what replaced the pulps...

[benedictjjones]

why did the 'pulps' die out? (obviously theyre not dead - just having a rest) or perhaps a better question is - what replaced them? another form of literature (if so what - thrillers a la tom clancy and the like?) or was it just tv and rubbish magazines??

as can be seen not just from this site but 2nd hand bookshops and the like the pulps were enourmously popular and i don't believe people just stop reading (or do they...)

anyway slightly confused but hoping someone can help enlighten me!

[PeterC]

A good question.
I think people do read less nowadays, TV must be partly to blame, although the pulps were dying out long before the internet came along, and cheap magazines have always been around.
I reckon the average concentration span has declined and that's not helpful for reading.

[killercrab]

I think pulp fun is still being had but in a much more sophisticated fashion via computer games. Maybe they are the new comics too. Market forces lead much of this stuff and shelf space is dominated by bestseller type tomes. The humble *series* has died a death - yet Harry Potter bucks that trend . That gives hope . I think we need more *series* books actually to revive the genre not standalones.

Good question Ben.

KC

[David A. Riley]

I think we need more *series* books actually to revive the genre not standalones.

Looking in Borders I think there are series, though perhaps not what you or I would choose to buy: romantic vampires and their kith and kin seem to be thriving.

Perhaps to get publishers to move from these to something a bit more interestiong wouldn't be all that difficult, maybe.

David

[killercrab]

I'd love to see a *new* Specialist type series. What with Van Helsing returning to tv in january in DEMONS - genre series are thriving on telly. What I'd like though would be for new original genre book series to appear - not spin-offs of tv. I know that the western and thriller genre still thrives to a degree ( Mack Bolan?) - it's just is the BIG audience still viable? I love the feeling of being part of a family when you get into a book series.

[benedictjjones]

^meant to say that i doubted the pulps had been replaced by the 'paranormal' romance rubbish as the demographics seem so different.

[bushwick]

I may be speaking out of turn here (others around have shitloads more knowledge than I), but wasn't the rise of video in the early 80s a big factor in the decline of pulp, especially the nastier stuff? Back in the 70s, if you wanted extreme violence and nasty sex, you had to get it from an Edge or a GNS or somesuch. Yeah, there were Hammer films and the like but it's not exactly exploding heads and rape scenes, is it? These books were passed round schools, weren't they? With the advent of video, and the 'video nasty' furore especially, kids could watch this stuff in the comfort of their own homes, not have to read about it and imagine what's happening (obviously in the case of some of the 'nasties, the rep was a lot more gruesome than the reality, but the same could be said of some pulps...that's exploitation baby!)

I work in alternative education, looking after excluded/troubled/fucking hard work kids. I know they are an extreme, but at no point have I EVER seen any of them with a book. They've all got GTA San Andreas though, and have seen all the Saw films, and probably a few Afghan/Iraqi beheading videos too. Twenty-five, thirty years ago, these kids would have been uniformly reading the works of NEL etc, of course they would. The ones that couldn't read would get a mate to read the good bits to them!

So I say, blame the VCR...

[Craig Herbertson]

good point Bushwick.

[benedictjjones]

cheers bushwick, i hadn't even thought of that to be honest.
i started thinking about this because i was wondering why kids don't read. when i was growing up there were people who said ' i don't read books me' but not as many as you seem to come across today, people in their late teens - early twenties. and that got me wondering whether i was part of the generation where reading 'stopped'
for a while i'd believed that maybe it was because there wasn't anything in books that older teenagers could really relate to but i thin i'm labouring under a fallacy in that regard. it's just a shame...

[corpsecandle]

When Plastic Logic a Cambridge firm get their first "inteligent books" made (in partnership with a German firm) I am quite certain we will see a need for pulp horror.

It will be more visual than before but this won't foresake the writing as it will be an audiovisual experence.

Here is an example of the kind of print I think will take off in the next to four years : video.google.co.uk/videosearch?hl=en&q=plastic+logic&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

also seeing as you can fit a multitude of books on one e-reader there will be a larger scope for new writers much like when bookshops had more space for horror.

