Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeshadow
6th post, sidetrack  to which I first answered re movies and music
Don't think it 'll go flamy here, we are still into facts. |
Also a relevant counter to the idea that the french (people) no longer understand storytelling. Books it might be debatable (
) but plenty of French movies do storytelling well. Some even travel cross-borders.
Books published through a traditionalist, "literary culture" system, however, are as much a product of the entrenched filtering system as they are the authors'. Which means that the gatekeepers (agents, publishers, and bookstore buyers) might simply be filtering out the kind of books that might be of interest to bestseller-focused "anglosaxon" agents. Most of whom, btw, are a wee bit concerned with the deep disruption of *their* "literary culture" that is changing the rules of their game.
That said, I'd be interested in seeing some numbers of sales volume for French mid-listers, since literary culture is really characterized by the mid-list. Bestsellers I found range from roughly 500K to 1.5M, but I couldn't find anything on the mid-list to contrast with the known US baselines.