The Worst Sellers

Five small publishing houses organized a debate at the recent Madrid Book Fair, about their books that didn't sell well (less than 200 copies). Without doubt, was to intend not to repeat - the reasons of the failure. But the real debate is another: why is it a failure selling little?

From the company or, rather, the business point of view, the answer is obvious. Nevertheless, some publishing houses do not always behave merely as a business concern or companies. There exist, as Schiffrin reminded us in his 'The edition without editors', publishing firms dedicated to contribute to the country quality literature in it's most critical sense. To do that one mustn't follow the current, but to try - not always successful, or only at long term - to side step it.

From the artistic point of view, one supposes that literature aspires to become art, but that won't do. What has book sale got to do with quality of the book? We enter here a debate as ancient as repetitive. Seems that nobody contributes anything but the old or the new topic. The old is taking for granted the relativeness between quality and sale, as in the meeting of writers in Ubeda last March. One of the themes was Literature of the masses and Literature of quality. The new topic is, as the story goes, when a lady editor approached an author who was visibly afflicted by the bad review given to him by critics: "But why should it bother you what they say, when you have sold 200,000 copies?" But it mattered to the author as he believed he had written a good novel, and the critic is the one who says whether he had done that or not.

ame as a film. I guess. The one that is most successful commercially with the highest box-office sale is not necessarily the best film artistically. Same with an art piece, or the most popular anything need to be the best.

Tag:worsesellers

Current Mood: Calm