I know a couple of aspiring authors who bemoan the difficulty of getting published. I’ve read their work. While it doesn’t knock my socks off, I’ve sure encountered a lot that is a lot worse.
I just finished a trashy novel that a friend gave me. One Perfect Lie by Lisa Scottoline. In short, it is complete garbage. A thriller about an undercover agent and a bomb plot. (Makes me wonder why my friend thought I would like it.)
Thrillers are my not-so-guilty pleasure, but they must be well written. For example, Lee Child’s Reacher book, or Mick Herron’s Slough House. No, not work for the ages, but just well written, believable characters/dialogue, well paced plot…
Hell, even garbage like Dan Brown is better than this PoS.
But the cover says this author is a NYT #1 best seller, with 30 published titles. The publisher is St Martin’s PB - so not a vanity shop. Something about it catches your interest, sure. But you are content to just skim it to see how it ends up, what the supposed “twist” is, etc.
What is the explanation? Is it easier to get published if you lower your standards? Is there an audience that prefers crappy fiction than decently written stuff?
I suspect that, for a lot of “genre” novels (thrillers, mysteries, fantasy, etc.), there’s a fairly narrowly-defined style and structure which publishers have decided sells well (probably to those readers who are looking for escapism and easy reading – “brain candy” or “comfort food” books). Thus, writers who are adept at writing within those boundaries (and reliably cranking out novels) are valued by those publishers, even if their output may be seen as “hackish” to readers who appreciate good writing.
FWIW, both of my parents are avid readers, but they have very different tastes in books, and there are very few books that they both like.
My dad likes spy novels and thrillers, but it’s definitely “comfort food” reading for him – he races through the books he reads, and I don’t think that he really wants super-complex plots or having to think too hard while he reads. He’s very happy reading trope-filled, formulaic novels.
My mom is eclectic in what she reads. She likes books that she can spend time on, and which will teach her about something (another culture, another type of lifestyle), and challenge her preconceptions.
When I worked at a public library from 1998-2003 or so, I was stunned how many Harlequin Romance novels there were. We had a system in place where patrons could take up to 10(maybe more?) of them at a time and not even check them in. They simply walked past our circulation desk and said, “I have ## of these” and got to keep them until they returned them. No tracing, no system of check-out.
Many women did this. Like, we went through tons of them.
I had to assume, but they all basically looked like cheap-o trash. I have no idea what is in them really, but we had our dedicated base of patrons that took tons of them over and over.
Like the OP, I’m amazed at the low quality of fiction by some authors who are not only published, but have a long list of titles in a successful series. Part of the problem evidently is that fans of the series are so desperate for more that they’ll buy whatever crap is churned out.
Then again, I’m spoiled by having read good fiction by the likes of John D. MacDonald, Lawrence Block and Michael Connelly.
I wouldn’t say Lee Child’s characters or plots were especially believable, but he writes well and the Reacher novels were addictive.
That was my grandmother. When she got older, and less mobile, one of my regular duties when I was in high school and college was to take the shopping bag full of Harlequin Romances that she had just finished back to the library, and then check out another batch for her. It didn’t really matter to her if I got her a book she had previously read, as they all sort of blurred together.
Agreed. Very formulaic. As Friends character Nora Bing, a bestselling romance writer, put it, “You start with half a dozen European cities, throw in 30 euphemisms for male genitalia, and bam, you’ve got yourself a book.”
Lincoln Lawyer (that movie with McConaughy) and Bosch (the Amazon show) are based on Connelly. I think the author did a couple of cameos on Castle as well.
It’s not a new phenomenon. In the late 19th Century, there were the penny dreadfuls and the yellow-backs. Later there were the dime novels and the pulp magazines. We remember the few gems, and forget about the masses of dross.
I have often wondered how an author could crank out hundreds of books that, to a non-fan, all look alike. Is there a literary form of Asperger syndrome?
I never looked through a single one. Are they kind of…relationship porn? Are they really explicit sexually? They seem like the equivalent of the bottom shelf plastic bottle of vodka that you can buy really cheaply.
This was kind of the impression I had of those Harelqeuin books. I think there is little pretense that they are “romance” books and are more “trash” books.
These are great, and addictive. I see I have fallen behind – he is turning them out at the rate of about one per year. I hope the quality has stayed up there, because I’m about to buy the last 4. (oops, 3, one isn’t released yet).
I’ve glanced through a few. “Relationship porn” is an apt description. My understanding is that most Harlequin books (particularly their “mainline” imprints) are not particularly explicit (lots of euphemisms), though that’s changed over the years, and they do have book lines which are fairly explicit, even kinky.
I am a fan of the J.D. Robb (alternate pen name of Nora Roberts) “-In Death” novels. Even though they’re set in the late 2050- early 2060s, they could only technically be called science fiction. And they’re not particularly inspired police procedurals either. Some of the plots are starting to repeat themselves. And yet in spite of it all I eagerly await the next installment. It’s like a trip to McDonalds: unashamed junk, but you know what you’re going to get and it’s tasty.
When I worked in hospitals, some of the nurses and desk staff would bring in a paper shopping bag of genre novels every week of so, mostly romance but some mystery/murder/police stuff, rarely fantasy or science fiction. There was a lively trade in these in the staff room. I would sometimes resort to reading one when I was hired for 1-to-1 special observation with 15-minute check night shifts, most of which were spent in a chair outside the patient’s room, peering in every 15 minutes. This is how I came to read V. C. Andrews and most of the charming The Glory Hole Murders.
I know a good game, though. Everyone brings in a few romance novels. When it’s your turn to moderate, you present one that you brought in. You show the cover and read the front and back texts aloud. Then you write out the real first paragraph and the players write out a fictional first paragraph. These are mixed, read aloud by the moderator, and voted on a la Fictionary. I am the queen of this game, the damn queen.