Lynne Patrick
The next line of that song of olde Englande goes Loudly sing cuckoo, which is apt in the light of this summer’s obligatory big book trade news story. (Last year’s was the sock puppet scandal; remember that?)
But I’ll come back to that. First, thanks a million to my good friend Chris Nickson for stepping in at short notice last week when husband whisked me away for a few days of sunshine and relaxation after recent housing development traumas. I’ve never read any James Lee Burke, or James Crumley for that matter, but maybe now my eye will stop at that point on the bookshop shelf.
The sunshine is still, blessedly, with us. Just when we thought we were going to jump straight from spring to autumn like last year, the good old jetstream changed course and summer arrived. I’ve probably jinxed it now, by admitting I’ve noticed, but at least we’ve had a couple of weeks without extra sweaters and wondering if we could justify turning the heating back on.
And now back to that cuckoo. More precisely, The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith. Or maybe not. In fact, definitely not. As you probably know, Robert Galbraith was outed at the weekend, as none other than our old friend J K Rowling.
Don’t get me wrong; this is not a diatribe against Ms Rowling. I have absolutely no gripe with her. I enjoyed Harry Potter as much as the next unlikely adult. J K is a perfectly decent writer who got lucky. OK, stupendously lucky. Success as a writer is about capturing the public imagination, and she did it without benefit of a six-figure marketing budget. (Yes she did! The first two HP books were word-of-mouth successes; the big hype came later, and by that time the groundwork was done.) And now that her name gives her an automatic pass into the bestseller lists, who can blame her for craving a few weeks of anonymity before the balloon went up?
Likewise, who can blame her publisher for craving the sales? I see a print run of 300,000 has just been commissioned (it says a lot that that figure has been released, or maybe leaked) and there’s little doubt they’ll sell. Apparently the whistle was blown through an anonymous and untraceable Twitter tip...
So no gripe with J K R, and none really with her publisher.
But what does it say about the book trade, or for that matter about the reading public, that a book by a competent ‘debut’ author sells an averagely respectable 1500 copies, but the same book with one of the biggest names in publishing on the cover will be top of the bestseller lists next week?
And yes, I probably will be reading it. So include me in the reading public above! Bang to rights, guv!
And so to Dan Brown. According to some figures I read a few days ago, Mr Brown and a diet book have been the best sellers here in the UK in the first half of the year.
I’m not altogether sure why the 5:2 diet needs a book. I’m doing it, or my own version of it, in an attempt to squeeze into last year’s shorts when we go to France in September. You eat normally for five days, and eat nothing for two. Where’s the rocket science? Why do I need an instruction manual? (Possibly because someone who couldn’t cope with eating nothing for twenty-four hours invented a new version which allows you to eat 500 calories, and some people need to be told what 500 calories consists of? Let me tell you a secret: it works better if you eat nothing.)
Dan Brown... Yes, well, I’ve said enough about him over the years. But whenever I see one of his books (see, not read, please note) I’m always put in mind of something a wise and experienced publisher said to me when I was a mere rookie in the trade. He wasn’t talking about Dan Brown, but he saw my lip curl at the stacks of copies of a new book by someone equally... (insert own opinion here) and said gently, ‘His sales pay for us to launch half a dozen debut authors every year.’
Enough said. God bless J K Rowling, whatever she’s calling herself this week. And Gillian Flynn and Jack Reacher were both in the top ten best sellers of the first half of the year, so all is not lost.
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