the (sad) skinny from bookseller chick
Bookseller Chick is somebody who really knows the bookstore biz, and here's what she has to say about the fate of many of good book:
You could have written an amazing (fill in the blank sub-genre) novel, but if the critics are just tired of reading them, if the public is just tired of the same derivative covers, if the marketing department just wasn’t on the ball, and if a bookseller didn’t read it on their off time and realize that this is obviously the hand-sell of the century, then your book could still sink away into oblivion. These days books have about six weeks to prove their worth before they’re yanked off the shelves, factor in some delayed reviews (or a lay-down date that got moved up), a slow to start word of mouth chain, and lack of up-front store time and your book could be off the shelves before anyone has realized it was there.
My heart sinks and my stomach cramps when I read this, because I know she's right. And I have a new book out there, and most likely this will be its fate. If I'm lucky it will resurrect with the publication of the mass market edition, but I would have to be very lucky.
This scenario is entirely what I expected to happen when Homestead was published, but in that case the booksellers jumped in and hand-sold, and then the PEN/Hemingway people called, and things took off. Totally unexpected, utterly wonderful and gratifying. But luck played a big part in that. The same scenario for the new book? Ultra unlikely.
So all of you who are writing novels, please be aware that luck and fate and all those unquantifiable market forces out there will have their way with your book. Which of course can also work in the other direction. Look at The DaVinci Code as the ultimate example.