I agree with you as well, Dana. The value of word-of-mouth has never been higher than now. But I've also noticed the kind of backlash you imply. Last year's sensation is passe quicker than ever. What are the odds of Justin Bieber being a "where are they now?" in five years?
The other implication is also not new, and an amplification of what we've seen for awhile. There is a huge pressure on writers and other artists to be prolific and kept the public supplied with new product. Back in the Golden Age of mysteries, publishers were so absolutely convinced that readers wouldn't buy more than two books a year by an author that the biggest names - Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner - who were capable of four or more books a year had to adopt pseudonyms to cover their alternate series. I always wondered about the logic of that. Whether it was ever true, it's obviously not now. Docking almost certainly was aided by putting eight books into play at once for people to find after they read one book and liked it. That couldn't have happened in the print world in the past, and I can't think of much like it in the present. Can she keep up with the continue pressure to provide output? Romance and children's authors are certainly current models for producing books at the rate of one a month and satisfying an audience. It would kill me, but there are hundreds of genre authors who've done it. My concern is that this has become the expectation in print and will become ever more crucial electronically. Who do we remember favorably out of the pulp age when these expectations were also in play? People like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who had tiny outputs by almost any standard. What happens to the authors who are not prolific and not among the top few in their genre in quality? This development appears to hurt the midlist more than ever. Are alternatives viable? The New York Times had one of their patented "new trend" articles this week. (The Times finds new trends every other day, it seems, and lots of outlets mock them because whenever they find two of something they proclaim it to be a hot new trend.) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/business/media/28bookstores.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=books&st=cse Publishers Look Beyond Bookstores Is this really a trend. And if it is, how can it be exploited? Steve -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
