Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
The success of books like this simply demonstrate that success has as much--and often more--to do with popularity than quality.
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If by "success" you mean sales, then it has 100% to do with popularity.
(OK, I guess one rich admirer could buy a million copies for himself, but that's more like patronage...and very unlikely.)
The question is why is or isn't it popular? Is it popular because it's great and anyone who happens to read it tells 100 friends how wonderful it is?
Or is it hooked, as you say, to another popular phenomenon, and gets curiosity or fan-loyalty sales, regardless of the content?
If it is NOT successful, is it because no on has heard of it--bad distribution and marketing? No buzz?
Or does it just suck, and anyone who reads it warns 100 friends not waste their time and money?
By the way, while popularity does not
equal quality, it is often a good sign.
I think in most cases, if someone has written what they think is a 'high quality' book that no one likes, they may need to reconsider what 'quality' means.
Similarly, those that bash writers like Stephen King or JK Rowling or ...um...whoever wrote Twilight as low quality also may want to reevaluate the meaning of the word, that is if they can get their noses out of the air and come down off their pedestals long enough.....
In other words, if a novel speaks to so many people that they spend enough to make it "successful", if they sing it's praises to their friends, and want to buy and read the author's next book, then those self-stylized Nobel Prize Panel wannabes who say "Oh the writing is so low quality....." need to accept that they have missed the point of novels by defining "quality" as some very narrow set of academic or personal preferences.
There are exceptions of course. Like the vast majority of the poll respondents in this thread, I have not read 50 Shades, and yet here I am contributing to the buzz, perhaps prompting folks to go get to see what all the talk is about. So yes, 50 Shades might be selling with nothing more in it's favor than hype and buzz. But I bet most popular books have more going for them than just that.
ApK