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Why Doesn't Sci-Fi Hit the Bestseller Lists?
Pomeranian writes "Sci fi readers often deplore book bestseller lists -- because review editors actively ignore many sci-fi sales, since they don't consider that stuff "popular", even though sci-fi titles often sell in far greater numbers than "serious" highbrow lit. But this all might change soon, with the launch of Bookscan: New technology that tracks actual sales at the cash register with greater precision than ever before. When similar technology launched in the music industry ten years ago, it proved the popularity of "new country" and hip-hop overnight. This story in the Washington Post wonders: Will Bookscan do the same thing to sci-fi? NOTE: this is a *shameless* self-aggrandizing plug, because I wrote the Washington Post story! But I figured it'd be of particular interest to Slashdot readers"
CD: While I'd love to see lists that are more reflective of reality, I don't think that a pure unadulterated list is in the interest of the reading public. When I worked at Waldenbooks many moons ago, we would commonly receive copies of one book, Dianetics, from the publisher, with our (And our competitors) sales stickers already on them. While this was an extreme case, it does serve as a cautionary tale about the lengths some will go to manipulate the numbers.
Shameless plugs on /., no way...when did this start?
=P
forget it.
My guess would be Harlan Ellison.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
If you get an accurate count of books sold, I'm guessing that the only thing you're going to see on the best-selling list is romance novels
What does this mean? Having never worked at a bookstore, I don't know what it means for a book to come with sales stickers on....
On the same day, a poll about bestseller lists and an article on bestseller lists appears on SlashDot. Many users, after voting for CowboyNeal's Anime Bestseller List, comment on how they think /. is selling out. Hours later, a bestseller article appears. The first poster talks about shamless plugs. This is either an eery coincidence or something really is going on. Just some food for thought.
Nike. Just jew it.
I would hate for this to lead the local stores of national chains to change what they carry based on what people in my area were more "likely" to purchase. Just like targetted advertising, their squeezing dollars leads to less local choice.
I know that I can look online and make decisions on what I might like, but the seredipity of finding something in the stacks is one of my greatest thrills (yes, my life *is* that boring...)
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
I had always thought that, despite their popularity, Sci-Fi books never ranked high on Review Editors' radar because of their "Pulp" popularity.
There's a stigma that goes w/ Sci-Fi books I think. Editors assume that they're a niche market, and reviews would be wasted because fans (in their opinion) are going to either buy Sci-Fi or not, regardless of their reviews.
This is probably the same reason they avoid reviewing Danielle Steele and other "romance novel" type books. I mean does anyone believe that THOSE aren't still selling bajillions of copies yearly?
My experience is limited to music, so I will constrain my comments to that field in what follows.
During that period of high international tension, interest in all things technological skyrocketted (again, no pun intended). While this surely sold paperbacks, the impact on all flavours of popular culture is simply beyond question. In the space of a decade we were given songs such as David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (featuring a main character worthy of Asimov) and movies, including Kubrick's 2001 and, of course, Star Wars. Even ignoring the merchandising that went along with these, the impact on Western culture is incredible.
In essence, science fiction represents more than a shelf or wall at your local book shop. It represents an entire school of thought, an obsession of modern man. It has been bred and inscribed into us from childhood. Counting books sold will never demonstrate the "popularity" of science fiction.
But do you know what will? Taking the hand of a child, standing under the night sky, looking up, and wondering... It's a spirit that lives in all of us, an inquisitiveness that won't be silenced. You can theorise about marketing trends all you want, but it is this essential humanity that will guarantee a market for "sci fi" until the end of time.
Take care, everyone, and keep on dreaming.
"I'm a rocket man / Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." - Sir Elton John
People shouldent base what they buy on what everyone else buys anyway, wether it be music or books. The only purpose lists like this serve, is inform publishing companies of what types of books/music are selling well, and to make the artists feel good.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
How to get a book to the top of the best-seller lists:
Have your minions go out and repeatedly buy hundreds of copies, returning them and buyying them again.
Dianetics(tm)(c) is, of course, the primary public tome of the Church of Scientology(tm) who will use very creative methods to make their publication appear more popular than reality.
It's good to be popular, or for people to suddenly discover you. It gets you more money, more opportunities, and with greater exposure comes greater influence. Look at Open Source and GNU/Linux - as it's popularity has risen, business have been forced to compete, support, and develop for the system. Like the article mentions with Country Music, sometimes there's an entire market waiting to be tappd.
At the same time, there's the dark side. As publishers notice "dang - there's lots of money to be made with science fiction", you can expect a flurry of studies, marketing strategies - imagine the N'Sync of sci-fi, as one evil example. It means the corner of the universe that used to be yours - or in the case of groups, ours, is now open to the world - with all the good and bad it brings.
So while I'm hoping this promotes more interest in sci-fi books and literature, and perhaps even more funding/greater recognition for those artists, I'm also worried about what the sudden press of "marketing studies" will do, or the effects of making sci-fi "mainstream" to try and get a greater public hooked.
Of course, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
At any rate, when Oprah starts talking about Jean Luc's latest adventure novel then we can ponder how things will change...
Believe nothing -- Buddha
It's bad to track user activity online, but it's ok to track book sales for the very same purpose?
"It's even worse if you're locked into a proprietary operating system." -http://www.wehavethewayout.com/scale.asp?rew=0
I'm told that the Bible has been the top book sold for many many many many years, so much so that they leave it off the list now.
Can anyone confirm/deny this? Also, is it generally the bible, or is it a particular version (NIV, KJV etc etc)
thanks
The large chain bookstores already track author popularity very closely and, if your last book didn't do well, your next book may not get the opportunity to do well. This discourages authors from branching out or trying something new. Several authors have found themselves forced to adopt new pen names to get around these problems.
I fear that this proposed system is only going to make things worse, not better. Yes, I would like to see SF treated with a little respect, but I'd also like to see authors free to experiment and to try something new and off the beaten track. I'm afraid that this will kill off what little market remains for interesting and innovative writers, and leave us with nothing but "popular" cookie-cutter pablum.
I think if you browse around on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America web pages, you may find some articles that address these concerns in greater detail.
At last, an empirical method to prove what the best books are! After all, everyone knows that Titanic is, scientifically, the best movie ever made. Finally, my Danielle Steele novels and R.L. Stine paperbacks will get the in-depth, intellectual criticism they've been *begging* for!
If they used slashdot ratings for these books in conjunction with Bookscan, would The CowboyNeal Anime BestSeller 2000 come out on top?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Seriously, have you seen that shit-fest lately? nobody likes sci-fi, because they associate it with this garbage.
And don't even get me started on the "Voyager Trek A Thon" they're having. Jesus fucking christ.
What does this mean? Having never worked at a bookstore, I don't know what it means for a book to come with sales stickers on....
The book was Dianetics, which is the big Scientologist book. The reason they show up at bookstores with price stickers already on them is because of the Scientologists' bestseller plan:
1) Everyone goes out and buys Dianetics.
2) Give the copies of Dianetics to the "church."
3) The church ships the books back out to retail stores.
