When is a book not just a book? When it becomes a cultural phenomenon.
Would it surprise you to know that The Da Vinci Code originally had a print run of only 50,000 copies? Or that the first Harry Potter novel was rejected multiple times before getting picked up by a small publisher of children’s books? The way these works have changed the world, it’s hard to imagine that their authors were once unknowns hustling for a sale–but there you have it.
Which only goes to prove: there’s no such thing as a sure-fire formula to predict success, because somebody would have patented it by now and retired to Tahiti. I think William Goldman put it best in Adventures in the Screen Trade when he said of Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything!” The same lesson applies to the book world, which explains the constant–and often futile–search for the Next Big Thing.
That being the case, you might ask what newbie authors like me feel about the Big Guys, now that I’m sharing shelf space with them. Since writers tend to be an insecure bunch, there are more than a few killjoys who grumble about how money is for sellouts and scoff at anything that’s popular (that’s right, you know who you are)–but you can take it on faith that these people would probably kill for that kind of success, unless it’s a literary critic whom they would gladly bump off for free.
As for me personally, I’m jazzed. People like Rowling, Brown, Clancy, Grisham and King fire people’s imaginations and get them reading. It also doesn’t hurt that they get those people’s butts into the bookstores, where they just might sample the works of a few new writers–including yours truly!
Aside from that “halo effect,” though, the stars also make it possible for new voices to be heard. Without the revenue they generate, publishers would be even more hard-pressed to give unpublished authors a chance. So the next time some hoity-toity highbrow sniffs at the latest Danielle Steel opus, you can tell ’em to go stick it.
Now. . .where did I leave my copy of Da Vinci again?
ShareJUL
2005