So, why are so many bad writers so popular? Does anybody have a theory?
I think a large part of it comes down to this one fact: AIUI the Average American buys one book a year.
Because of that, so much of the book-buying is done by people who don’t read often, and regularly. Thus you’ve got two factors that lead to people buying books that many regular readers would think weren’t worth a moment’s notice: first, a bestseller is a book that others will be talking about - more than that, it’s on a list, in most bookselling outlets, that shows it’s popular - ergo it must be good; second, if one only buys one book a year - why not buy a book by an author one has read before and liked? So you’ll get a known product.
And, as someone who tends to read certain authors above others, I can’t fault that second reasoning. I just wish that they’d look at other authors.
The only thing I’ve read in this genre is some book by Stephen King abour a writer who finds a spaceship buried in her back yard. The premise was OK, but you could actually watch him run out of ideas as the book progressed, until he just gives up and throws in an *Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World * ending. It was, quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read all of Ayn Rand’s “novels”.
As a side note, if the book you are reading has a full-page glamour photo of the author on the back cover, you are rading a bad book.
…about a writer…
…you are reading a bad book.
:smack:
There’s nothing more annoying than trying to be all snobby about bad literature and littering your post with typing mistakes.
I think it’s a lot like fast food; easily available, easy to consume, nicely packaged, and offers a bit of sustenance whilst deteriorating the system designed to appreciate what’s entering it.
I am trying to read an alleged bestseller by James Patterson, Big Bad Wolf. My best friend said she couldn’t put it down, but it’s setting my teeth on edge.
Tell me if it’s just me:
I’d think this inner monologue of a vapid stereotype, who’s easily distracted by shiny objects, is satire, but it’s clearly meant to make us sympathize with and like the gorgeous, rich, (need I say) blonde chick who (it’s on the back cover of the book, but)is about to be kidnapped into white slavery!
That said, it’s nothing on Danielle Steele - couldn’t read that garbage even when I was 12 and enthralled with stuff like Mary Higgins Clark.
Oh, and to paraphrase Stephen King himself, King, Koontz, Auel, and many others write *good * crap, whereas Steele, Jenkins, et. al. just write crap crap.
I was reading that one on vacation by the pool, and set it down to use the bathroom. When I came back the wind had blown it into the pool. I left it there.
You sure it was the wind and not an informed bookworm trying to rescue you?
No, but if the situation were reversed, I would’ve set it on fire, then thrown it into the pool.
AerynSun, you’re being charitable, calling that satire. He uses a lot of words to tell us that Lizzie’s busy, but he’s told us nothing about Lizzie.
But I can see the appeal. There’s no need to think while reading that.
I get the Pattersons mixed up. I think the other one, Richard North Patterson, writes some decent stuff.
AIUI? I thought I was up on my internet abbreviations until I came across that.
AIUI - As I Understand It
:eek: Holy gods of Valhalla, that was like trying to follow the thought process of a sugared-up eight-year-old with ADD who hasn’t slept in a week. Were they going for product placement in that thing or did that have an actual coherent point?
Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown, and Dan Brown are a few names that come to mind…
Here’s my semi-obligatory best-seller post (forgive me if you’ve heard this one)
I worked in a bookstore about 15 years ago. The really popular book while I was there, the one that we never seemd to be able to keep in stock and seemed to be on permanent backorder, was Possession, by A. S. Byatt. Meanwhile, for weeks on end, the NY Times bestseller list showed Bridges of Madison County as the bestseller in fiction the entire time I worked there, and I’d guess in that time we sold one of the roughly 25 copies we had on hand in that whole time. I also saw books on the list that had not officially gone on sale yet (we’d gotten copies and display material with instructions to set it up on a certain date. Surely THAT many stores were not releasing early?!?)
I asked my manager about this apparent discrepancy, and she informed me that the NY Times bestseller list (a that time, at least) was calculated based on the number of books shipped by the publisher, rather than the number bought at the counters, the logic being that the then-nearly-impossible to calculate demand at the stores would be reflected in the easy-to-track shipments. (Soundscan was just barely coming online for record stores at that time, so for all I know they use something similar for books in the brick & mortar stores now).
It was an open secret in the industry that you could manufacture a bestseller before a single book had sold simply by requiring the purchasers to buy a certain minimum. This is not hard to do, as most large book chains ordered from Ingram. So the publisher would tell Ingram, “you want one copy of this book, yhou take ten thousand”, Ingram would do something similar to the bookstores to clear out their warehouses, and Voila! a bestseller no one has bought and read yet, a hit pre-ordained.
Obviously Amazon goes by actual sales, so I’m sure the dynamic for the rest of the industry has changed since the early 1990s. But it helps explain why there is a “bestseller” genre of books.
Tommyknockers. In King’s defense, he produced this one during the height of his cocaine addiction; I doubt he even remembers writing it.
Myself, I’d like to nominate Michael Crichton. There may be worse writers, but none of them enjoys the veneer of intelligence and sophistication that Crichton has inexplicity acquired. The man can’t write involving plots, he can’t write characters, and he doesn’t have an idea in his head that wasn’t thought up by a better writer 40 years ago, or ripped off of an article in Scientific American. The man’s a genius, yes, but brains don’t equal talent.
I mean, I recently read Timeline and I have to say, of the hundreds of time travel stories I’ve read or seen in my life, that one was undoubtedly the worse. It made Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure look like All You Zombies.
There are much better science fiction writers out there. Why is HE the best selling one? Is it because he doesn’t admit to being a science fiction writer? If that’s it, there’s one more reason to despise him.
My #1 pick is always Sue Grafton. She simply cannot write.
IIRC, Stephen King has said publicly that he had a period where he was so mired in alcohol and drug addiction that he can’t even remember writing The Tommyknockers, which is easy to believe for anyone who’s read it. It’s probably his most incoherent and poorly written book. It’s not a good book to judge his whole body of work on, though. King does have talent and is capable of some quite compelling storytelling, but he’s hit and miss. He’s also in a position where he can publish every single thought that comes into his head without ever being edited and that has hurt his body of work in the long run. A lot of his stuff could be better if it was stripped down and edited right. Some other stuff just never should have been published.
Speaking of bloated, self-indulgent books badly in need of an editor, has anybody mentioned Ann Rice?
Agreed. Although I hate the whole concept, I must admit that the ‘story skeleton’ should be a compelling read, and the story is LaHaye’s. But Jenkins writes like the collective Franklin W. Dixon, and doesn’t seem to be able to keep details straight, or even see the scene in his head.
BrainGlutton:
Because the average reader doesn’t want great literature, they want escapist fantasy. And that means predictable pap like Danielle Steele.