The end product is that Dianetics goes sky-high in the bestseller lists, without costing the church typical manufacturing costs. And bookstores get copies of the book already with sales stickers on.
Years ago, the PTB reformed the process that music sales were recorded & how albums would thereby be certified as ``Gold" or ``Platinum."
One week, the best-selling record was some forgettable group created by the music industry & heavily hyped on MTV. (ISTR it was a group called ``Poison.") The next week . . . Nirvana was king. And Seattle suffered for it.
Just remembering a bit of history.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Sci Fi never makes it to the top sellers list? What about Michael Criton and Stephen King? Sure it may not be hardcore sci fi but the romance novels that make it to the list aren't hardcore porn. The Hardcore stuff is unpopular in a lot of places.
Ok maybe sci fi will become "hot" but would that make sci fi better - probably not.
Sci fi has been hot in movies for a long time and what do we have to show for it - several big budget movies that are complete crap (men in black independance day, that arnold thing, phantom menace etc.) with one medium budget movie that is not that bad (the matrix).
And even though sci fi movies were hot Douglas Adams did not live to see a Hitchikers movie.
Good sci fi gets written not because its on bestsellers lists but because people that write it love doing it.
Tracking use activity online is actually a privacy issue because of the fact that the internet is so vulnerable and because half the time it is not what you bargain for (KaZaA clasic example.) Bookselling tracking is statistical, not (hopefully) for profit, and is (hopefully) anonymous. But it is walking a thin line.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It's about time. I hated having to call my handler every time i bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
This is just another shameless attempt of prying into our private lies. How do the customers of this technology that know absolutely nothing about know this know their private information will be kept private and not sold to other companies. I am sure Amazon, Ebay, Chapters, and many other heartless corporate entities will stop at nothing to get this information. Even worse they could sell this personally identifiable information to DoubleClick and make millions off of these people being taken advantage of. I could see them even breaking a few legs in the process to at this info.
And what about security. What about the hackers and phreakers trying to get at this information. Do you really want everyone to know what books you purchase? What if your mother found out you are the person who bought the most Gay Porn magazines in this country. Think it would go down very well with your mother? Think it would go down very well with your father?
I say give customers a choice if they want to take part in this. If they say no acknowledge it and accept their answer. And to follow it through. Not force them to do something they don't want to, like a certain company does consistently.
While sci-fi novels regularly sell in large
numbers, they sell to a voracious subculture
(of which I am indeed a member) whose tastes
and preferences to not reflect those of the
world at large.
I think the title of this whine should be, "Why don't my trendy, flash-in-the-pan favorite sci-fi wannabes of the month hit the bestseller lists?"
The answer is self-evident. If it's good, the market speaks. If it sucks, well, there's always Slashdot.
;)
Pfui. Snow Crash. Neuromancer or almost anything else by Gibson. Many titles by Gregory Benford.
Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein had much less of an idea of how technology would affect society. For example, Asimov's robot stories are brilliant, but the connection to real life is subtle, because so much else of society is going to change radically before we have sufficient AI to get Asimov's robots.
"Modern authors" have been "rehashing the same old plots" for thousands of years. Read Joseph Campbell.
Aw rats. I been trolled...
Whoa! I read the same "News for Nerds" site as a Washington Post reporter?!? I am SO cool. :-)
I see somebody owns a thesaurus!
Back in the early nineties I used to work in a now non-existant bookstore, that had the task of compiling the list of bestsellers for the local newspaper. The bestseller list was compiled in order using the following rules:
1. The number of copies we had of the book in stock (not the number sold). This true for fiction only - our best selling books were always stuff like "Introductory Accounting Book 1" - which we never bothered listing. Sci-fi was not exempt - we had a hardcore Scifi customer base - although we weren't a genre bookstore.
2. If the book was selling poorly it was placed higher in the list to try to boost sales!
3. Some random book that the manageress liked would be in the top ten regardless of sales (in many cases we didn't have any copies of it - embarrassing).
At least these where the rules as far as I could figure them! Scientific huh?
I don't know, i think Vernor Vinge has some very goos stuff. Everyone here should have at least heard of true names (which has *finally* been reprinted), and Fire Upon the Deep hit big a few years ago (its sequil/prequil wasn't nearly as good though, imho). The Tinkers from peace war, and few of his short stories set in the same world should have immidiate appeal to most people reading this. If you havn't read some Vinge, you should. I recomend the recent collection of _all_ of his short stories, excluding True Names.
'hot' or science fiction for general audiences sounds like an excelent idea. We can have new successes in the field of science fiction just as the music industry has had such great artists as Nsync and Backstreet Boys
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
SciFi probably never makes it because it is an awful genre. It doesn't have to be, but stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars have soured the name of SciFi.
Of course, Ender's Game was first published 20 years after Dune.
This.
Sales don't mean everything, what would be more accurate about popularity would be if they could include sharing, giveaways, and non-primary store purchases (think swap meet, thrift store). Taken in the software context, this sort of metric is like saying apache sucks because nobody buys it from a store.
That said, I encourage you all to read the Hyperion set by Dan Simmons (read ALL of them, the best reading is in the last book of the series)
Travis
So, just because I read slashdot and have a passing interest in things geeky, I must care about SF? Criminitly, I've been stereotyped.
You wouldn't dare assume something equivlent about a Cosmo reader, not and not get your proverbial nuts handed to you.
Display some adaptability.
Look at your bookshelves (I'll wait). Welcome back. How many of your books are paperbacks, and how many are hardbacks? I would guess 90% paperbacks, but the main bestseller lists track sales of new hardcover books.
Thinking at the keyboard here, I would say most hardbacks are bought as gifts. Tracking paperbacks would tell you what people are buying for themselves to read.
The trouble with this is that paperback buying is probably more spread out over time. Did, say, 2001: a Space Odyssey make the best-seller lists? I don't know. But how many copies did it sell in paperback across the decades?
Hence, I conclude that best-seller lists are marketing hoopla, and we should ignore them.
I, for one, hope that the major newspapers publish both lists.
The benefit of consuming WSJ, NYT, the Post, or any of a host of others is their editorial expertise. Each newspaper has a brand they maintain. Science Fiction is simply not that compatible with their brands. If you want to know about science fiction, do you go to WSJ? Huh, didn't think so. Consumers expect the editorial bent of the paper to affect their content. (Perhaps the moniker "best seller list" is exceptional because it implies statistical rather than anecdotal analysis.)
The new format will be interesting from a sociological perspective. It will provide all kinds of demographic information. Unfortunately, I'm sure the information will be very expensive, so we will probably not benefit beyond the top 10 lists, which will be not all that interesting.
As to why Sci Fi and Fantasy are not taken seriously by the heavy hitters: those categories are, today, formula fiction as much as any thriller or romance is. Go to the "Reference" section of your bookstore. How many "How to Write Science Fiction" books are there? Now, how many "How to Write a Really Good Story" books are there? Sci Fi and Fantasy provide easy gimmicks to let writers off the hook, so the best writing no longer tends to be in them.
