Colin Taber Borders Perth Q&A
The Question: Will Twilight be all but forgotten – unlike Lord of the Rings & Harry Potter?
The Answer: Eventually, yes.
How's that for a limb to go out on! Now, let's see how strong it is.
Twilight has been a publishing phenomenon – and hot on the heels of the last one, or is it two? Both Harry Potter and Dan Brown have created books sales history, and all in an era when reading and publishing are supposed to be dying. So, what gives?
All three of them, regardless of literary merit have become more than 'books', instead, they've all become part of pop culture, if holding vastly different positions within that fad-filled and tenuous arena.
Now firstly, I'm not going to go into detail about how they got where they did, what I'm going to talk about is will they maintain the heights they've achieved – or will they fade away, not just into memory, but oblivion. In short, I'm focussed on which of them will be stayers. For the record, they got where they are fundamentally through word of mouth. Once they found their markets, it was that positive buzz that set them on their way. It was only then that substantial marketing resources were invested into pushing them as far as they could go.
So, what makes a stayer?
A stayer has the ability to move well beyond its initial niche market. A book doesn't have to come out offering broad appeal, but some achieve it through universal themes, where as some are simply too niche, regardless of how big that niche may seem. For example, Harry Potter crossed relatively quickly from the children's market (and note, it was in both the boys and girls ends of the children's market) into the adult market – and when it did, it wasn't just adult readers of fantasy that were picking it up, but yet again a broad range of people (and again, both male and female). More than anything, Harry Potter created a reading habit in a lot of people – and not all of them children.
What helps cement a stayer is of course backup, whether that be in the form of new books or follow on series, TV or movies, or just the sidelines of T-shirts and other seemingly unrelated product. All of this can add to the 'product experience' some of it though, through overexposure, can also diminish it.
Okay, so what doesn't make a stayer?
A book might be the bomb in its home market, like Twilight was, where it became a must have accessory for millions of teenage girls and young women worldwide, but if it can't climb the walls and spread across other niches (not just one or two), it's just not going to get up and run – and I'm not talking about the niche friendly 100m sprint, but the stayer's marathon.
Lord of the Rings
Tolkien's epic is a stayer because of its quality and depth – and all despite the archaic prose which might have been acceptable to the market when it was first written, but has over time become a barrier to many new readers. With so many other titles backing it up (led by the Hobbit), Lord of the Rings, as a fantasy forerunner, was always going to be at the very least a cult hit. Over the years it's come into fashion and gone out again, but it's consistently named in polls that seek to find the public's favourite books. Simply, it has a huge footprint, and now is reinforced by Peter Jackson's solidly produced movie trilogy. This is a series that will never really fade away, not now, not even 'just' into cult status. Simply, people will still be reading and watching Lord of the Rings in a hundred years.
Harry Potter
This series of books has been handled well, even if not wildly original in concept. Built of competent writing and execution, its real strength is its broad appeal – and that's what makes it a stayer. Simple themes of coming of age and good versus evil lift an accessible story into the mainstream, and do it easily. Backed up with quality movies, this is a series that will also last. The themes are ageless, and the weighting of the story (of its gradual shift into more mature territory of politics and life or death battles) is handled so well that young readers have grown up with them – and will continue to do so. This is a series of quality that is accessible and enjoyable. Not the stayer that Lord of the Rings will be, but nonetheless something I feel is strong enough to well and truly hang around. I also think people will be reading it in a hundred years, and certainly watching it.
Twilight
Twilight has saturated its market, but that's something it can't grow much beyond. There is overflow of course, but nothing as substantial as in its target market. The end result will be, by and large, that the core of Twilight's market will grow out of it. I'd already seen it begin to happen when I was a bookseller. What could have arrested such a thing would have been high quality movies, and a well developed genre populated by many authors staying true to their genre but doing different things. Unfortunately, neither of these are in place. Consequently, and egged on by the crass commercialisation of Twilight through everything from towels, T-shirts to broaches and more, I think the market is far more likely to burn itself out than last. There will be resurgences in coming decades, but in the end, without having a broad base to appeal to, it will not be around in a hundred years, not in any meaningful way. Twilight may seem as quaint then as the fiction genre of yesteryear, the Western. If anyone remembers it.
Obviously, no one can say for sure what will be read in a hundred years, but that doesn't mean that we can't try and make an educated guess (or that I can't simply make a fool of myself). What I have tried to do is use my knowledge of what people read and why, and then apply the above question to these three series. In the end it comes down to whether something has broad appeal, a certain level of quality and back up. But all of this is also subject to the fickleness of human nature, literary fashion and even pop culture.
