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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.
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
WTF?
Clearly you have not read a really good book in a long time. I highly recommend hooking up with some intelligent, well-rounded, non-SF readers and finding out what they've read and giving it a shot. For many years I had time only for trade journals and tech books; recently I went back to real literature and have found it much, much more interesting than nearly all SF or fantasy I have read since the Tolkein/Asimov days.
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...
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
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).
If they adjust downward for theft the Bible won't make it.
When I was a lowly bookseller at a big national chain, *cough* Borders *cough*, one of the most heavily shop-lifted sections of the store was the christian Bible section.
Sweet, sweet irony...
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.
Adjusted for Inflation, Gone with the Wind is still #1. Titanic is #7.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/
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