A similar thing has happened in TV. Look at any show that starts off really interesting. After a few episodes, people start having exrtraordinary things happening to them: they get shot, things blow up, they get amnesia (and it's prime time, not just daytime TV). That's because it's hard to write really good, creative fiction without using these easy devices. And once the devices were well established, the formula became well known, and its the exceptional writer that now really creates something new in any of these formula categories.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
>the everyday reader doesn't want to read Sci-Fi anymore
>i suppose good Sci-Fi is just too difficult for most to understand
Spiderman, the science fiction film has made $114 million. And your're telling me people aren't interested in science fiction?
--Metrollica
If the method worked so well in the music industry, how come we have so much garbage coming out in the music industry to this day? For every decent band in the spotlight, I can name 50 that should be there and 200 that shouldn't....and that includes hip hop and "new country" (alt-country?).
I think you will see the same lopsided results in books. The literature industry controls (to a slightly lesser degree than the music industry) what is made available to the public, and far more importantly, what is publicized to the public. That which does not get publicity, will not succeed on a mainstream level. If a book (no matter how good it is) is not considered mainstream material (read: risk-averse vanilla) then it will not hit the bestsellers list. Some of the better music/books out there will never be accepted by the mainstream, but achieve decent sales through the phenomenon known as 'cult'. 'Cult' tends to not be significant enough to be blockbuster (as the music industry has shown).
I think that we've found the missing middle step to:
1. Sci-Fi
2. ???
3. Profit
I must say though that most Sci-Fi, be it books, movies or TV, really REALLY sucks.
For every Brave New World or Snowcrash there's 100s if not 1000s of published shitwork. I think the legitimate Sci-Fi is lost in the noise of all the shit. If the Sci-Fi industry wants to lift itself from the industry ghetto they need to start being a lot more selective in what they publish, IMO.
in something other than internet exploder......
A sharp marketing department could notice that SF with such-and-such a cover and such-and-such a description sells a solid 5% better than anything else.
A few weeks later, editors and slushpile readers get standing orders to only vet manuscripts that fit a certain profile.
The next year, the books in your local bookstore's SF&F section fall into maybe three categories. Cover artists who want to continue eating ape a certain sterotyped style.
But, dang, SF books start hitting the Bestseller Lists, so it would all be worthwhile.
Stefan
Sci-fi is a fantasy/make-believe genre. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it just is. Regular fiction is also fantasy, but, it's fantasy that the Public can identify with. There are millions of soccer moms out there. If Oprah says that The Adventures of a Soccer Mom is good, it's likely to sell a lot to this demographic because it's a story they can identify with. If Oprah says that Willy's Adventures With BooBoo Alien Kitty on Neptune is good, it probably won't sell a lot, because there are few that can, or wish to, identify with it. Sci-fi's appeal is to a very small percentage of the population.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Sorry to do it, wish Slashdot had an edit post feature. I forgot to mention that this system may seem unfair if you're a Sci-Fi fan, but if the 'highbrow' lit lists didn't select out what they considered 'noise', even Sci-Fi would get lost in the sales of those shitty romance novels. Those sell big.
The big problems with getting science fiction onto bestseller lists, except for top names like Crichton, is that publishers don't print enough to actually make a dent on the lists. According to Robert J. Sawyer, his initial harcover runs are still only a few thousand for North America (this includes Canada as well), while best sellers usually sell this many just in the first week at least just in the USA. Sawyer's won awards in four countries and is constantly active in science fiction with clinics and book tours, as well as being a former president of the SFWA, but because he's not only Canadian, but a science fiction author, he doesn't get the sales of anything that, say, Grisham or King would get.
And until there's a demonstration that books such as his are marketable in the same lists as King or Grisham books, they won't be printed in the numbers needed to get on those lists.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
When purchasing a Bible there are tons of options (Adult study, Teen bible, children's picture bible, etc...) as well as different translations (KJ, NKJ, NIV, NL, AS, etc...). Each of these Bibles (probably hundreds) has a different ISBN. So all of these would probably be counted individually under this new system. I think it is likely that the current sales numbers for "The Bible" are probably a combination of all Bible sales regardless of ISBN, which is why it is always a best seller. It will be interesting to see if the new tracking changes the results. Go buy your bible today!
-- Find the Truth...
Just because the tech is available doesn't mean that all book sellers will use it. Here in Australia, one of the largest music retailers do not contribute to the chart. I'm not sure how much this affects the results, but it could significantly affect the results. Another point, if the retailer doesn't a particular title to count, they do not need to scan the ISBN. They could scan the UPC or even manually enter a SKU/PLU. I wonder how they people running the list will adjust for this?
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
i thought there only was some made for tv stuff, and radio shows.
Hm. Would (2) possibly be legally actionable as constituting fraud for financial gain?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
>the only thing you're going to see on the best-selling list is romance novels
Why? Isn't that what pr0n magazines are for?
The Music version of this is called Soundscan. In the music industry it's often referred to as "SoundScam", because of the abuses of the system, and the ease in which it can be manipulated to reflect what the label wants it to do. All you need is an indie promoter, a few thousand copies, and one unscruplous store owner or employee.
All their purchases are made electronically so that has to be the most accurate tracking of books sold. Ok, obviously amazon.com only tracks the books they sell which is slightly different than the article which talks about all book sales. But amazon.com has enough customers to make an accurate random sampling of the entire set of customers who buy books.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
STAR WARS: EPISODE 2 -- ATTACK OF THE CLONES, by R. A. Salvatore. (Lucas/Del Rey/Ballantine, $26.) As the Republic edges toward disaster, Anakin Skywalker falls for Senator Padmé Amidala.
I guess this doesn't count as Science Fiction since it has less literary merit than most Science Fiction...
Spider-man is fantasy, dude. Just because something is couched in scientific lingo, doesn't make it sci-fi. None of the elements in Spider-Man are plausible.
Then again, I'm a purist. If it's not 'hard' SF, it's fantasy.
BTW, Spider-Man sucked big time. The Fly from 86 is waaay better in exploring a man turned into a super-man via some sort of DNA accident, and it at least tries to explain why and how he's changing.
And come ON, the dialogue and FX in Spider-Man? Garbage. Nonsense for the 12 year old crowd.
The book isn't being returned to the stories, it's being 'cycled' through. Scientologiests buy the book, then ship it themselves to the publisher, who sends them back to the bookstories to be sold again. So the book cycles through without needing to be remade.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Stephen Baxter is damned good as well, Ring particularly.
Top seller lists are designed to help sell as many books as possible. Those who are not among sharpest crayons in the box tend to have more free time to consume fiction. I think smarter people whose lifestyles revolve around science fact, spend much of their reading time consuming science fact. If reading fiction, tech people have an obvious tendency towards science fiction. Since most people are dull crayons and avoid science fiction, sf is not as profitable as what we consider less than worthy reading material. Slop sells and if it's at the top of a list it will sell faster. I don't claim this to be true, but I'm sure it's a contributing reason to the lack of SF on BS lists.
