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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 27, 2009 20:28:57 GMT
It may well be, but I don't think publishers view it that way. And with the success of stuff like 'Twilight' doing tremendous business in the female teen market they may be right. And as for: My dear Caroline I didn't know - it was just a feeling. The sort of feeling that has got me into all sorts of trouble in the past - the fun kind, naturally
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Post by andydecker on Feb 27, 2009 20:30:45 GMT
If you watch things like Amazon´s genre top 100, the Paranormal Romance kicks even Fantasy´s ass. It is sad. Of course those things have nothing to do with horror. Most of its audience would be revolted by a real horror novel. Having sex with a corpse doesn´t seem to count. I don´t get the current success of the PR. It is not that they are new, they wrote that stuff 10 years ago qand nobody cared. I blame the artifical Dark Fantasy nonsense, when publishers didn´t want to be no longer associated with horror, but also didn´t want to loose that audience. And who could blame them? If a remake like Friday the 13th can make 43 milion $, there has to be an audience for horror. Unfortunatly the term horror seems to have become a synonym with splatter for the marketing gurus, and they have other sensibilities than an exec of Lionsgate. Of course the success of PM is good for publishing, and as always the market is so stuffed with it that it is only a matter of time till this bubble will burst. Real horror is still out there, but it is hard to find. And it will never sell as much as the latest fad. One can bemoan this, but it is not as if this was better in the past. The surge of popularity in the wake of King never materialized in enough sales for keeping the genre afloat in a big way. The success of the brit horror in the 70s and 80s cannot be duplicated. It was a whole different game back than, it was a generation of lads who didn´t grew up with todays entertainment. We read.
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Post by corpsecandle on Feb 27, 2009 21:42:34 GMT
If you watch things like Amazon´s genre top 100, the Paranormal Romance kicks even Fantasy´s ass. It is sad. Of course those things have nothing to do with horror. Most of its audience would be revolted by a real horror novel. Having sex with a corpse doesn´t seem to count. I don´t get the current success of the PR. It is not that they are new, they wrote that stuff 10 years ago qand nobody cared. I blame the artifical Dark Fantasy nonsense, when publishers didn´t want to be no longer associated with horror, but also didn´t want to loose that audience. And who could blame them? If a remake like Friday the 13th can make 43 milion $, there has to be an audience for horror. Unfortunatly the term horror seems to have become a synonym with splatter for the marketing gurus, and they have other sensibilities than an exec of Lionsgate. Of course the success of PM is good for publishing, and as always the market is so stuffed with it that it is only a matter of time till this bubble will burst. Real horror is still out there, but it is hard to find. And it will never sell as much as the latest fad. One can bemoan this, but it is not as if this was better in the past. The surge of popularity in the wake of King never materialized in enough sales for keeping the genre afloat in a big way. The success of the brit horror in the 70s and 80s cannot be duplicated. It was a whole different game back than, it was a generation of lads who didn´t grew up with todays entertainment. We read. You know what is strange is the decline in the written horror genre has gone the opposite way to what has happened in Pro-Wrestling. I know it's an odd example but it's an intrest comparison...now you see after the WWE had taken over it's two major rivals E.C.W and W.C.W it was blammend for also breaking up and destroying the old terrotory system. This basicly ment you had small indie wrestling companys working a particular space (say Florida) and they would operate outside of that much and respect other companies areas. Now we have a state of affaris where pro-wrestling is still a money making operation and lot's of money is there to be made. However it's all really run by the monolithic WWE and the smaller companies TNA and ones even further down the food chain are luckey to make a penny. With horror you have many small publications comapnies and privatly printed publications but no real visible horror publishing company that you can aspire to write for.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 27, 2009 22:40:33 GMT
There has been some debate elsewhere that No 20 may well be that last of that series too. Things could be getting even worse. It may not be long before the only source for modern ghost and horror short stories will be via the small press. A sad state of affairs. David Is this based on new information or is it a manifestation of last October's minor It's the End of Best New Horror" panic? I blame the artifical Dark Fantasy nonsense, when publishers didn´t want to be no longer associated with horror, but also didn´t want to loose that audience. And who could blame them? I've made reference to Chris Morgan's anthology Dark Fantasies (1988, 89) more times than is healthy. It's a very enjoyable collection, with striking contributions from Stephen Gallagher, David Langford, Lisa Tuttle, Ian Watson ........ But Mr. Morgan's introduction, No Slime, No Chainsaws is a textbook example of just how hung up some authors were about being identified with anything as frightfully nasty as pulp horror fiction at the time. If I'd been one of the Hamlyn authors his attack is clearly directed toward, I'd have laughed my tits off.
