level of accessibility to good books here is remarkable if you only take a moment to look, and generally those interested in literature do take that time and don't take advertising at face value. I've never been so overwhelmed by crappy fiction that I felt like I couldn't find quality reads and it is absolutely easy to lay your hands on any novel you desire.

No, never. Only advice from 50 members per book from this forum can make me read something else except my strange choices. Actually, book that need a commercial is no book at all.

P.S. Even mentioning Dan Brown on this forum is a blasphemy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by higley

You made some great points, JCamilo.

Whatever the means of promotion, I'm not going to begrudge an author his success even if he publishes a bunch of popular rot that panders to the mindless fascinations of an apparently shallow public. I also don't really concern myself with those who read these books; each to their own, I figure. I know a lot of people who read trashy fiction because it helps them unwind after long and difficult days, and that's their right.

JBI, sure there's a lot of crap hedging the shelves with neon lettering, but at the same time the level of accessibility to good books here is remarkable if you only take a moment to look, and generally those interested in literature do take that time and don't take advertising at face value. I've never been so overwhelmed by crappy fiction that I felt like I couldn't find quality reads and it is absolutely easy to lay your hands on any novel you desire.

---

I must say that I do concern with others read for many reasons. Once I think the notion of freedom that is used to defend the personal choice must be analysed carefully. We are not that free when the Market is using also his power.
I am also concerned with the formation of the new writers, because this is related with what they are reading. History already showed that writers will adapt to market - as JBI pointed, prose domains the best-sellers lists and that was mostly an adaptation to the market. But Poetry (not the poem, the form, but the language) still what the literature have of best to offer. If it became more and more difficulty to a writer with great poetic powers to be reckonized, it is possible that he will either vanish or try to adapt himself. Plus, the critical sense of the mass culture is reduced by such process, so a poet does not have challenge enough to produce the great works.
I am not apocalypitic, I know Culture will find her way. I just wish to understand this way and see it.

It's strange too - I always wonder how G. G. Marquez made it huge in The U.S., while being one of the more challenging authors. Oprah's exposure surely helped, but what got people to read him? I don't know - the only real answer I can formulate for myself is a sense of colonial misreading of the text.

That is the most troubling, as it is such a great novel, but perhaps a hard one to understand, given its post-colonial content. I think I may look at some response theory and criticism some time, so I can get a better sense of how colonial readers interpret it.

On the whole though, people generally read crap, and will continue to read crap. The problem with art, is the reliance on copyright. If copyright is the way artists make income, it obviously will be abused by the publishers to turn a book from a work of art, into a commercial good. In that sense, the book becomes judged by how much it can sell, rather than how much it can say, and the publishing hegemony continues.

I think the only reason something like poetry is able to flourish in Canada is because of government intervention in the arts. In the past, before copyright, poets generally relied on government handouts to survive. Aristo did, Tasso did, and certainly Racine did. When you think of it, how many poets started off as courtiers, or were professional courtiers? Sydney, Wyatt, Chaucer, Spenser?

In terms of publishing, the way an author gets paid, he receives about 10% royalties for sales of his novels. If one writes romance novels, one probably will be paid much less, or have that amount ceilinged. Various romance authors don't even own their own pseudonyms, and essentially ghost-write all their novels. When you have a low income, and rather obvious projected sales, obviously you are going to churn out books quickly.

How many authors though, can make good pot boilers? Very few.

I doubt, however, that there are more bad texts written now than before. I think though, they certainly have more exposure, with posters, action figures, movie adaptations, costumes, and radio ads. That is the real difference - one is just overwhelmed by the presence of mediocre texts. In truth, when you look at it, I think books fall like this

95% a 0, rubbish
4.9% a 1, mediocre
.1% good-great.

That being said, when it comes to the actual bookstore, it's more like this

90% rubbish
6% mediocre
4% good-great.

That is for your standard Barnes and Nobel / Indigo/chapters, etc.

There are some bookstores which stock 20-30% good-great books, but those are specialty bookstores, and cater mostly to academic readers anyway.