> I recently asked Ed Gorman about the
> > revival of the Black Lizard series to which he
basically answered,
not
> > as far as he was aware of. He went on to bemoan
the fact that his
own
> > company had tried to reissue similar material
& couldn't even sell
500
> > copies.
>
> Rene, could you expand on this? Did Ed say why, what
the problems
were?
>
> Brad
>
No, he didn't really elaborate beyond saying that people just
didn't want to read them. My opinion, for what it's worth, is
that it's a distribution & marketing issue. I don't think
very many people have heard of Five Star books - I'm only
aware of them, & only vaguely so, because Ron Clinton (I
think) has plugged them on the list here. Also, these books
are in hardback which I know would put a lot of people off
buying them - it certainly doesn't make me jump right out
& buy them, even if they were available where I live.
Another problem is that, as good as these books probably are,
many of the authors are a little obscure, even by HB authors'
standards - meaning that they don't have the same sort of
cachet (right word?) that books such as "Black Wings" &
authors such as the Gold Medal writers have
. There must be some sort of market out there, who the fudge
is buying these pricey trade pb's by people such as Goodis,
McCoy etc that the
"boutique" publishers are putting out, or the several "pulp"
anthologies that Ed Gorman & companeros put out.
According to the publisher, "The Mammoth Book of Pulp
Fiction" sold very well, which is why they've put out "The
Mammoth Book of Pulp Action". It seems to me that 2 very
successful marketing strategies have been using the term
"pulp fiction"
(because of the Tarantino movie, is my feeling) liberally
& also tying in these books with film versions (which I
think could be extended to books that have no movies made
from them - a good example would be the 1970's Penguin ed's
of Raymond Chandler books which featured stills from old
films noir that had been coloured in on all the books, not
just those with film versions. Nice covers, too). And,
finally, another possible problem is the generic name of the
publisher - try doing a search on ABE or any other on-line
2nd hand books site & you'll find yourself swamped with I
don't know how many different publishers, which would make it
very difficult to even find these books (I forgot what
happened when I did this at Amazon. I don't think I found
much of anything). I did discover another Five Star of
interest - a UK pb publisher in the 1970's who reprinted a
lot of Gold Medal stuff (I actually have Peter Rabe's "Benny
Muscles In" from these guys). This goes to show how many
publishers have used this name - what are the odds on 2
totally different co's with the same name putting out noir
material? Needless to say, I didn't give Ed Gorman the
benefit of my brilliance as I didn't think he'd take kindly
to some goose with no publishing experience presuming to tell
him where he's going wrong in a game he's been in for years.
All the same, it's what I think. It's not that I think this
stuff is mass market material (yet; I wouldn't rule it out
completely some time in the future) but I find it impossible
to believe that you couldn't sell 500 copies of a revived
Black Lizard title, for example, with the right
marketing.Anyhow Brad, I'm sorry I couldn't really answer
your question but instead had to substitute
speculations.
(And thanks, Ron. I didn't get back to you because I assumed
you would have seen Ed's response on his bulletin board, as
you did).
Rene
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