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re: Richard Bachman [message #118723] Tue, 24 September 2013 14:33
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: @RUTGERS.ARPA:boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
Message-ID: <887@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 06:04:30 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.887
Posted: Wed Mar  6 06:04:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 04:41:46 EST
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 66

From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA

> From: Randall B. Neff 

> [this just shows that the sellablity of a book is the name of the
> author, not the quality of the book.  If King was famous for the
> quality of his writing, then the five Bachman books should have made
> Bachman also famous.]

There's a faulty piece of reasoning there. While it's true to a degree
that a books salability has more to do with the author's name than the
book itself, it mostly has to do with the publisher's promotion of the
book. Contrary to popular belief, "best-sellers" are made, not born. If
you look at trade journals, you will notice that many, if not most,
publishers treat "best-seller" as a distinct genre. They say, "We're
going to market this as a best-seller," with impunity, as if the sales
of the book had been pre-determined. That the Richard Bachman novels
didn't sell like hotcakes, like Stephen King novels do, it's because
NAL didn't promote them as anything special, they didn't have especially
large print-runs, and basicly, no one knew they existed. If NAL promoted
Richard Bachman the way they promote Stephen King, Bachman might well
have been famous. And if this happened, the cover would have been blown
long before now; "Bachman" could never have been in the limelight like
King is without ever showing himself. The name of the author sells the
book, but it's the quality of the book that gives the author his
reputation. If King's books were all turkeys, no one would be buying
them regardless of how they are promoted. Well, OK, many best-sellers
*are* turkeys, but what I mean is, if King's first three books really
bombed, no one would want to read the later ones.
	Plus, with the exception of THINNER, the Bachman books were all
paperback originals, which are generally ignored by the reviewers.
	Secondly, it's not strictly true that it's an author's name
that sells books. It's his *reputation* that does it. Is this unusual?
After so many very good novels, Stephen King has the reputation of
turning out well-written, spine-tingling chillers. Anyone going into
a bookstore and seeing THINNER by Richard Bachman sitting next to THE
TALISMAN by Stephen King and Peter Straub is most likely going to
choose the latter, because he feels sure that he's going to enjoy it,
knowing how good the previous books by those two are. As for the former,
he's likely to say, "Who the hell is Richard Bachman?" and will not be
sure that he's going to find the investment worthwhile. But when folks
find out that Bachman is actually King, then the chances that they are
going to enjoy THINNER dramatically increase because of King's reputation
for turning out a good, scary novel.

Tell me, if you went into a store and saw a new novel by Robert Heinlein
and a new novel by Anson McDonald [this is presuming that: (a) you are a
Heinlein fan and, (b) you are not already aware that Heinlein has written
stories under the McDonald by-line], which would you pick? If you pick
the Heinlein, why? Is it because of the name? And then what if you had
heard that Anson McDonald was actually Robert Heinlein? Would you go
right back to the store to pick up that McDonald book?

The other thing to remember is that the mainstream world is not like the
sf world. We (sf fandom) are a tightly knit group, and book and author
recommendations travel around pretty quickly, so a really good book by
an unknown author is going to get more attention than a similar book in
the mainstream world. There's no network like it in the mainstream market
and so the authors are completely at the mercy of reviewers and their
publisher's publicity department. If no one knows your book exists, it
doesn't matter *how* good it is.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA)

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ARPA:	boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA
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