pulp fiction | CW Hawes

The Indie Movement

In December 2012 I bought my first book by an indie author. The book was The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker. I was favorably impressed. So much so, I went on and bought the series.

From there, I discovered other indie authors who were very good writers. And somewhere in the reading of those authors, my choice of authors shifted from traditionally published to a majority being indie published.

The independent author/publisher movement confirmed all the stories I’d heard for decades — that the big corporate publishers rejected thousands of good manuscripts every year.

Why do they do that? Because big corporations are by nature conservative. Sure they had to take risks to get to be big. That’s when they’re innovative — when they’re small. But once a corporation is huge, they become much more concerned about the bottom line. And innovation takes a back seat to profits.

Random House/Penguin and their behemoth German owners, aren’t going to take the risks that small press publishers might (although even those can be quite conservative). There is always risk with business. More fail than succeed. So the successful eventually begin to conserve their gains. That’s just how it is.

The sole entrepreneur, however, has only himself to be concerned about.

If I self-publish a book and it doesn’t make money, that only affects me.

If Macmillan (now a German company) publishes a flop, they are out the advance to the author, the salaries of the acquisition editors, the copy editors, the advertising people, the office rent, the cover artist salaries, the warehouse space, etc, etc. And the shareholders don’t get their dividends — which puts the CEO’s job at risk. And that’s something that just isn’t tolerated.

If I publish a book that goes nowhere, I can leave it on Amazon, and Kobo, and Apple, and wherever else I choose, essentially forever. And let the royalties dribble in. Simon and Schuster (owned by ViacomCBS) can’t afford to do that.

Thus you see the big corporate boys declaring for many years now that vampires are dead. But on the indie scene, dozens upon dozens of those bloodsuckers can be found. And some are making their creators a lot of money.

The big boys don’t want to continue a fad because they don’t want to be left holding the bag when the fad fizzles out. Or can no longer make enough money to meet their bloated bottom lines when the fad tapers off.

What is significant is that James Patterson has now discovered money can be made at the indie price point and has convinced his publisher to take on his BookShots line. The blurb on Patterson’s website reads in part:

Life moves fast—books should too. Pulse-pounding reads under $5 and 150 pages or less. Impossible to put down.

This comes at a time when many indies are moving to longer books and higher prices — in an attempt to look like the big corporate publishers, and thereby make themselves look more legitimate. A bad move, in my opinion.

Patterson, though, realizes money can be made for him and his publisher at the indie price point. And with shorter books. This is truly a return to the ethos of the 1950s. And I think forecasts good things for indies who can, for the most part, turn out shorter works faster.

Back in the pulp magazine era, many of the magazines cost a dime. Today, depending on what standard you use, that dime would be equal to anywhere between $1.50 and $6. In the 1950s, paperback books could be bought for a quarter. Or $2.50 to $4 in today’s money. Essentially the price range of most indie books today.

I’ve said for quite awhile now, that the indie movement is essentially a return to the Pulp Fiction Era. To be successful, a writer has to turn out a good story in a popular genre that is exciting and generally fast-paced. The writer must also write lots and publish often. To be sure, as an indie, there are more factors involved than what faced the average pulp fictioneer, because today’s indie author is also a publisher. But the basic formula remains the same.

Today is a good day to be a writer. A self-published writer. An independent author/publisher. It’s also a good day to be a reader, because there are many excellent self-published books available to read.

Thars gold in them thar books! So get crackin’!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading! (and writing!)

Share This!

H Bedford-Jones

H Bedford-Jones was one of the most prolific writers of his era. His only rival was the equally prolific Fredrick Faust (aka Max Brand).

During his 40 year career, HBJ sold 231 novels, 21 novellas, 372 novelettes, and 748 short stories — more, or less. We write “more, or less” because HBJ used so many pen names it is difficult to pin down with exactness everything he wrote and got published.

After his death, however, his name, along with those of many of his fellow pulp fictioneers, faded into oblivion.

Thankfully, the renewed interest in the fiction of the pulp era is restoring the reputations of the many fabulous writers that era produced.

