Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
If a book is well written it will find its place on the bookshelves, and if it's badly written the best promotion money can buy won't do a thing for it.
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Perhaps some of the best written novels in the past decade, Shayne Parkinson's
Promises to Keep series (which I reviewed here:
On Books: The Promises to Keep Quartet and
On Books: Promises to Keep are Promises Kept, among other mentions), are only available as POD (print on demand) or as author self-published ebooks. These books should have been bought by a major traditional publisher and promoted to kingdom come. They are exceptional, yet they do not readily find a place on the retail bookshelves.
Similarly situated, are Vicki Tyley's mysteries, which I reviewed here:
On Books: Murder Down Under. I consider Tyley's books to be 5-star books (out of 5 stars) and Parkinson's to be 5+ (out of 5) stars. I think Tyley is the Australian P.D. James. Yet, like Parkinson, she can't get a major traditional publisher interested.
In both instances, I suspect that a large part of the problem is that Tyley is Australian and Parkinson is a New Zealander, and there is a bias in the major publishers against small-market authors, especially when a book doesn't have a nearly exclusive niche that it can fill.
But the point is that excellent -- even oustanding writing -- is no guarantee that a book will find its place on the bookshelves.
Conversely, if one can spend a virtually unlimited amount of money promoting a far-less-than-stellar book, that book can be turned into an international bestseller. Do we need to look any further than
The Da Vinci Code for an example?