Eric wrote:
> Maybe they (Harlequin) were marketing to people who buy books because of the covers. Don't laugh. They are out there. Sad but true.
Sheesh. You'll hurt Charles' feelings. And expose all of HardCase Crime's carefully guarded business secrets.
But I'll bet there's more than one person on this list who's bought a book simply because of the cover. I know I have.
Still, the truth is, a lot of those great pulp cover artists did great covers for lousy books and stories. Anyone who thinks the pulps and the subsequent pulp fiction paperbacks were pure literary gold has never tried to read anything beyond the A list -- even in their absolute prime, BLACK MASK, DIME DETECTIVE, Gold Medal et al all published a lot of turkeys -- horrid, inept filler that not even the charms of nostalgia can save. The racist, misogynist, homophobic crap and general ignorance were the least of their problems. The only saving grace of a lot of these books and stories was their covers.
That HardCaseCrime has managed such a high score of great covers AND great reads is a testament to their vision and editorial true grit. Like, this new guy they're touting, A.C. Doyle guy, is going places.
Mark my words.
Kevin Burton Smith
Editor/Founder
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
"Wasting your time on the web since 1998."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Dec 2009 EST