Consequently, we can now find many of H Bedford-Jones’s works back in print.

One of the most enjoyable books I read last year was HBJ’s lost race novel The Buddha’s Elephant, published in 1916 in All Around Magazine, under his Allan Hawkwood byline. The book is a rousing adventure yarn that is thrilling and suspenseful.

HBJ, because of his prolificity, was dubbed “The King of the Pulps”. His prolificity also earned him during the 1920s $60,000 to $100,000 per year. Which in today’s money would be equal to a few million dollars in purchasing power.

What was the key to his prolificity, and the key to his popularity? Let’s take a look at each in turn and see if we can’t find some clues.

Prolificity

What I’ve gleaned from HBJ’s book This Fiction Business and from information in King of the Pulps: the life and writings of H Bedford-Jones by Ruben, Richardson, and Berch, HBJ viewed writing as a job. In fact, it was his job. He had no other source of income. Writing was it. Consequently, if he wanted to eat, he had to write.

HBJ was not a good record keeper. One of the reasons why we aren’t sure what his total output actually was.

The estimate is that HBJ wrote at least 25 million words in his 40 year career. That means he wrote on average 625,000 words or more per year, or about 1712 words per day at a minimum.

On a good day, I can write those 1712 words in an hour and a half. However, HBJ advised writers to work 4 to 5 hours a day at just writing, and the rest of the work day reading or studying. He limited writing to four or five hours, because writing is exhausting work, and he felt we should protect ourselves from exhaustion.

My guess is that HBJ wrote far more than 1712 words in a day, at least up until a heart attack left him in poor health. In fact, he advised writers to write between 5,000 and 10,000 words per day.

Nevertheless, if you start at age 25 writing 1712 words per day — you will have your 25 million words by the time you are 65. The same as HBJ.

Another key to HBJ’s prolificity was that he did not let writer’s block get in his way. He had four typewriters loaded with stories in progress. If he got stuck on one, he just moved over to another machine.

I do the same thing and I can tell you — it works!

HBJ also wrote in series. Doing so speeds production because you don’t need to think about scene or setting. The world of the story is set — just start writing.

Popularity

In his day HBJ was exceedingly popular. What was the key to his success?

It lay in avoiding what HBJ called The Deadly Sin. That is, “The lack of perception as to what must be emphasized…”.

How does this lack of perception manifest itself? By not letting the reader follow and share the emotions of the hero in detail. By skimming over the crucial conflicts — by not sharing the details of the hero’s thoughts and feelings with the reader. To quote HBJ:

The reader wants the situation prolonged in proportion to its bigness, or at least emphasized: even though it passes in a moment’s time.

Let the reader share in the agonies and the ecstasies of the hero. Don’t gloss over them.

I recently read three books by a writer who is very high up on the Amazon charts. I read them because even though they were loaded with PC pandering (which I don’t like), he didn’t commit The Deadly Sin.

And neither did HBJ.

Therefore, I got to experience the ups and downs the main character experienced in both writer’s books.

Lessons Learned

H Bedford-Jones was a giant among the writers of his day. He was prolific and he was popular.

So what can this man who died in 1949 teach us today about This Fiction Business? I think it is two-fold:

- Plant butt in chair and write. Write like your supper depends on it. 5000 to 10,000 words per day needs to be your goal, according to HBJ.
- Don’t cheat your readers. Let them freely and fully experience the main character’s emotions. Give the reader a powerful vicarious experience.

H Bedford-Jones should be on every writer’s reading list. If you want to be a successful writer, he is a fine exemplar to follow.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Men’s Fiction Revisited

A knowledge and understanding of history gives a person a depth of perception that is noticeably missing from those who are only savvy with current events.

There was a time when men had fiction that catered to them, catered to the things that men find interesting. Today, though, this isn’t so much the case. Yes, a man can find contemporary novels and stories written with a male audience in mind. However, in my experience, they are few and far between.