R
http://www.tradica.com/
they are. really.
the only few _good_ NEW books that have come out in a decade or so without being sleepers were the zahn's star wars trilogy. sure there has been few almost good books(as fast selling and wide spread goes), gibson & such. but not anything on par with the zahn's.
and i still can't have conversations with most book reading people about zahns trilogy. whereas, take any asimov book, and some other who digs scifi books(!), he's sure to have read them(at least a few)..
but can i assume he has read the last years 'top selling 'scifi' book'? no, because i haven't either.
actually, imho, you shouldn't categorize books by the surrounds the story is told in, but by the STORY, asimov for example has love drama, exploration and detective stories.. all that would work equally well in different surroundings. you could put the empire to be roman empire & etc, without actually losing one inch. of course it would be raping the whole idea tho.. you could put 1984 or fahrenheit 181(?) to whatever time perioid with minor changes and still have the message told.
it doesn't really matter if the story is told in ancient egypt or starship leaping in the stars, or in both. techinical gizmos are easy for writers to explain in detail, making the reader understand a persons character is much more difficult.
i don't count humour books to be anything else than humour(adams, harry harrison), no matter how great and funny they are(adams&harry harrison again).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Asimov, Clarke, Niven (with and without Pournelle) have made the NY Times Bestsellers List, sometimes the top (albeit not very long), even if you don't count King, Clancy, Vonnegut, et al.
Oh...you mean in the past five years.
Elaborate a bit
I was a big Nirvana fan (more of an Aphex Twin fan now, although I keep a fair amount of alt-rock in my playlists)
It was Nirvana that allowed a bunch of other great acts (Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Weezer) to gain exposure
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I posted this late, so I probably wont get modded up, because people who post early are the only ones who get modded up. But I like to always point out things Japan does right, and has been doing right, that the US has yet to figure out.
I Japan if you buy a book, CD, dvd, anything it has a small paper or cardboard reciept on it. At the point of sale the little slip is tossed into a box. At the end of the day they get a perfectly accurate count of what was sold very easily. If you purchase a cd from somewhere like www.cdjapan.co.jp or buy some imported manga you will probably get this little "recipt" because the people who sold it to you do not count them. It's pretty cool, since they been doing this for a long time.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Well, at least I glanced at that and wondered what Boskone was launching... Oh, Bookscan.
Amazing. I read the comments expecting to see hoopla about government conspiracies to track individuals' book buying habits! Where are you guys tonight?
David Brin has some great stuff and James P. Hogan's work is great along with all those mentioned above of coarse
In addition, Stars moved a couple of years ago to a better location, but has largely found that there's no longer enough demand for a specialty store to make having a storefront a truly viable proposition.
So, what stores are they going to be drawing these new listings from?
fencepost
just a little off
I see a few people complaining that there's not enough good science fiction out now; I beg to differ. Off the top of my head, Egan, Vinge, and Bear have all written some great books in the past few years; and have you ever read "Ribofunk" by di Filippo?
For years I've been using the THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST as my reference as to what science fiction I should be reading. It's not as flighty as a "current bestsellers" list is, but new books do work onto the list in due time. And most of the books on the list really do deserve to be there. Over the past five years, I've managed to read probably about half of the books on the list, and have an idea about most of the others. No small task, because the list does change over time. (Although looking at it now, I see a few names I don't recognize, which means it's time to start doing more reading).
The publishers are the ones that produce and sell the books, who get returns (or the ripped off covers of them), who get the orders for replacement copies, etc. They have all this information, though probably filtered somewhat through distributors. The bookstores already have this as well, down to the per-store level. The only people who really haven't had this are the press and members of the general public.
fencepost
just a little off
Because.....
only nerds and geeks like to pretend they are in space...
regular people have better shit to do , like read wHO MOVEd mY CheesE
There is some decent new stuff, though you have to look a bit if you want quality "hard" science fiction rather than space opera fluff. Stephen Baxter (Moonseed, Titan, Manifold Time), for example, writes some fairly decent classic science fiction. Greg Bear (Darwin's Radio among others) has his moments. And a new guy, Ken Wharton (Divine Intervention, has injected some fresh, if somewhat provocative, ideas into the genre. (Ken was a friend of mine from grad school, so I can't help but plug his book).
The Harry Potter "children's books" were extremely widely read by adults, but were scorned from the best-seller's lists for the same reason.
No, it's just a prediction of the future. "Sure, it may not be selling well now, but just wait until this gets published; then it *will* be a best seller!"
...the article doesn't cover Sci-Fi in any detail and actually focuses on religious material.
any of your bullshit Gibson clone wanabee assholes.
Quit picking on Neal Stephenson. He's nothing like that.
Oh... wait....
The $cientologists aren't the only ones who did this sort of thing.
The way the New York Times bestseller list works (or at least used to work, not sure what they do now), is they get the sales figures from a few stores. Since they are (or used to be) the same stores all the time, intrepid authors/publishers used to go out and buy as many copies from those few stores that they could find. Instant bestseller list, which becomes self-perpetuating as people buy it because it was on the list.
IIRC the books usually were those non-fiction business fad books (How to Drive Your Company to Just Unbelievable Success by Shouting Slogans at your Salesforce kinds of things).
I remember 1993... suddenly country was cool and every radio station within range dropped their Pop/Rock to play it. Country as people are down hear, there just weren't enough ears to go around.
The fad ended, the stations didn't notice
1997 a few go back to what's now called "Top 40"
but no one remembers to listen.
monkeys.
I've friends who supposedly hated science fiction, until I forced them to read Dune.
The problem they had was that they weren't really reading science fiction, they were reading space operas.
So what is science fiction? I've heard plenty of arguments why (same example) Dune isn't science fiction. But then, Herbert worked technological details and actual *science* into the books. I'd say that qualifies.
Too many people see the words science fiction and think "Cap'n! The warp interdimensional transducers are going critical because of the broken knefler pin!". Jargon != Sci Fi.
One could argue that Snow Crash and such are science fiction. Are they, or should they be more properly labelled as 'Cyberpunk' or something else?
Even with questions of semantics looming overhead, the sad truth is that the average book-buying person is more likely to say, "Where's my Grisham?" or "Where's my Koontz?" rather than,
"Where's my Asimov?"
Actually, if you read some of the comments in the poll, you would find that chris said, "This poll was inspired by an article in the pipeline, these polls are just kinda fun, yadda yadda.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
My partner is in constant contact with publishers, and fantasy well and truly outstrips SF sales. Fantasy is the biggest selling genre, even beating romance.
If this sort of thing happened, you would get a lot more manipulation of the definition of the 'fantasy genre', so that books can be classified that way in the store and thus appear more enticing to fantasy buyers. It's happening already with some authors desparate to be labelled fantasy to increase sales.
Who would pay for bookscan? How many small, independent bookstores that currently make up the bulk of the bestseller information would be left out?
That weird logic is probably the prima causa of why that bookstore is non-existant now.
How are they going to invade your privacy using that system?
American publishing needs a system that they can use to invade your privacy. Only this way will they catch up to amazon.
