George:
<<Well, if the Parker novels, Backflash and Comeback,
are overpriced in trade paperback, you'll really be glad to
hear that the next one, Flashfire, is set to come out in
November in hardback at $22.95 (US), $32.95 in Canada.
Mysterious Press is the imprint.>>
With new hardboiled literature being an endangered species,
I'm glad these books are being published at all. I don't like
paying a lot of money for books, but I don't think these
Parker titles could ever be best-sellers and, after all, the
author depends on sales. I think this applies as much to
Westlake as to a newcomer in the field.
By the way, and only tangentially related to the above, have
other US raravians noticed how hardboiled literature is
eschewed (there, I knew some day I wold use this word) by
public libraries? In some, you can't find Gores, or Stark, or
even a complete set of Chandler or Hammett, but they alwaysy
do have the most recent "The Cat Who...".
Some days I feel that we are a tiny group of loyals trying
not to drown in a sea of cozies, romance dreadfuls,
Grishiads, and technothrillers. Surely the bottom-liner blues
has something to do with this; I suspect the public's
sensibilities have changed and made it less sympathetic to
hardboiled literature. What's a typical sales number for a
hardboiled hardcover novel?
That is my rant for the week.
Regards,
mt
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Jun 2000 EDT