Some time ago I outlined what Men’s Fiction might contain. I’d like to revisit the concept of Men’s Fiction and why I think it is of vital importance that a BISAC category for Men’s Fiction is created — and soon.

A cursory search of the internet will reveal the concern in the publishing industry over the statistics showing a decline in book buying and reading in the States.

Personally, I’m not convinced the stats portray an accurate picture. As the now defunct Author Earnings website repeatedly demonstrated, book buying is quite healthy.

The reason for the discrepancy lies in the fact that most indie authors don’t use ISBNs, which is how the book industry keeps track of inventory. Thus all those books with no ISBNs are never counted. They are invisible to the bean counters sitting in the treasure rooms of the corporate publishing houses.

What the stats actually reveal is a decline in purchases of traditionally published books.

As for those surveys showing a decline in reading and that men aren’t reading fiction, I’ve previously discussed male reading habits. One of which is that men tend not to be social and demonstrative in their reading. Which means men simply may not be accurately represented in the survey results.

I know men who read, and men who don’t. I know women who read, and women who don’t. I know men and women who never touch fiction. And those who only read fiction.

The simple fact of the matter is that the surveys may not be accurate.

Another factor which is likely to throw a spanner into those stats on book buying are the folks who basically buy used books and only used books. As a case in point, I rarely buy a new book from a corporate publishing house. Yet, I do buy a lot of traditionally published books — virtually all used. New books are just too dang expensive.

In addition, today the frugal book buyer is having a field day with all the free books that are now available on the internet — and I’m talking about the freely available public domain books one can find on Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg Australia, Faded Page, and archive.org. As a further case in point, I have downloaded books and magazines by the hundreds from these sites. All for free. After all, I’m retired and living on a fixed income.

Personally, I think reading is alive and well — and I think the male reader is nowhere near needing life support.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. Which is why I think the book industry and indie authors need to be careful not to exclude the male half of the population. The book industry and indie authors need to make sure that there is fiction boys and men will actually read, not stuff the industry hopes they’ll read.

Male readers prefer, for the most part, the genres of adventure, humor, horror, and science fiction. They also tend to shy away from books that are focused on relationships (such as romance).

The male reader also has a strong preference for main characters who are men, men he can relate to, and for male writers. This may be due in part to the current stereotype that reading fiction is something only women do. And thus boys especially need the male writer and male main character to avoid being seen as a “sissy”.

Gender issues aside for the moment, if we want boys to read — we writers have to give them something they will actually read. They aren’t going to read books about androgynous main characters. Or books where the main characters are female. They just aren’t. If we want to capture those young male readers, we need to give them boys and men they will respect and we need to give them storylines boys are interested in. It’s as simple as that.

This year I’ve been exploring and reading the fiction of the old pulp magazines. I’ve discovered writers such as H. Bedford-Jones, Talbot Mundy, Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Brand, Seabury Quinn, Alison V. Harding (almost certainly the pen name for Lamont Buchanan), and Hugh B. Cave. I’ve gotten reacquainted with Carl Jacobi, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Frank Belknap Long, and E. Hoffman Price.

The above writers (save for Harding) all made their living from writing fiction — and writing fiction for men. In fact, Blue Book magazine at one point proudly declared that their stories were “for men, by men”. Pretty doggone clear who their audience was!

So what have I gleaned from my reading of pulp era fiction?

The main character is always a man. He’s strong, smart, and very capable. He is a man of good morals, and is polite and considerate, unless unduly provoked. Then he is liable to deck his antagonist. Or he may deal him a witty barb that figuratively knocks him out. The pulp fiction hero is what every man would probably like to be. There are no angst driven heroes in pulp fiction. There are no heroes who are physically or mentally challenged. We’re thinking Jack Reacher types here.

There’s frequently a love interest. The woman is, surprisingly, given all the stereotypes, a strong personality who can go toe to toe with the hero. She is a woman who is strong and capable. A woman the hero can and does admire — that’s why he falls in love with her.

However, men have a need to be a knight in shining armor; a protector of those who are not as physically strong as they are. And they also have a need to pursue their love interest. If the woman is easy to get, then she really isn’t of interest as a mate.

