--- Jack Bludis <
buildsnburns@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I think it was Ace who did double volumes a
long
> time ago, in a world far away, but I don't know
how
> they sold. Anybody know?
Sure, I remember those and bought them, myself. Doesn't seem
all that long ago, either. I know the cost of ink and paper
have gone up but even buying it retail, which publishers
don't do, it's not THAT expensive. Back in the day a 180 page
book sold for 35 cents. Are we really to believe that if
someone published a 180 page book today for $2.00, no one
involved could make any money? The fact is books today are
not 180 pages. They start at 300 pages and more frequently
they're well over 500 pages. I read this stuff, or try to,
and frankly what you get for your extra 320 pages is no
editing. Recently, or not too long ago anyway, some genius
decided to republish Robert Heinline's Stranger in a Strange
Land just as he delivered it to the publisher. Instead of
most of 400 pages, it was 700 page. I don't know if anyone
else read this, but it was NOT an improvement. Editors have a
purpose or at least they used to. They did the same thing to
John Fowels' The Magus, a confusing book made more confusing
by a whole lot more stuff.
I remember when a hard cover book was $3.00. Today they start
around $30! Sure, inflation, but ten times the cost? For the
most part, very rare exceptions, the modern cost is not equal
to the value. In my humble opinion, Patricia Cornwell is not
the writer Patricia Highsmith, Josephine Tey, Mary Roberts
Rinehard or Agatha Christie were. But she writes a lot more
pages and somehow she sells a lot more books. I think an
editor's hand would greatly improve many modern novels. These
stories we're talking about are 'yarns.' This is great
literature in spite of itself. No one needs more than 200
pages in which to tell these stories. The trick with a book
is, sales are everything and once you've bought it, you don't
take it back. No one knows and I, myself, can't even count
how many books I've bought, become completely bogged down in
due to convoluted plots and bad sentences, and just never
finished. A 200 page book is a train ride, a 500 page book is
a commitment and it better be worth the effort because I
could be listening to my Ipod instead. There has got to be a
way to bring back the terse, well-written yarn. Our era is
suffering for the lack of it. Sure, Stephen King has turned
out a few
"Blockbusters" that are worth all that page turning. But he's
also put out a few that seemed a lot like the last one. His
immitators, again in my opinion, fail almost across the
board. Very few plots are worthy of the "War & Peace"
length and some of these books are not even plotted. I can't
tell what the story is about.
I don't know how much a 35 cent Goldmedal paperback should
sell for today, but whatever it is, someone should work it
out and bring that format back. Adding hundreds of pages to a
story does not improve it. Max Perkins knew this, and he was
handling GREAT writers. Why is this news today?
Patrick King
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