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this crazy business

Posted: May 13th, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: books | Comments Off on this crazy business

Today’s New York Times has an excellent article about the unpredictability of the book business. The most interesting thing I take away from it is the complete lack of customer research in mainstream publishing, which is in part justified by the nature of the product, how no two books are the same, as much as Joe Schmoe Publishing might want to convince me that their latest offering is “just like Harry Potter.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep is used as an example throughout the article. I read the book and can appreciate that she is a good writer, but I really didn’t enjoy the story or the characters and found the ending depressing and unsatisfying. The article touched on the offbeat promotional campaign used to sell this book, but noted that no one is certain what exactly it was that rocketed this book to the success that it enjoyed. It then reported on the disappointing sales of Sittenfeld’s sophomore effort, The Man of My Dreams, which, for the record, I also read and found it to be ultimately disappointing, although better than Prep, in my opinion. I have to wonder how many other Prep readers, like me, were drawn in by the hype, stuck with the book hoping it would get better, and were ultimately disappointed, and, unlike me, skipped the next one.


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