So even though the woman with whom the hero is in love can drink, swear, and dispatch a dozen bad guys, she will need to be pursued and at some point she will need rescuing. And rescue her he will. The rescue is the ultimate display of his love for her and also proves to her she wasn’t wrong in her choice of him for her mate.

Pulp fiction is often laced with humor. Men love a good laugh, and pulp fiction provided it. Laughter helped to ease the tensions of a hard day at the office or on the assembly line.

Action. Almost all of the stories are filled with action. Pulp fiction heroes are men of action. They aren’t navel gazers.

Adventure. Pulp fiction stories and novels are mostly tales of adventure — regardless of the genre. Men live for adventure. There’s a bit of the wandering spirit in all of us guys.

What I found in reading pulp fiction surprisingly corroborates the research Kate Summers presented in her article “Adult Reading Habits and Preferences in Relation to Gender Differences”.

Which to my mind means the pulp writers and magazine editors knew their readership and gave them what they wanted. Strong men. Strong women. Humor. And plenty of action and adventure.

The corporate publishing industry is dominated by women. And evidence shows they have little interest in catering to the reading preferences of men. Which is a shame, as they are leaving a huge revenue source untapped.

Which leaves us with the men writers who are independent author-publishers. What does pulp fiction teach us men who are indie authors? I think it means, if we want to tap into an audience that is starving for good stuff to read, that we write Men’s Fiction.

Fiction with strong, intelligent, and wholesome male leads. Fiction with women who are the equal of the hero, but are also all woman. Not the kickass heroine who is too often a man in drag. Fiction with plenty of action and adventure.

Pulp fiction was commercial fiction. It was written and published to make a buck. It was meant to be disposable, casual reading. It was pure entertainment. Pulp fiction was not meant to be great literature, but then Shakespeare wasn’t intentionally writing great literature either.

We men who are indie authors, could also do a world of good by writing fiction for boys. Because if boys learn to love reading, then we writers have them for life.

Kate Summers concluded her essay noting that while gender equality is important, when it comes to reading, and especially reading for leisure, it might be better if we just gave men and women what they want to read. I’m sure glad a woman wrote that.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Commercial Fiction

Commercial fiction has existed ever since that first storyteller figured out he could get paid for telling stories. Paid on a regular basis, that is. That genius is lost to the mists of time, sad to say, but his legacy lives on.

The seeds of modern commercial fiction began in the 1700s with such money making gems as Pamela and Varney the Vampire. And continued into the 1800s, first with anonymous potboilers, such as those written by Louisa May Alcott, and stories from the pens of Poe, Dickens, and Trollope; and then on to the penny dreadfuls, the five-cent novels, and ten-cent novels of the later 1800s.

Commercial fiction blossomed in the 20th Century beginning in the 1920s and it continues unabated to this day.

So just exactly what is commercial fiction? H. Bedford-Jones (dubbed King of the Pulps) put it this way:

Look at magazine fiction. Has it any pretensions, any purpose, other than to entertain the reader? Absolutely none. A fiction magazine shuns in horror all propaganda, religious controversy, and boresome highbrow effusions. Its business is simply to make its readers forget their troubles and come again for more.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was even more straightforward:

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

The bottom line is this: commercial fiction’s sole purpose is to entertain. And I would add — make money for the writer.

The writer of commercial fiction is an entertainer. No different than a singer, or a magician, or a carnival busker, or any sort of performer.

However, we writers aren’t told this. At least not by our English lit teachers in high school or college. And certainly not by creative writing professors.

Why? Well, the establishment only values what’s called literary fiction. That is, books and stories that have a message and are written with the message foremost in mind, not whether or not the story entertains. It may entertain, but that’s not its purpose.

Now the irony of this view lies in the fact that much so-called “literary” fiction was in its day commercial fiction.

One need go no further than Shakespeare. Bill did not sit down and write Hamlet or MacBeth or The Taming of the Shrew with the literary value of these stories in mind. He was writing to make a few quid to keep a roof over his head, food on the table, and to make sure his wife and mistress were happy.