Good reading.
The Answer: Eventually, yes.
How's that for a limb to go out on! Now, let's see how strong it is.
Twilight has been a publishing phenomenon – and hot on the heels of the last one, or is it two? Both Harry Potter and Dan Brown have created books sales history, and all in an era when reading and publishing are supposed to be dying. So, what gives?
All three of them, regardless of literary merit have become more than 'books', instead, they've all become part of pop culture, if holding vastly different positions within that fad-filled and tenuous arena.
Now firstly, I'm not going to go into detail about how they got where they did, what I'm going to talk about is will they maintain the heights they've achieved – or will they fade away, not just into memory, but oblivion. In short, I'm focussed on which of them will be stayers. For the record, they got where they are fundamentally through word of mouth. Once they found their markets, it was that positive buzz that set them on their way. It was only then that substantial marketing resources were invested into pushing them as far as they could go.
So, what makes a stayer?
A stayer has the ability to move well beyond its initial niche market. A book doesn't have to come out offering broad appeal, but some achieve it through universal themes, where as some are simply too niche, regardless of how big that niche may seem. For example, Harry Potter crossed relatively quickly from the children's market (and note, it was in both the boys and girls ends of the children's market) into the adult market – and when it did, it wasn't just adult readers of fantasy that were picking it up, but yet again a broad range of people (and again, both male and female). More than anything, Harry Potter created a reading habit in a lot of people – and not all of them children.
What helps cement a stayer is of course backup, whether that be in the form of new books or follow on series, TV or movies, or just the sidelines of T-shirts and other seemingly unrelated product. All of this can add to the 'product experience' some of it though, through overexposure, can also diminish it.
Okay, so what doesn't make a stayer?
A book might be the bomb in its home market, like Twilight was, where it became a must have accessory for millions of teenage girls and young women worldwide, but if it can't climb the walls and spread across other niches (not just one or two), it's just not going to get up and run – and I'm not talking about the niche friendly 100m sprint, but the stayer's marathon.
Lord of the Rings
Tolkien's epic is a stayer because of its quality and depth – and all despite the archaic prose which might have been acceptable to the market when it was first written, but has over time become a barrier to many new readers. With so many other titles backing it up (led by the Hobbit), Lord of the Rings, as a fantasy forerunner, was always going to be at the very least a cult hit. Over the years it's come into fashion and gone out again, but it's consistently named in polls that seek to find the public's favourite books. Simply, it has a huge footprint, and now is reinforced by Peter Jackson's solidly produced movie trilogy. This is a series that will never really fade away, not now, not even 'just' into cult status. Simply, people will still be reading and watching Lord of the Rings in a hundred years.
Harry Potter
This series of books has been handled well, even if not wildly original in concept. Built of competent writing and execution, its real strength is its broad appeal – and that's what makes it a stayer. Simple themes of coming of age and good versus evil lift an accessible story into the mainstream, and do it easily. Backed up with quality movies, this is a series that will also last. The themes are ageless, and the weighting of the story (of its gradual shift into more mature territory of politics and life or death battles) is handled so well that young readers have grown up with them – and will continue to do so. This is a series of quality that is accessible and enjoyable. Not the stayer that Lord of the Rings will be, but nonetheless something I feel is strong enough to well and truly hang around. I also think people will be reading it in a hundred years, and certainly watching it.
Twilight
Twilight has saturated its market, but that's something it can't grow much beyond. There is overflow of course, but nothing as substantial as in its target market. The end result will be, by and large, that the core of Twilight's market will grow out of it. I'd already seen it begin to happen when I was a bookseller. What could have arrested such a thing would have been high quality movies, and a well developed genre populated by many authors staying true to their genre but doing different things. Unfortunately, neither of these are in place. Consequently, and egged on by the crass commercialisation of Twilight through everything from towels, T-shirts to broaches and more, I think the market is far more likely to burn itself out than last. There will be resurgences in coming decades, but in the end, without having a broad base to appeal to, it will not be around in a hundred years, not in any meaningful way. Twilight may seem as quaint then as the fiction genre of yesteryear, the Western. If anyone remembers it.
Obviously, no one can say for sure what will be read in a hundred years, but that doesn't mean that we can't try and make an educated guess (or that I can't simply make a fool of myself). What I have tried to do is use my knowledge of what people read and why, and then apply the above question to these three series. In the end it comes down to whether something has broad appeal, a certain level of quality and back up. But all of this is also subject to the fickleness of human nature, literary fashion and even pop culture.
Good reading.
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