Think this sounds far fetched? Don't be so naive. Remember, libraries are already required to handover records to the Federal Gov't for matter dealing with "national security", what makes you think certain books won't be flagged.
wars not make one great
Sapere Aude - Homer
Most SciFI is literature "lite" and trying to equate it with great literature is akin to comparing television's Friends with Shakespeare. BUt hte plots always focus on technology more than character development--that's why it's called *science* fiction instead of fiction--duh! Most people either wnat mindlessroance or action not midless geekiness and so sci-fi's popularity to ratio will be similar to Java with the general public. Relax. Enjoy it for what it is: period entertainment with a substantially short half-life because it is shallow geekiness with littel character development. I like it, but I don't kid myself that it challenges great literature nor appeals to the lowest common denominator. Sheesh find something important to talk about. Like the fact that evidence is mounting that Enron traders used computers to screw California rate-payers out of billions.
> That weird logic is probably the prima causa of why that bookstore is non-existant now.
Nah - it's because the people who ran it were incompetant idiots. Decided that a bookshop in a dark alley would survive rather than moving it to the busy high street (which they had several occasions to do). The chain is still in business though.
If we really tracked best sellers we would probably see coloring books, shopping catalogs or other weird things showing up in the lists as well. We may even see the one thing that publishers never want known: the biggest determining factor is what is and what isn't a best seller could well be price.
A lot of the built in prejudices of the best seller lists is that the dime novels of yester year were out selling literature, largely because of price.
is quite obvious. Look at the amount of shelf space in many book stores. Ever notice the huge rack of Star Trek/Star Wars/etc books? There are at least 2-3 ST books published per month these days. They even invented new ST series to print more books. The sheer volume of this dreck will far exceed most science fiction sales which means will we see more of it. Assuming that they don't run out of rainforests first...
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
Yeah, it must have been Soundscan. I mean, it couldn't have been the fact that Garth hit the scene in late 1989, and really started getting huge in 1990, and accounted for over 20% of country music sales in the 90's.
> it proved the popularity of "new country" and hip-hop overnight
Oh fuck off.
I just noticed you comment is exactly the same as another posted 18 minutes earlier by user Xtifr. Are you the same person?
No chance. Read Iain Banks or Ken MacLeod for some
amazingly creative utopian (IB) or dystopian (KM) science fiction. And Kim Stanley Robinson's incredibly well-imagined near future books (Mars etc) are equally unique and nonderivative.
It's funny you use Dune as an example- the original and some of the sequels are as good as it gets, but the New Dune stuff by his son and Kevin Anderson? Now THAT'S derivative rehashage!
I noticed that your comment was reposted here by user JPawloski. Are you user JPawloski or did someone copy your comment?
It is true that there are other reasons, as mentioned already, but if any list maker were to actually comprehend F&SF they would have them in the list and that would then generate more sales and make the publishers have larger runs.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Not offtopic. Interesting.
Read Dan Simmons' Hyperion series.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Finally a problem to go along with the national ID card solution!
We are saved!
So more folks read sci-fi/fantasy and religious books? I don't know if i should be happy or cry...
:)
It's good that there are more nerds like me, but bad that so many people buy into religion.
No, this isn't a troll or an attack of any type. It's just my opinion...after having just skimmed, "The Demon Haunted World" and looking forward to reading the whole book, I'm saddened that Carl is right...
It really is depressing, first I was "different" for reading books on bugs and dinosaurs and sci-fi growing up, and then i realize, that my thinking is so vastly different from the majority of americans that I should move
Check this out.
Now, by my count, of the top 25 grossing US pictures of all time:
2 comedy...
3 drama...
5 cartoon/family...
SIXTEEN -- SIX-FSCKing-TEEN fit in the SF/Fantasy category.(though Twister might count as a comedy...)
Of course, you can divy 'em up however you want, but my point here should be crystal clear. I'm *NOT* gonna say this again.
BTW, by my count - for those that are interested...
3 movies rated R
4 movies rated PG13
THIRTEEN movies rated PG
2 movies rated G
Now, explain to me why Hollywood keeps doping films with gratuitous sex, violence & language that does nothing to advance the story. My guess is that they're more interested in impressing their party-friends and pushing a social agenda than making decent films. I believe Walt Disney used to say he made family films because "Why sell two tickets when you can sell four?" Hollywood - sheesh. What a bunch of morons.
(Sorry to rant so far OT, but my car ran out of gas on the way to the store tonight, and BP DOESN'T HAVE GAS CANS for loan, rent or buy; so I had to walk to Sheetz Fuel Mart in the rain and buy one. By the time I finally got to the store, it had just closed. What a night -- I'm such an idiot!)
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Because the geek:pleeb ratio has got to be in the 1:100 range!
Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker" ? Probably the best SF book I have ever read. Most of the ones high on the list that I have read I think were good, some very good and even excellent. But Star Maker is well .. in a league of its own. I can only presume its not on the list because no one knows it exists.
Just take a look at the reviews on Amazon.
Bitter and proud of it.
The average sci-fi readers aren't stupid, and know which books they'd enjoy so the best-seller walls aren't targetting that particular demographic.
Too Bad, so sad...They don't make it to the bestsellers lists because the human IQ numbers follow the gauss distribution. I could even go to argue that the _really_ best titles sell less that the dumbed down "sci-fi" titles like Neal Stephenson (spelling may be wrong) and the like.
But I think that at least some awards do make a great way to tell what are the good titles.
unfinished: (adj.)
er, some of best sci fi is actually reality now, so finding a fantastical story that has the *just right* blend of reality and future social implications seems that much harder.
the command line by Neal Stephenson is a nice example. You might want to print it out, its long.
Considering that new paper backs cost around $10 now, no wonder price is such an issue.
.
:) (err, but keep him away from the co$ wackos)
I do not even bother to look at the price of Hardbacks any more, they were ~$17 last time I checked (around ten years ago) so I can only imagine what they have gone up to since.
I have not bought a new (fiction) book in quite a few years, hell I can no longer AFFORD to buy new books. Especialy considering that it takes me all of two or three hours to finish a standard length novel. . .
I used to be able to tell people that buying a book was more bang for your buck then going to the movies, but now I am getting to be rather unsure about it. (of course I only go to $5 movie theaters so. . . . heh. I understand that some people go to expensive ones. ^_^ )
Books are getting to cost WAAAY to much, and the damnest thing is that every time they raise their prices their number of sales go down.
Hell last time I was buying new books I was going to buy 3 books but was instead only able to buy 2 because the books were $7 a piece.
So strange too, when buying the older classic science fiction books (which are a pain in the arse to get ahold of mind you. ^_^ ) paying $5 for a book that has a 25 cent price tag on its label, LOL!!!
Oh well, well worth it though! The Goldern Era Rocked, we so need to clone John Campell.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Pfui. Snow Crash. Neuromancer or almost anything else by Gibson. Many titles by Gregory Benford.
Hmm.. who's this "Pfui" book by? I've never heard of it.