Yet while making a buck, Bill wrote some great literature. Funny how that worked out.

Louisa May Alcott turned to writing anonymous potboilers to put food on the table and pay the rent because her head-in-the-clouds father, Bronson Alcott, didn’t have a clue as to how to support his family. Louisa May also wrote Little Women to keep the wolf from the door. The rest, as they say, is history.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote commercial fiction. He told stories for money. So did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and H. Rider Haggard. And for that matter, so did J.K. Rowling.

Yet the academics, even for JKR, try their best to hide the filthy lucre aspect and dub the writings of those folks as great literature.

Even JRR Tolkien wasn’t trying to write great literature. He kind of thought of himself as this reincarnated Norse bard who was telling a story in the king’s great hall. And why did bards do that? To entertain their host as payment for a meal and a bed.

Robert E Howard wrote stories to make a buck. He was writing to entertain. In the process, he wrote some very fine literature. The same with Dickens, and Trollope, and Alcott, and Wells, and Dumas, and Verne, and most of the writers who wrote what is today called great literature.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction between literary fiction and commercial fiction, because of my interest in the writers who wrote for the pulp magazines. They wrote for money. They weren’t writing great literature. They were writing entertainment. Yet sometimes they did indeed write great literature, or at least fiction that came close to great literature.

One of the best statements on religious belief that I’ve read is in the second Tarzan novel. Who would’ve guessed?

H. Rider Haggard’s She was written as entertainment, but the story drives us to think about the purpose of life. And that is exactly what great literature is supposed to do.

Commercial fiction isn’t bad. It’s what most people want. So why shouldn’t someone write it for them?

Quite honestly, I mostly read commercial fiction. I think Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is a fabulous story. So much is said by not saying anything. It’s a thought-provoking and memorable piece of fiction. But I’d much rather read Robert E Howard’s Solomon Kane stories. Why? Because they’re fun.

This exploration of mine into the writers of pulp fiction and the stories that they wrote has given me a lot to reflect on concerning my own path as a writer.

Given my present course, I see myself in a kind of fictional no man’s land. I’m not writing literary fiction and I’m not writing commercial fiction. As a result, I’m not making much money. And I do want to make money. At least enough to cover my expenses.

I’m not sure what the future will bring. How this exploration will affect my writing if it affects it at all. Because the actual writing is only one piece of the puzzle. There are also the other pieces: catchy titles, catchy cover art, catchy blurbs, effective marketing (both paid and unpaid). And who you know.

We can’t forget the who you know factor. If Mark Dawson, or Michael Anderle, or Agatha Frost, or Scott Pratt suddenly started promoting my books — why, my problems would be over.

All of the above, plays into the end result.

So I’m off to have a think. Not a heavy think. Just a let it simmer think. In the meantime, I’m going to have a cup of tea and read Ganbaru, written by Matthew Cormack, who’s one of my favorite post-apocalyptic writers. He entertains, and makes me think. What can be better than that?

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Seabury Quinn

In March of 1918 a story appeared in the pages of Detective Story Magazine and the author of the story was Seabury Quinn. The title of the story was “Demons of the Night”.

As near as we can tell, “Demons of the Night” was Quinn’s first fiction sale. That sale began a fiction writing career that spanned over half a century, and saw the production of over 500 short stories and 2 novels. And those numbers don’t include his many non-fiction writings.

Seabury Quinn was the quintessential pulp fiction master, along with such greats as H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Robert E Howard. He knew how to craft a story that would sell and he wasn’t shy about going where the money was to be found.

In his day, Quinn was an exceedingly popular author. A Weird Tales poll of the magazine’s readers put Quinn as their number one favorite author — ahead of such luminaries as HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and August Derleth. More Seabury Quinn stories received cover art than any other writer for Weird Tales. As I noted in another post, it was Quinn and his creation, Jules de Grandin, who saved Weird Tales from folding in the early ‘30s, which would have possibly denied us the best of Lovecraft’s work, and such talents as Robert Bloch.

