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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.
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....
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?
In Hardcover?
Mind you, I've never bought a harlequin novel, but I always assumed they went straight to paperback.
Now, most Sci Fi is sold in paperback, as well, but my belief is that it'll make more of an impact on the hardcover sales than romance novels, and I assume that these best seller lists will still be hardcover only.
Incidentally, I'm not hugely pleased by the emergence of the new, better marketing of music. I worry that accurate figures will drive the publishing industry to be (more) driven by marketing research. Does this mean that I think that culture-distributors should not have access to the information they need to make smart sales decisions? Well, they will only use that knowledge to do evil, so yes.
Of course, Garth Brooks contaminates the radio, and N'Sync has taken away my MTV. No-one forces you to read tripe, but if this sales data causes someone to decide that C-SPAN's book-TV is a commercially valuable resource... well, that'd be too bad.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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
Wasn't "The Gripping Hand" by Niven and Pournelle on the best seller list when it came out?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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...
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?
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.
It might be interesting to see how the Bible holds up (or doesn't hold up) against sci-fi and other titles among American retail bookstores.
The Harry Potter books are a good example of the NYT's biases, in fact. You see, Rowling was taking up "too many slots" on the NYT Best-Sellers list, so they suddenly decided that they really needed a separate list for childrens' books (apparently to keep fantasy cooties away from the "good stuff").
This despite the fact that the Harry Potter books sell to adults as well as children.
Dare we even mention the proliferation of used books being sold? Will those get tracked? Do used records get tracked? I'd say that about 1:20th of my book collection are from the used books store. I generally take chances with new authors that way.
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
Monitoring online activity, though, necessarily involves knowing where the endpoints of the transmission are. So it's a matter of surveillance almost by definition. And I can find out a lot about you by tracking where you go even if I don't know the specifics of what data you've downloaded. But I can tell a lot less about where a book goes after a sale no matter how much I know about its contents.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
I don't know if you noticed, but other than the brief intro to establish character, the OP stayed on-topic. Not only that, but the post was pretty perceptive, IMHO. I don't see any sign of troll.
I think this is a classic case of judging a book by its cover. Unfortunately, it appears the moderators have chosen to follow your "advice." Just because this poster, assuming "Elton John" isn't his real name, had the imagination to choose a nickname other than his real name (like did CmdrTaco, et al, and unlike you, apparently), is no reason to distrust his opinion.
Apologies for the heat, but I hate to see non-trolls modded as such, when there are so many more deserving of it. And apologies to the moderators for this offtopic post. You can mod it down, I just want Mr. Brewer to read and consider it. Thanks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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).
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
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.
I second that, the Hyperion Cantos is awesome, my favorite series of all the Sci Fi I've read (which is a lot), it's too bad all Mr. Simmons writes anymore is thrillers and horror.
I highly reccomend actually reading the bible.
It's got some pretty strange shit, like a race of giants having children with earthly women.
And Jesus didn't exactly advocate the American Suburban life.
I'm not saying you should take it as God's word or anything, but it's pretty interesting. Especially if you can find an edition that includes the non-canonical books.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Adjusted for Inflation, Gone with the Wind is still #1. Titanic is #7.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/
My Journal
I highly reccomend actually reading the bible.
Seconded.
It's got some pretty strange shit, like a race of giants having children with earthly women.
Some parts do read like a fantasy or a sci-fi. There's a reason for this. It's what they are.
Credentials check: Father is a minister, also an active academic who does his scriptural study in the original languages, hence I've grown up with a reasonable appreciation of hebraic culture and history, etc.
The Torah and what is now (since the ecumenical councils of Rome and Ephesus in the fourth century) known as the Apocrypha were written down based on fixed-form oral tradition (this is fundamentally different from fluid-form oral tradition). The stories were told for a reason. They were designed to show the world to people from a usefull perspective, rather than an obvious one. This is much the same as the purpose of satire in modern society (cf. Mr. Pratchett) but lacks the ridicule element of a good satire. It's more, in fact, like Aesop's fables and the stories in the Mabinogion. Interesting, memorable, dramatic stories which have a very simple point, such as 'Pork doesn't keep well in a desert' and 'If you screw your brother's wife, keep a good eye out for flying spears'.
They get deeper and more interesting than that, but this is basically what it boils down to. They're a combination of mythology and history, and should be read as such. If you read the biblical books as primary historical sources, then it is quite easy to synthesise them using the standard techniques of history 101. If you view them as being word-for-word literal truth, you haven't done your homework.
And Jesus didn't exactly advocate the American Suburban life.
Too right. Jesus advocated some dead basic principles; look after your own problems before having a good judge-session; be nice to people, it'll come back and haunt you otherwise; once physical needs are satisfied, luxury can be good but not at the expense of spiritual/emotional needs; that kind of thing.
/rant.
~cHrisNote: I have no source for this.
AFAICR, the decision to make a new 'Children's Best Seller' list by the NYT was not because the Harry Potter series (and specifically, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) were fantasy. It was because they were childrens'. No children's book had ever been number 1 on the NYT best seller list. They were proud of this. They looked at the figures. They realized suddenly that in a week's time they were going to have to publish a best-seller list where number 1 and number 2 were both a children's book. They changed the rules.
As I said, this is as far as I can recall, not 'truth' as such. Anyone confirm/deny?
~cHrisEllison seems to be one of the biggest producers of flame-bait in the genre. As another poster can tell you, his "other works" include plenty of rudeness and funky opinions. I'll tell you a story about him -- most of you probably won't know it.
Once upon a time, Harlan lived in NYC and shared an apartment with another guy who I will call "B." (I forget his name, and no, it wasn't me
Anyway, at one point both of them were out of town at a Con of some sort, and they got into an argument about the identity of the musicians on a particular album. They then made a bet (which would be paid when they both got home to check what it said on the back of the cover), that the loser would forfeit his entire music collection to the winner.
Harlan got home first and discovered that he had lost! His solution was to print up a forgery of the offending album cover with just the necessary details changed and glue it over the original. When B. got home (and quickly discovered the trickery), a fight ensued.
Harlan pulled out a pistol and shot up the place. Eventually the cops came and dragged them both off to jail. Friends of B. came and posted his bond rather quickly, but Harlan was left there for about 4 more days. Nobody liked the guy enough to get him out of jail!