**ducks**
You're probably right. But I can give an interesting counterexample. Andy Beyers, a Washington Post columnist, wrote a horse racing handicapping book called "Picking Winners". Basically, the book explains how to make "speed figures" that measures how fast a horse runs. It's not very complicated math (linear recursion, basic statistics). But the main topic of the whole book is math. He didn't figure many people would read it, but it became a bestseller that is still popular.
Probably many people who bought the book didn't understand it fully. But i bet the ratio is about the same as programmers who buy Knuth's books yet don't understand that math.
: Perhaps the general populace are "dull
: crayons" but that's because they're the
: colorful ones. The sharpest crayon in the
: box is always the white one...
And the dullest crayon is the black one.
Ok, fine. I doubt that will change. But wouldn't you agree that if it starts hitting bestseller lists, the authors might get paid more decently (Anne McCaffrey was halfway through her career before she could even manage to buy a modest house, and had to leave the United States because she couldn't afford to live here) and more people might be exposed to some good books?
Most of the shit coming out of Nashville isn't country music. It's the same manufactured crap that's on Top 40 stations except the singers have cowboy hats. Real country music has been relegated to 'alt-country' stations. I think Hank Williams III nailed it with this song:
DICK IN DIXIE
Well some say I'm not country
and that's just fine with me
Cause I don't wanna be country
with some faggot looking over at me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self destruct
But if you know what Im thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
Well I'm here to put the Dick in Dixie
and the cunt back in country
Cause the kind of country I hear now days
is a bunch of shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
Well they're losing all the outlaws
that had to stand their ground
And they're being replaced by these kids
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea
bout sorrow and woe
Cause they're all just too damn busy
kissin' ass on Music Row
Well I'm here to put the Dick in Dixie
and the cunt back in country
Cause the kind of country I hear nowdays
is a bunch of shit to me
And they say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
And if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I'll done learn you to criticize my English.
What's pathetic about my use of nonstandard American is that I've actually been paid to teach English, and have over 500 classroom hours of experience!
It is a proud and defiant ignorance allowed because the audience doesn't know better- they don't know of the SF books beyond the "Sword of Han Solo" serials on the NYTimes lists. The same reviewers would never review a modern comedy as "the tradition of Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin" or a mystery as "part of the long history from Poe to Doyle." i.e. if it is another genre they'll have at least a basic knowledge of it: for example, that westerns went from simple ("Indians bad") to complex, and that other countries (Japan, Italy) are part of cowboy movie history. They'll know that Elvis isn't modern rock and Martha Graham isn't cutting edge dance. But with SF they'll use 40 year old movies as their example (in turn based on 60 year old stories/ideas, as SF movies tend to be far behind the literature) without embarrassment.
So what- let them be ignorant, some could say. But when reviewers don't know about or ignore modern SF, it hurts more than some thin-skinned fandom:
So I'll be happy to see (what I assume are at least good sellers) books like Dozois' Best SF Stories of the Year and more showing up. Reviewers will have to first account for the writers like Ian McDonald, the rapidly approaching (and hope he pulls it off) Singularity Charlie Stross, and just intensely good Greg Egan, before they blow off SF as spaceship-westerns.
Alt-country is alternative music, for all intents and purposes-Wilco and Whiskeytown hav a lot more in common with Neil Young (the alternative-period Neil Young, of course) or Sonic Youth than Hank Williams. "New country" is the Garth Brook's, the Tim McGraw's-the pop-ified country that plays on VH1 all the time.
Science Fiction by L. Ron Hubbard is always a best-seller ... for the same reason that Britney Spears originally topped the charts - the Church of $cientology buys books from retailers and then sells them back, registering a sale. This is what record companies do to get up-and-comers into the charts.
The line between Science Fiction and Religious "Fact" is very thin in the CoS!!!
http://www.xenu.net
IIRC the books usually were those non-fiction business fad books (How to Drive Your Company to Just Unbelievable Success by Shouting Slogans at your Salesforce kinds of things).
:)
You're sure that wasn't just the Ballmer Effect? Let's face it, he has the money, the motive, he's exhibited the behaviour... he could well have OD'd on these types of books
deus does not exist but if he does
Come on editors. Why do you try to stop "free-like speech"?
You allow us on these boards (with full posting privelidges), but shut up the ones you truely dislike. Even Malda said effectively, that he doesnt give a shit about us. So why should we care if we bruise your status-quo?
What am I looking for? I'm looking for a decent conversation between some editors and us. If you don't like our statements (banner killers), then ask us to leave- IN THE THREAD. If you would give us some respect, I'd surely give you respect too. However, simply bitchslapping -1 on an interesting thread is just plain inane.
Hopefully, we can at least have a decent conversation here or AnimeFreak's diary.
Thanks,
Josh Crawley
That is so 60s.
Remember that "Sci Fi" was a term invented by some megacorp marketroid to sell lameass movies in the early 70s.
ah, yes- this reminds me of another branch of comments lower in this thread, concerning the bible. those who see it as a historical account have always left a bad taste in my mouth. a parable taken as fact is dangerous indeed- as is demonstrated by religion being the number one cause of international conflict, save for, of course, money. group them together and you have a bunch of people killing eachother for money whilst simultaniously preaching against greed and murder. cest la vie.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
Seems these lists are more a wish of what the book-sellers would LIKE to sell... a wish list. If I'm not mistaken, for the past 400 years it seems to me that the Bible in it's various forms has outsold every other book ever published.
Certainly not a read only once book... hardly good for the book sellers if it keeps getting read over and over and they can't sell a new one to the reader...
fwiw
"Sometimes you've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight" Bruce C0ckburn
Bear in mind that both the music single and box-office takings charts have been doing this for decades. The only reason the music charts were started was as a marketing tool: yet more proof (if it were needed) that the buying public are sheep.
This is stupid! Couldn't they donate such books to a library or something?? It's better than to just destroy the books. Anyone could enjoy the information that way.
One of the things i've noticed is that good authors are "packaged" as non-SF writers by their publishers to reach out to a wider audience.
Good example is Neal Stephenson whose _Cryptonomicon_ is sorta SF, but it is also sorta historical what with that parallel thread that shows WW2 and the Japanese gold. And even Stephenson's contemporary-near-future thread is more science-fact than SF.
I can only hope that SF will be released from its "ghetto" status and get the same respect as other genres. I'm skeptical, but hopeful.
This is more than just SF. Publishers have been criticized for only supporting blockbusters. And that focus causes them to do stupid things, like pay Hillary Clifton millions for a book that sells a few thousand copies. With better instrumentation, the value of mid-list titles may be enhanced. Let's hope someone other than rich white guy names (Clancy, King, etc.) will get good book deals. Of course, when The Rock can make the bestseller lists, I get really depressed.
Pfui. Snow Crash. Neuromancer or almost anything else by Gibson.
Snow Crash is by Neal Stephenson. Your statement makes it look Snow Crash was written by Gibson.
You never know though, it might just be my copy.
Adjusted for Inflation, Gone with the Wind is still #1. Titanic is #7.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/
My Journal
Dirk
Maybe one day the worm will turn, and the game will be up, but I think the cracks of doom will have opened and I'd be as cold as a stone before that happens - his plays are a dish fit for a God, and meat and drink for me.