So why is Seabury Quinn denied his claim to fame and basically relegated to a footnote? The answer lies with the politics of the Lovecraft Circle, specifically the machinations of August Derleth.

In order to elevate Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn became the whipping boy. Quinn was a hack and the epitome of what was bad in pulp magazine fiction. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was a genius and represented the highest ideals and possibilities of the pulp magazines. Derleth’s hero worship put the knife in Quinn’s back. And why Quinn, and not someone else? Probably because Lovecraft didn’t like Quinn’s fiction, making him an easy target.

For a long time I held to the common, albeit unfair, assessment that Quinn was a hack. I held that view until I actually read some of his stories. Much to my surprise, his stories are no worse than Lovecraft’s, or Howard’s, or Frank Belknap Long’s, to name three, and in some cases better.

Seabury Quinn was a decent, prolific, and inventive writer, much like Robert E Howard. Quinn was paid more than the other writers for Weird Tales because the magazine’s readers wanted his stories.

Now, thanks in large part to ebooks, publishers are republishing the work of Seabury Quinn, and I am very pleased to see him regaining the recognition he is due.

Yesterday, for Christmas, I received two volumes of Quinn’s work: Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books; and A Rival from the Grave, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume 4, edited by George A Vanderburgh and published by Nightshade Books. Santa was indeed good!

In short order, Seabury Quinn has become one of my favorite authors. His books stand right next to the works of Lovecraft and Howard. He’s easily their equal. Sure, he’s different from them. But that doesn’t make him a lesser writer. Seabury Quinn’s stories have immense entertainment value. What more can one ask from a writer?

As always, comments are welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

The Man Who Saved Weird Tales

…and saved weird fiction.

Really? Weird Tales and weird fiction owe their existence to one man? The Unique Magazine? The magazine of HP Lovecraft?

Actually, Weird Tales wasn’t the magazine of HP Lovecraft. Sure, he submitted stories to WT and had them published (and a few rejected). But HPL actually disdained the commercial press and those who wrote for money, or “sold their soul to Mammon”, as he once put it. Lovecraft was willing to live in genteel poverty and support the amateur press to keep his art pure.

I wonder sometimes why he submitted to the pulp magazines at all. He in truth disdained them. I guess even a purist has to eat.

No, Weird Tales was not Lovecraft’s magazine. That is revisionist history started by his proteges August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

Actually the man who was the defining persona of The Unique Magazine was Seabury Quinn. The man usually relegated to the footnotes of WT history telling.

Quinn was a lawyer, magazine editor, and prolific writer of fiction. He wrote over 500 stories. His published works number more than 5 times that of Lovecraft, and that includes HPL’s ghost written stories and collaborations. Granted Quinn lived 32 years longer than Lovecraft, but HPL was even out written by his younger contemporary, Robert E Howard, who had far fewer productive years than Lovecraft.

In actuality, Lovecraft saw himself first and foremost as a poet. Let’s be honest here. Lovecraft wrote around five dozen stories and maybe half are memorable. It’s also true that HPL would have faded into oblivion were it not for Derleth’s continual paean of praise.

Quinn, on the other hand, had no champion and did fade into obscurity — and only now is being given a fair assessment. And the verdict is that he was a very decent writer. In fact, he was the most popular of Weird Tales’s cadre of authors.

Quinn and Lovecraft made their debut WT appearance in the 7th issue, October 1923. Lovecraft’s contribution was “Dagon” and Quinn’s was “The Phantom Farmhouse”.

Quinn’s story was so popular among WT readers they consistently asked for it to be reprinted. Not the case with “Dagon”. I’ve read both stories. Both are good. Different, but equally satisfying reads — for differing reasons.

Quinn’s occult detective, Jules de Grandin, first appeared in the October 1925 issue of Weird Tales and immediately became a hit with the readers. They couldn’t get enough of the little Frenchman and it was Quinn’s de Grandin who saved Weird Tales from dying in 1931.