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Post by lobolover on Feb 27, 2009 23:46:59 GMT
now even these are being squeezed out in favour of this Stephanie Meyer type paranormal romance drivel - wall-to-wall Laurell Hamilton, Karen Chance, Charlaine Harris, Carrie Vaughan, Patricia Briggs, Christine Feehan etc.... I know what you mean. I had the very same feeling when I last went to our local Borders. They had put all these books in one big section at the very beginning of the shelves, pushing any true horror books to the end - almost like an afterthought. David Now imagine how its like in the czech republic- where I never saw a "horror" section even in a purposefully english bookshop. Around where I live its even worse. In this country, most of the ajor old horror stuff has never ben published- Marsh's The Beetle wa spublished last in 1930, and none of my literary teachers has ever heard of Lovecraft. Worst is, they think horror is an inferrior genre, they have parently never read it, and my (I guess its a High school, except you start there at 14-15 and study four years) Hugh school librarian never heard of M.R.James!Or of Hawthorne. Some Literature teacher. My god, I feel like an idiot trying to sum up what I think about stuff to a person thinks its all slasher trash. It's even worse that you won't find a horror shelf, but heaven forbid Stephen King doesnt have a whole isle all for himself. Now, I never read any King, because I always felt he was too popular amongst the common people to be realy good. Partialy, it was my hate to follow any trends, but also recently ive discovered what Joshi thinks of him and I would say we have a similar taste from what I gather.Based on that and reading the plto summary for the last Dark Tower series on wikipedia, I have to ask....a door with (his?) name on it sucks him in ? Thats why I dont read Stephen King. I dont know about Koontz, never did him either, but I never heard of him, see. But seeing by the space he actualy gets in bookstores, thats not a good sign. So, when I come to a bookstore, which actualy has some books in it, theres no Horror section, the majority of the stuff I would need, let alone want, to read has either never been published here or was published 30+ years ago and is no longer in print, and so the only thing I have to go through are the Sci Fi and Fantasy sections....cramped full of things with trashy covers and trashy names and trashy summaries, talking about space ships, space voyages, space crap, social relations.......and I keep thinking to myself-why? I mean, my german language teacher thinks "Wuthering Heights" is a "romance novel" for women!
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 28, 2009 9:49:13 GMT
You are probably right, though I don't recall the outcome of all this offhand.
With the way things are going, with fewer and fewer independent bookshops surviving and more topselling books being sold at unrealistically low prices in supermarkets, I believe that, absurdly, we may eventually see most of the big mainstream publishers concentrating ever more on that end of the market, with the small press moving into the market for the less popular genres, especially horror. Never before have there already been as many small presses, I am sure, with production values that rival - and frequently surpass - those of the mainstream. As more and more books are sold over the internet than through brick and mortar shops, it strikes me that market conditions now exist for a real upsurge in the small press, who can now compete on a more level ground with larger publishers. Perhaps it would be advantageous if they started to work together to help promote their books online more effectively, to reach a wider audience. Most are still aiming for market sales in the hundreds, very often the low hundreds at that, rather than several thousand. If one of the mainstream publishers bring out an anthology or a single author collection of short stories, they would, I imagine, have a potential market numbering at least a couple of thousand. It will be a true breakthrough when today's small presses can achieve those kinds of figures too. Hopefully, that may some day be possible as internet selling increases and the ability of small press publishers to reach out and attract enough attention for their products increases. Larger print runs would bring down the costs. I have one beautifully printed small press book, about 120 pages in length in hardback, which cost me £18. This sounds a lot, but it only had a print run of 100. Come the day when books like this could be successfully sold in enough numbers to justify a print run of at least 1000, the cost per copy would come down enough for the price to come down too - as it would have to do if anyone hopes to sell books like this in any real quantity.
I am interested in what is going on with Guy N. Smith's own publishing house. Perhaps someone like Smith, with his reputation and, hopefully, his financial backing, will be able to start a publishing revolution.
David
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Post by ghostwriter2109 on Feb 28, 2009 11:09:34 GMT
It's strange (good) that you mention small press working alongside majors to increase the distribution. We are already in negotiation with a number of larger publishers who have contacted us...not us to them.
My gripe was always the rediculous discounts that the major stores want...now I'm actually ok with that...if the bastards pay on 30 days...but they don't...so why should I give my money to a store for them to play with...not doing it for me.
Guy and I have gone another route...we are working alongside about 35 independent booksellers who have worked with Guy before.
There are plenty of opportunites for small presses (and some are fantastic) but few seem to embrace them. I see small presses spending more time trying to impress each other rather than sell books for their authors.
And people are correct about publishers not working with authors in developing them...GWP are. We are working with six new authors...never had anything read...but Guy and I are shaping their first books into something marketable...and it's fun.