Still, come what may, I'd advise you to learn of his contribution to English. All these phrases in bold are his. The language would be a sorry sight without him.
Cough. Now I know I'm probably in the minority here, but Gibson has to be the most overrated, talentless wannabe to enter the SF scene for years. Neuromancer was an art book, not SF, and not a particularly well written one at that. His other efforts have been equally uninspiring.
As for Benford, I lost all respect for him after his awful handling of "Beyond the fall of night". Clarke's original was a masterpiece, but Benford's sequel just highlighted the difference in class between the two. He has some good ideas at times, but can't seem to turn them into a good, readable story. On the other hand, his non-fiction science writing is actually very good.
This isn't intended to be flamebait. I'm just stunned that you've managed to single out two authors for praise that I'd have placed near the bottom of the pile. I guess there's no accounting for taste :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The case is not quite the same here in the UK.
The Sunday Times (free reg) regularly has sci-fi on their top 10 booklist for the week. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are practically permanent residents on the chart, and this week "Attack of the Clones" (R A Salvatore) tops the chart under Hardback fiction.
There are also reviews of fantasy books although the genre do seem to take a bit of a backseat in this area.
Many consider the Sunday Times pretty high brow here in the UK, but apparently they are recogninsing that S/F adn fantasy now is a BIG market.
-.sig sauer-
God bless America!
> I used to be able to tell people that buying a book was more bang for your buck then going to the movies
But at least you can buy books second hand. I've recently bought several sci-fi books from a local Amnesty International shop, and a few from Oxfam.
Mostly £1.50 (a bit over $2) or less. (I do buy new books too, and sometimes buy old ones at second hand shops/stalls, and also use the library a lot.)
(Ok, you can buy second hand videos and DVDs too, but that's not the same as going to the movies).
rant
Maybe I am being thick or British or both, but how did the Night's Dawn Trilogy not appear on your bestsellers? If your bestsellers aren't the books that sell best, what criteria have you been using? And raw unadulterated charts might not be that interesting. Rather than Bibles and Shakespeare, you are just as likely to find dull government documents that create high sales simply by virtue of the material they cover. For example UK booksellers frequently hum and hah over whether to include the Highway Code (does what it says on the tin) and mandatory school curricula that are 'bestsellers' on the list.
I think scifi books are likely to be edged out by romances...
I thought it was excellent. Gave a good view of Imperial politics and furthered the character development. Consider the changes in Bury from Mote to Hand.
Best Slashdot Co
you forgot step 4, Repeat. Like with the movie Battlefeild Earth, where they were told that they needed to go see it three times, you'll have $cientoligists buying one of these books every week or so and shipping them back to be sold again.
Xaotik Designs
Remember what Theodore Sturgeon said about sci-fi...90 per cent of sci-fi is crap because 90 per cent of everything is crap. I think he lowballed it but that's just me.
At any rate, a quick scan of the NY Times Bestseller List shows that:
Hardcover Fiction
#2 ST: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones
Hardcover Nonfiction
#6 The Art of Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones
Children's Books
#1 STAR WARS: EPISODE 2 -- ATTACK OF THE CLONES
#8 ATTACK OF THE CLONES MOVIE STORYBOOK
#10 ATTACK OF THE CLONES SCRAPBOOK
Children's Chapter
#7 BOBA FETT: THE FIGHT TO SURVIVE
Paperback Fiction
#32 THE NEW JEDI ORDER: REBEL DREAM
Paperback Nonfiction
#11 STAR WARS: THE NEW ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CHARACTERS
I would have put the Potter books up but they aren't sci-fi...so...a quick glace would suggest there is sci-fi on the best seller lists but it's all stuff that makes George Lucas a couple more dollars.
Frankly, most sci-fi today sucks anyway...I stopped reading years ago. The golden age of sci-fi was amazing...today's stuff is bust plain boring.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
They may not be the best cross-section of book sales as they represent just internet sales, but I'd guess they at least do that well.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
..that I had to scroll down so far to find this comment. I've really *tried* to like a lot of scifi books, but I've found that many of them are really bad. Characters with all the development and depth of cardboard, too many deus ex machina situations and good versus bad settings with all the complexity of a 3rd grade cops-n-robbers game.
Even the ones I thought were really good (Martian Chronicles, Philip K. Dick shorts, the early Gibson books) weren't that good relative to "real" literature -- Dick's shorts are merely clever next to Raymond Carver or Richard Ford. Some of the early Gibson books often veer into the metaphysical masturbation I'd expect from an engineering student who just showed up at liberal arts classes instead of paying attention.
I think scifi books probably expend too much energy on the scifi aspect or fall back on it too much as a crutch to carry their narratives. Straight lit books don't have that to fall back on, so character development, complex morality and so on become more important and more interesting.
And not that there aren't shit lit books printed by the trainload, either, but I think the "scifi reader community" will read damn near anything and everything ("I just finished I.M. Tedious' 87 part Nebula series. I can't wait to read all 49 parts of the Galaxy series.") and the publishers need to keep the production line full. When you value quantity like that, well, quality comes in second.
The traditional lit community tends to prize editorial and critical acclaim a little more and books that are "bad" in this realm just don't get read in the volume that "bad" scifi does.
It's ironic that the Washington Post published this article. A couple of years ago, they had an online survey for favorite romance books. Each voter would email their 10 favorite romance books to their romance reviewer. He unilaterally dropped the a romance/SF book, A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, when it was receiving the most votes of any book.
Yes, one member of the Bujold fan list did post an email suggesting that Bujold fans write to the survey, but so did members of the Georgette Heyer fan list. If you are going to publish a survey, you shouldn't throw out results that don't match your prejudiced notions.
I'm not sure how useful bestsellers stats are for readers. My agent keeps pounding into me that word of mouth is your best advertising medium, and I've come to believe him. In fact, I think I value the recommendations of friends much higher than some page or TV spot telling me what I'll like. As a writer, I feel that my books are my best advertising, and my readers are my best advertising reps. That said, a big problem with being a novelist these days is that the publishers hold sales data very close to their chests. It's almost impossible for us lowly scribes to get any sales numbers, not at least for a year or two after the book comes out... so for us, an objective third-party measure of our success could be very useful in making critical career decisions--such as, I _think_ my latest book's a hit; should I quit my job to write full time now?
The problem is, many books are liked by some and disliked by others, sometimes with vivid intensity on both sides. Take A Game of Thrones, #1 on that list. I utterly hated it, even though it was well-written, and wished I had never picked it up, because the good parts were buried in 800 pages of tedious side plots and futility.
I've found that Amazon reviews are almost always skewed towards the positive, because of the way their review system works. The negative reviews wind up buried 5 pages down, and they're still swamped by all the idiots saying "best book ever." Of course, Amazon is in the business of selling books, and thus has little incentive to provide negative reviews.
What I want to find out is something like "you'll like this if" but "you won't like this if." I haven't found such a site yet.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'd like to agree. After all, my taste is clearly not mainstream in other areas. However what else can I go on?