[ghostwriter2109]

Book sales are higher now than they have been for the past ten years, and with the new reading initiatives across the globe, I think the future is quite bright...just different.

I agree that attention spans are down to that of a goldfish...but I think with eReaders and Kindles, that the way a 'book' is presented is going to change. Which is a good thing.

Will they replace the book?...no...can they work alongside?..most definitely.

What I hope is that we can get back to authors writing entertaining stories and finish them within 40000 to 50000 words. And series, I agree with Ade on that...lets have more of them.

And Hollywood producers and studios love buying a series of books rather than standalones (unless it's a best-seller). Hello writers...you reading this?

Guy Smith was a clever one...wrote a number of series and a few with sequels...that's why I have film producers fighting among themselves.

Long live the pulp....I do miss the cheaper paper though.

Neil

[pulphack]

i think we had a very similar discussion to this over on the old board, a couple of years back, and in many ways the same things apply then as now. i think it's partly due to the increase in 'new' media (some of which is now old!) that has taken over the function of pulp, and partly because of publisher's behaviour. the old mid-list covered pulp paperback territory - quick turnover shelf stackers that had a certain sale then move on. triuble was, increased advances on the big name writers meant that greater resources were piled into them, and bye-bye mid-list. there were also odd decisions - axeing of westerns and war titles, for instance (johnny's shaun hutson interview reminded me of this) for no other reason than publishers thought there was no market, even though library and import sales only proved that it was a little smaller.

in this country, we're a bit behind on the increased reading trend. there are still more titles than ever being publishd, but in smaller runs. and a lot of it is celeb or other media fronted.

but i agree with what's being said about the new forms as gateways and complimentaries to novels. this is the way ahead, and there has always been a market for this kind of writing. always will be. it might be smaller than before, but it can be as a compliment to other media rather than a spin-off.

some publishers are looking at this - baen in the usa, and harper's new angry robot imprint are examining this - but when you say 'hey writers, are you listening?' about series, neil, bear in mind that it's not writers who are the problem here - it's publishers who have had the blinkers on about this for some time. hopefully these are attitudes that are changing.

[ghostwriter2109]

I agree wholeheartedly about publishing attitudes...but I think it goes deeper than that. In the UK we seem to have a deep rooted island mentality.

Trying to do deals or joint working arrangements with printers (who are struggling in the present climate) was/is so hard here...yet in the US and Canada, I had absolutely no trouble at all.

I think what needs to change is the way that business is actually done and making it more of a collaborative effort where all get a good portion of the spoils...not the pissy little amounts that writers get at the moment.

I did an interview recently, where I said that publishers treat their writers like dirt...the backlash I got was amazing...but only from publishers. So you are bang on the money when you say it's attitudes amongst publishers that needs to change and cut out the crazy advances to writers who are just not worth it.

Neil

[pulphack]

i've come back to this thread after reading about the Malko series in the new PF. the revelation that it does 200,000 per title still in France, and mostly through non-book-chain outlets, shows that it's publishers who are the problem in this country more than ever.

look at it this way. i know that uk publishers wet themselves with joy if they can make a title do over 10,000 in pb, let alone a tenth of the French sales. now not every series would do that, admittedly, but it is proof that markets exist. and maybe part of the problem here is that publishers are lazy with their sales forces, concentrating on chains and arguing about shelf-space for guarenteed sellers rather than looking to alternative outlets.

for instance, i was in asda last week, and noticed that M&B have launched a new line called Blackstar Crime, which is shelved with their regular romance titles. i'd be very interested to know if it starts to pick up sales as it gets on the supermarket shelves, as all the other books in stock from the big houses were chart only and therefore guarenteed sales. if Blackstar does do well, would publisher's reps push to get lesser known stuff on those shelves? or would that be a little too much like hard work?

[benedictjjones]

^for a long time i've thought that in all honesty (if you can do it) with niche stuff is to self publish and shift it yourself. now obviously there's a stigma attached to SP bcos anyone can do it BUT if you look at music most 'underground' (read niche) is put out by the artists themselves...