But this all takes time and a change of mind set...on the part of both author AND publisher.
Neil
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 28, 2009 11:22:06 GMT
I agree. Promotion for many seems to be little more than stroking each other's egos on various forums, particularly Shocklines. Which would be fine if they made a serious attempt to sell their books other than to each other. Which is probably why few seem able to manage more than a hundred or so sales.
Plus I do detect a creeping pretentiousness appearing in too many of them. In my view, most readers of horror novels/short stories want entertainment, not stories that have allegedly been wrenched from the writer's innermost soul and were inspired by the state of the economy, etc, etc, blah blah blah. If anything is going to kill off the hopes of many small presses of achieving anything, it's this kind of incestuous pseudo intellectualism. Just a thought.
David
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 28, 2009 16:25:34 GMT
Oh well said David! I still maintain that most people, either as readers or as viewers of film or TV are actualy very willing to stretch themselves as long as they're being entertained as well. I'm just watching Twin Peaks for the first time and I can't believe it was as successful as it was - you'd think the sheer level of weirdness would be too much for most viewers, but it just goes to show that as long as you do it right and make people feel they're getting a worthwhile entertaining experience they'll actually do their damnedest to keep up with you, which is great.
My thoughts on pretentious literariness have been well-documented elsewhere on this board so I won't bang on about it again, but we really need in the small presses the modern day publishing equivalents of some of the old British movie moguls like Tigon's Tony Tenser or Hammer's James Carreras, people who could tap into what the public wanted and then dress it up and package it in an attractive manner. And if that sounds more businesslike than artistic that's because it is, but then my own personal view of this genre we love is that it should be entertaining first and foremost.
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Post by carolinec on Feb 28, 2009 20:49:38 GMT
You are probably right, though I don't recall the outcome of all this offhand. The outcome of it for me was that I got my wrists slapped ( ) by new BFS boss, Guy Adams, who told me it wasn't actually true that Best New Horror was being cancelled, and the guy who started it had got it all wrong. But I do believe Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror has been cancelled. That might be what you're thinking of, David?
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Post by Steve on Feb 28, 2009 20:50:39 GMT
You know me, I love my pulp, I do, but I don't believe 'literariness' in horror writing need necessarily equate with 'pseudo intellectualism'. Basically, as long as somebody gets eaten and there's at least a hint of necrophilia, I don't object at all to a spot of soul-searching or pondering the human condition. In fact the more I think about it, the more I feel there's possibly a real need for an anthology which attempts to bring together 'brainy horror' and good old-fashioned blood 'n' guts pulp nastiness.
Also I'd like to give a mention to our local Waterstones who, credit where it's due, have about 12 shelves full of stuff that could loosely be described as horror. Granted, much of it is this 'Paranormal Romance' carry-on which seems to be the thing these days among young women with an entirely black wardrobe and a death wish, and then King and Koontz account for another sizeable proportion, but you've still got James Herbert, Shaun Hutson, and the often overlooked Graham Masterton, keeping it real for British horror - just as they have been doing for the last 4 decades. As long as I can still walk into a high street bookshop and buy The Fog or Slugs or Manitou Blood off the shelf, well... all is not lost. Not just yet. My only real gripe is the frankly rather poor selection of Wordsworth Mystery & Supernaturals they keep in stock - 4 to be precise (well, to be absolutely precise 5, if you count both copies of To The Devil A Daughter). But at least they're better than Smith's, who have none at all, and I'm doing my best to encourage them to get more in - not least by buying as many as I can. When I was in Waterstones today there were about half a dozen people huddled about the 'horror' section (whereas 'crime', which we're led to believe is far more popular with the reading public - what's left of them - and certainly gets considerably more shelf space, was completely deserted). Of that half dozen, at least one was a woman (I didn't look that closely to be honest). Whenever I go in, there's always at least one other shifty looking character, apart from me, skulking about. And they usually buy something.
I'm sure the market's there for all kinds of horror. Mind you, I'm usually wrong about most things.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 28, 2009 21:54:29 GMT
God yes! If anyone wants a sub from me to a book like that I'd be there like a shot.
[Dare I say that's the sort of thing I try to fill my own books with? Well I've had a bottle of Shiraz so I will actually. Just this once]
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 28, 2009 21:55:46 GMT
Just realised I hadn't voted in this one (hic!) and I've gone for the 90s as it was the only time I almost Lost The Faith
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 28, 2009 22:39:24 GMT
Nor do I, but it sometimes, unfortunately, does.
David
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Post by marksamuels on Mar 1, 2009 5:41:48 GMT
I'll get my coat. Mark S.
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