Turning Authors into Bestseller Machines

Posted on June 11, 2008

The Guardian's Stewart Evers has a pretty harsh piece about how America's biggest authors are being turned into brands instead of writers. He says that making big authors write a minimum of one book a year -- and sometimes many more -- lowers the quality of the work.

Patricia Cornwell, like many of her super-successful rivals, long ago ceased to be a writer and became a brand. As a brand the stakes are higher, and normal literary rules no longer apply. Jobs, salaries, budgets and bonuses depend upon the likes of Cornwell to deliver the goods year in, year out. But just like Nike or Ford, Cornwell's brand needs to be constantly in the public consciousness. To go on leave for two years could allow Kathy Reichs, Karin Slaughter or one of Cornwell's other rivals to nip in and steal her crown. The fact of it is, that despite the pressures, Cornwell still wants to be number one: and to do that you need to keep pumping out the product - how hateful that sounds! -- no matter how low the quality.
Of course, this is nothing new for crime writers used to churning out pulp for cents a word, but the obsession with "branding" authors is threatening to hamper new talent. Writing a book a year is the absolute minimum for an aspiring genre novelist, and this treadmill approach allows no let-up. Will new crime writers get the freedom of say, Dennis LeHane, Thomas Harris and James Ellroy to write the books they want, when they want? Or will they be squeezed out by rivals willing to fire off three or four books a year to establish themselves? Publishers are asking ever more of their writers to get on to the bestseller lists - and for this we have one man to thank: human bestseller machine James Patterson.

We see his point in general, but think his concerns are overblown. For one thing, the number of authors who are so famous that they fall into this category is unbelievably small. And regardless of what the critics say, we believe that Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson still give it their all when they write a book.