The Unique Magazine had financial troubles throughout its entire history. This was partly due to its small readership. Competition for readers was fierce amongst the plethora of pulps and slicks. Not unlike the competition amongst indie authors today for readership.

The first issue of Weird Tales was March 1923. Edwin Baird was the editor. In just 13 issues, Baird had saddled WT with a debt of over $40,000. In contemporary dollars, that’s close to $600,000. Most of this money was owed to WT’s printer.

The publisher, J. C. Henneberger, decided to solve the problem by selling majority interest in the magazine to B. Cornelius, the printer, with the understanding that when the magazine became profitable, Cornelius would get his money back and the stock returned to Henneberger.

In the re-organization, Baird left and Farnsworth Wright took over as editor in 1924 when Lovecraft failed to accept Henneberger’s offer. And even though Wright’s tenure as editor is considered the magazine’s Golden Age, Weird Tales remained an unprofitable enterprise.

By late 1931, Cornelius’s patience had run out (we are talking 7 years here) and he ordered Henneberger to shut the magazine down.

Let’s think about this for a moment. If Cornelius had gotten his way, the history of weird fiction would have been very, very different. The best of Robert E Howard’s horror and fantasy, gone. No CL Moore or Robert Bloch. Much of Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s weird fiction, gone . Most of Carl Jacobi’s weird fiction, gone. We wouldn’t have Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “The Dreams in the Witch House”, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, or “The Haunter of the Dark”.

The best years of the magazine would not exist.

However, Wright managed to convince Cornelius he had two serials that would turn the magazine around. They were Otis Adelbert Kline’s Tarzan pastiche, Tam, Son of Tiger, and Seabury Quinn’s The Devil’s Bride, the longest de Grandin story Quinn wrote.

The Devil’s Bride ran for six issues and effectively saved the magazine.

Darrell Schweitzer wrote, in his introductory essay, “Jules de Grandin: ‘The Pillar of Weird Tales’”:

“When you consider that Robert E Howard still had his best Weird Tales material in front of him and that all of CL Moore, Robert Bloch, and many others was yet to come, it is worth pausing to reflect on how much fantastic literature owes to Seabury Quinn’s excitable Frenchman.” (The Dark Angel: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Vol. 3. Night Shade Books, 2018)

So why is Seabury Quinn so little known today? I think the answer is August Derleth and his indefatigable championing of Lovecraft. Derleth placed all Weird Tales writers either in Lovecraft’s circle or outside it. And because HPL did not like Quinn’s writing, Quinn was damned. Because those outside the circle were promptly forgotten.

That Weird Tales was a Lovecraftian world is a myth. A myth created by HPL’s protege, August Derleth. Who also happened to be the second most published Weird Tales author. Much of that due to his “fake” collaborations with Lovecraft.

Stefan Dziemianowicz noted in his essay “‘Loved by Thousands of Readers’: The Popularity of Jules de Grandin”:

“In retrospect, Seabury Quinn’s tales of Jules de Grandin played a vital role in the development of weird fiction, if largely through their relationship with Weird Tales and its readers.” (The Devil’s Rosary: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Vol. 2. Night Shade Press, 2017)

Now that’s not something we weird fiction fans hear every day. Nor something we should ignore.

Comments are always welcome! And, until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Bestseller Lists Are Fake

Bestseller lists aren’t what they pretend to be. In other, more blunt, words: bestseller lists are fake.

A few weeks ago I looked at what provides the best reading experience for us readers. Its characters we grow to love (or hate).

Today I want to look at how we readers are duped into thinking a book is a bestseller. And therefore worthy to be read.

I’m going to focus on The New York Times bestseller list because it’s the 800 pound gorilla on the block and has been since the 1930s when it began.

In 1983 William Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, took The New York Times Company to court claiming that the newspaper was intentionally excluding his book, Legion, from the bestseller list for editorial reasons. By looking at sales alone, it should have been on the list.

The New York Times won the case. Their defense in part was that the bestseller list was not supposed to be accurate, but merely reflected their opinion.