Sure, I know from expirence that if the name Andre Norton appears on the book, I can buy it, but that is getting overused and I've bought a few duds with that name. Now that I own the book, it sits on my bookshelf, and is never read.
What I want is a foolproof system that next time I walk into a bookstore will point out "You will like this book. You will hate this book, but read it anyway cause everyone else loves it. Don't waste you time on this one. Look for this one in the library, you won't like it enough to pay for it"... However there is no such system.
I love to read. I hate reading bad books. I hate spending money on a book that I might or might not like, becuase once I read it I can't take it back (I suppose I could, but that is immoral)
People turn to [the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post] for certain information and turn away from them [toward other outlets] for other information.
Except the average Post reader doesn't know that the other outlets exist, therefore the other information doesn't exist, therefore popular SF doesn't exist.
The trick in life is to find people whos opinions you respect and share recommendations.
And it remains tricky, even in the age of the internet, to locate coverage of alternative viewpoints.
But it's this exact role that makes me hope these outlets carry both types of lists. One that is biased only by actual sales figures and another that is biased by their editorial bent... both are valuable to me, and side-by-side they are more valuable together.
I agree completely. (By "unbiased" I think I actually meant "biased by only straightforward objective statistics.") I just wonder how the average consumer can discover sources of information with different editorial bents.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's not weighted in it's ranking, and it's sample is woefully non-diverse. Books with less than 100 votes can easily outrank books thousands have read and liked. Books that are heavily marketed or are parts of series not yet completed are more likely to be on the list than a measure of their "absolute" quality might otherwise dictate, simply because they are the topic of more discussion (and a good start can often lead a reader to base their judgement on their own speculation of how good the series as a whole might be...speculation which is rarely borne out satisfactorily, IMNSHO).
The only way I've found to find out what books are almost certainly going to be a good read is to join a dedicated forum to that genre, determine which participants have similar tastes to your own, and then find out what they've read and liked that you've read and liked. So far it's served me very well.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
I think the best best-seller list is at the USA Today. Instead of only tracking select books -- as the NY Times does -- the USA Today list actually tracks scanned sales from some of the country's largest book stores, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Waldenbooks, Wal-Mart (ugh), Borders, and more. (The complete list is on the bottom of the page I've linked to.)
Anyway, it's an interesting list -- especially if you compare it to the NY Times list. Star Wars is #1 and #13 (a children's version, I guess), and Spider-Man is #32.
-- Hobbits suck!
So I'm just cruisin' the NYT bestseller lists, to see how accurate this is.
Hardback fiction:
#2 - Star Wars 2
#25 - Diplomatic Immunity (Lois Bujold)
2 Star Wars books on the paperback fiction list, too.
Maybe, just maybe, individual SF titles are still a relatively niche market. Naaah. That'd actually mesh with the facts.
They were what came to mind first. I was really arguing against the parent post, which asserted that Asimov, Herbert, etc. had said all there was to be said in SF and there was no point in reading any more recent works. I agree that in some ways Gibson is over-rated, but I meant that his perspective is much different from that of the previous generation. Similarly, I am amazed at how uneven Benford's stuff is; I think the good is very good but he did put out some unreadable crap.
Used books have gone up in price too. It seems only 5 years ago I was able to pick up used books for $.50 a piece...now they are $3 a piece. The one thing I know is that the number of reads per book is going up. I get with friends and we buy only one book...while in the past we would all buy and keep the books we read.
It is strange that there has been such inflation in book prices when printing and publishing costs had fallen through the floor.
For what it's worth, science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction regularly appears on the bestseller lists in the UK.
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E.g. at the Times this week [1] I see books by Steven King and David Gemmel, Star Wars Episode II.
I don't know whether that's because people in the UK have wider reading habits, or whether it's because the list is less subject to political coruption, for example. The UK music charts sometimes have a classical work, such as Gorcki's 3rd symphony or (less recently) the pie Jesu from Lloyd Webber's Requiem, which was number 1 in the singles charts for several weeks.
Or maybe it's because there's only 20% of the population of the US, so there's less flattening to mediocrity, I don't know.
[1] www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,264-289569,00.ht
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Which authors would you put near the top of the pile? I'd say Gibson as one of the better ones, and you certainly can't call him a wannabe by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll certainly grant that (a) his books could be called "art books" and (b) after Neuromancer and a couple of others around that time, the subsequent ones just milked his arty formula, but not quite as well. But frankly, I haven't read a whole lot of SF authors lately that I would rank a heck of a lot higher.
Yep, I wholeheartedly agree with that. A lot of it, I suspect, stems from the fact that he has no scientific background, in direct contrast to the big names of the past. Some claim that gives him a freedom to write about things that others don't have. My personal view is that people use it as an excuse for his vague and sloppy handling of technology. I certainly don't think it improves his writing, and I think others with the same persepctive handle things much better. Just to pick an obscure one out of the blue, Katharine Kerr's "Polar City Blues" is a frequently underrated example. Perhaps not as hardcore as Gibson, but a far better book.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Wow, it's a good thing you saw this movie, or you'd never know how the world really works! Good christ, please tell me this was a joke.
Because at least 90% of it, and probably more of it sucks rocks.
Wow... here here! I support you, brother!
Fuck, even OSS is against Slashdot. What does that tell you?
There is plenty of good recent SF. I read tons of SF and recently compiled a list of authors for a friend who wanted reading recommendations. I like hard SF best, including space operas and military SF, but also like GOOD fantasy. Here is the list (alphabetical). If you can't find any books you like from these writers, you don't like SF, IMHO. Kevin J. Anderson Poul Anderson Patricia Anthony Isaac Asimov Robert Asprin Kage Baker Iain M. Banks John Barnes William Barton Greg Bear Gregory Benford Ben Bova David Brin John Brunner Lois McMaster Bujold Chris Bunch Orson Scott Card Jeffrey A. Carver Jack L. Chalker C. J. Cherryh Arthur C. Clarke John Dalmas Philip K. Dick Gordon R. Dickson William C. Dietz Stephen R. Donaldson David Drake George Alec Effinger David Feintuch Alan Dean Foster Robert Frezza William Gibson Peter F. Hamilton Robert A. Heinlein Frank Herbert James P. Hogan Nancy Kress Henry Kuttner Keith Laumer Fritz Leiber Ursala K. LeGuin Paul Levinson Ian MacDonald Ken MacLeod Susan R. Matthews Julian May Anne McCaffrey Jack McDevitt L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Elizabeth Moon Larry Niven H. Beam Piper Frederik Pohl Terry Pratchett Mike Resnick Kim Stanley Robinson Fred Saberhagen Robert J. Sawyer James H. Schmitz Charles Sheffield Robert Silverberg Dan Simmons Norman Spinrad Allan Steele S. M. Stirling Sheri S. Tepper George Turner Harry Turtledove John Varley S. I. Viehl Vernor Vinge David Weber James White Connie Willis David Wingrove Timothy Zahn Sarah Zettel
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment â" Buddha