Brian Thornton wrote:
> No offense, Charles, and if I'm out of line
here,
> feel free to disregard this missive, but I
find
> this passage somewhat troubling:
>
> "I can tell you, though, that many people
don't
> agree with you. Literally every week I get
e-mail
> messages from people complimenting TWO FOR
THE
> MONEY and asking us to reprint more of the
novels
> in the Nolan series -- and we certainly don't
get
> messages like that in response to every title
we
> publish."
>
> It just doesn't sound like a discussion we
ought
> to be having on RARA AVIS. I have two Hard
Case
> Crime editions in my massive TBR list, Al
> Guthrie's KISS HER GOODBYE and
Stansberry's
> CONFESSION, and I was considering commenting
on
> one or both of them here once I had finished
them,
> since RARA AVIS is the place for
discussing
> HB/Noir fiction. Now I'm not so sure.
I hope you will read those books and will feel free to
comment on them -- here or elsewhere -- whether you like the
books or not. I apologize if my comments made it sound like I
was trying to stifle discussion. All I wanted to do was
balance a set of negative statements that I believe to
represent an atypical reaction to the book with information
on the other side -- entirely in the spirit of the sort of
spirited discussion that you endorsed later in your original
message.
In a subsequent message, you clarified that you were making a
slightly different point, which is that it's awkward when an
author defends his own book (not what happened here) or when
a publisher defends its own book (precisely what happened
here), since critics might then feel uncomfortable speaking
out. I think this point has merit, and I'm sorry it didn't
occur to me before I sent my message. For the record, let me
say this: I welcome comments on any book we publish (or for
that matter any book I write), positive or negative. In the
last month, I've gotten mail from people saying that PLUNDER
OF THE SUN is the worst book we've published and that PLUNDER
OF THE SUN is the best book we've published; same with
BRANDED WOMAN, which one correspondent called "very
underwhelming" while other correspondents called it
everything ranging from "fun" to "brilliant." I welcome all
of these comments. Obviously I'm happier when I learn that
our work has pleased a reader than when someone tells me he
or she was disappointed, but I want to know what people
honestly think. How will we ever improve if we don't welcome
criticism?
Another point you made is that it's inappropriate to refer to
the
*number* of people who have written in to tell us they liked
TWO FOR THE MONEY, asking (very reasonably) whether the huge
number of people who like a given book (for instance, THE DA
VINCI CODE) means you should read it or shouldn't criticize
it. Clearly the answer is no. But at the same time, is it
really meaningless for me to point out that, for instance, of
the dozen or so people who have written to us about BRANDED
WOMAN all but one have enjoyed the book and only one has not?
I would think that this is a useful piece of information for
someone to know if he's trying to decide whether or not to
read the book. Note that I did not say "A lot of people have
bought this book; therefore it is good" -- what I said was
something more like "A lot of people have told us this book
has given them pleasure, so your comment that it did not give
you pleasure seems atypical rather than typical." The former
strikes me as the sort of argument-from-the- numbers that you
rightly despise; the latter, though, strikes me as perfectly
reasonable for a literary discussion list, seeing as how it's
basically just a more efficient version of, say, a dozen
separate messages saying "Well, you may not have though this
book was much good, but I did."
Modulo, of course, the question of trustworthiness. While I
would never misrepresent the facts of a case like this, the
fact that I have an obvious bias makes a certain amount of
cynicism on this point entirely understandable. For this
reason I agree it's better to let the dozen supporters write
in one by one if they will than for me to report their
comments to you in aggregate form.
Bottom line: If you read one of our books and hate it, by all
means say so -- and if you want to try to persuade other
people that it's bad, more power to you. That's the stuff of
good debates, and I'm delighted to see it. To the extent that
I disagree, I will feel free to voice my opinions -- but I'll
try to confine my comments to my own opinions and to matters
of literary, rather that economic, merit.
Which brings us to the question of whether "popular" equals
"good." While I do know some businesspeople who would say yes
and mount a spirited defense of their point of view, my
answer is no. Popularity and quality sometimes coincide, but
more often they don't and they're certainly not the same
thing.
At Hard Case Crime, our goal is to publish good books. We
would like these good books also to become popular -- but we
will never publish a book we don't believe is good solely
because we believe it is likely to be popular. Life's too
short and integrity too dear.
With this in mind, I hereby note that the following comment
from a message earlier in this thread misstates our
motives:
> Not that I'm blaming HardCase for
reprinting
> them, I understand Collins's draw as a
name.
We didn't reprint BAIT MONEY and BLOOD MONEY as TWO FOR THE
MONEY because Collins's name is "a draw." We reprinted them
because I love them and wanted to share that pleasure with
other readers. It's as simple as that.
In one of the last messages in the thread (so far) Mark
asked, "So how are they chosen?...For instance, the cover of
Branded Woman
(which I am currently enjoying) notes that it's by the same
author as Touch of Evil and Plunder of the Sun (which I also
enjoyed immensely) is blurbed as from the author of To Catch
a Thief. So why those two books and not the ones the movies
were based on? Or why that Al Colby book by David Dodge and
not the first in the series?"
The answer is that I didn't like the other Al Colby books
when I read them; PLUNDER OF THE SUN is the only one I felt
holds up well after more than half a century. As for why we
didn't reprint TOUCH OF EVIL and TO CATCH A THIEF, I thought
that, other things being equal, it would be more fun to
introduce readers to books they'd never heard of than to
re-introduce them to stories they thought they knew.
Best, Charles
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