Here it is from the court ruling:

“Defendant further argues that inasmuch as the list was compiled in the exercise of its editorial judgment and represented its opinion of which books were best sellers, the First Amendment shields defendant from liability for interference with plaintiff’s prospective advantage by refusing to include his book in the list.” (Blatty v. New York Times Company, Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, California. Emphasis mine.)

For decades, The New York Times presented the illusion that the bestseller list was in fact a list based on actual sales of books. And virtually all of us were duped into thinking that illusion was reality. In fact, the list is merely a compilation of sales based on a survey of specially selected sales outlets, heavily edited by The New York Times staff.

In other words, the list is a sham. It’s fake news, as it were. The list is in reality merely the opinion of The New York Times staff as to what books should be bestsellers. It’s an op ed piece telling you what they think you should be reading.

So what does this mean for us readers? I think it means we can safely ignore bestseller lists. Because the books on them are not true bestsellers. They are not a true measure of what people are actually buying and reading.

We associate social proof with quality and acceptance. Author Mark Dawson makes this point all the time to authors when it comes to Facebook advertising. The more 5 star reviews an author has the better. This is part of our herd instinct. We are, after all, social creatures. There is a tendency within us to not go contrary to the group think. The Times knows this and exploits it in their bestseller list to get you to read what they think is best for you. In a way, this is a type of fake news.

The other lists, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today operate in similar fashion.

Even Amazon plays this game by creating micro-categories for books, so that authors can get a “bestseller” tag — which generates more sales for the Zon. One author noted that his book on Washington, DC didn’t sell until he took advantage of Amazon’s Washington, DC micro-category. Suddenly it became a “bestseller”.

What this all means is that the term “bestseller”, when it comes to books, essentially has no meaning. It’s valueless.

Reading, as with all things in life, is a personal experience. What moves me, may very well not move you at all. I’ve laughed my head off at a passage in a book, while my wife doesn’t think it is at all funny.

Commercial fiction has proven that most people do in fact ignore bestseller lists. Starting back around World War I, the pulp writers ignored the academics and literati. They wrote what the average guy or gal wanted to read.

Edgar Rice Burroughs never made the New York Times bestseller list and I don’t think he cared. He got rich off Tarzan. Lester Dent made a decent living writing crime and suspense novels and most of the Doc Savage books. Murray Leinster wrote thousands of stories and made a nice living at it. The same goes for Seabury Quinn, Robert E Howard, and many others.

And this continues today with many indie authors making a very nice living without the help of The New York Times or USA Today. And that means most books which are enjoyed are not bestsellers. By extension that means that most books worth reading, aren’t on the bestseller lists.

William Shakespeare, who predates all these lists, wrote with one thing in mind: give the theater goers a play worth their money, and they’ll be back for more. It was the public Bill wrote for and he made a nice living doing so. In effect, he was a pulp writer.

We readers, I think, can safely ignore the claims made by authors of bestseller stardom. Because such a claim is no guarantee their books are actual bestsellers, or that they are any good. I know that has been my experience more often than not.

I’ve noted before in this blog, there are many gems that have never gotten into the top million on Amazon’s paid Kindle list. Those books are very much worth reading. Often they are far more creative and entertaining than those much higher up on the list.

Jacques Barzun, in his preface to The Selected Letters of Lord Byron, wrote: A letter is in fact the only device for combining solitude and good company.

I think the same applies to books. Leave the fake bestseller lists (and their fake social approval) behind. Be thyself.

Here are 4 articles that go into more detail regarding the bestseller list sham:

Tim Grahl tells us the truth on bestseller lists:

http://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-and-wall-street-journal-bestseller-lists/

Ken Kurson gives us a look at political bias in the NYT bestseller list:

http://observer.com/2014/01/dueling-ailes-bios-and-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list/

Tucker Max on bestseller list bias:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280520

Noah Kagan on how writers can hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list:

https://okdork.com/hit-1-amazons-bestseller-list/

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy non-bestseller reading!

Share This!