THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE SUCCESSFUL – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

I began this debate a couple of weeks ago with a discussion about the relative merits of Harper Lee’s latest release, GO SET A WATCHMAN, and its more famous antecedent, TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD (see below, dated 31 August). I’m not proposing to reprise that argument now but I did put forward the suggestion that while one was ‘good’ and the other ‘bad’, they were both ‘successful’. And if that sounds like a conundrum to you, what I thought we’d do this week is explore things a little bit further and see if we can make some sense out of it.

Firstly, what do we mean by ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Well, please excuse the pun, but that’s literally a matter of opinion. Judging the merits of a book is a subjective exercise and there can be no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about it – we’re relying on someone’s personal point of view. So who decides what’s good and what’s bad and whose point of view are we relying on? You’d think that the best place to start would be with the critics. This elite band has had the benefit of a literary education (or so we assume) and they’re therefore in the ideal position to decide. But I don’t always agree with them - and they don’t always agree amongst themselves (although in the case of GO SET A WATCHMAN, they seem to be fairly unanimous).

Prior to the introduction of the internet and the spread of social media, the critics were the sole (independent) arbiters of literary opinion. Now there’s another set of judges on the scene – the reading public – and through the review system on the likes of Amazon and Goodreads, we get a completely different perspective. Is that any better? In my view, no, it’s not and I think the review system is fundamentally flawed. In a world where three of the five stars available suggest a book is ‘good’, one says it’s ‘ok’ and only one points towards ‘bad’, there’s an inbuilt tendency to over-rate. Added to which is our general reluctance to be critical. This is especially the case for low-ranking and self-published authors who only ever sell in small numbers and are not exposed to the reading public at large. The ratings they gather will inevitably come from friends and family – and we all know what they’re going to say. So we find ourselves in a position where BERTIE THE BULLDOG, written by a complete amateur for his darling niece and published online without the benefit of any editing or spelling corrections, gets a solid five stars from Grannie, Grandpa and the milkman whereas GO SET A WATCHMAN gets rated with a measly one because they didn’t like what Harper Lee did to Atticus Finch. And she’s a Pulitzer Prize winning author for goodness sake! That’s not to say BERTIE THE BULLDOG isn’t a ‘good’ book (or that GO SET A WATCHMAN isn’t a ‘bad’ one) – it’s just that I don’t trust the rating system. I know of one self-pubbed author for instance whose book has garnered 57 reviews on Amazon, 46 of which are 5 stars, 10 are 4 stars and 1 is a 3 star (what a misery that last one must be!). He must have an awful lot of friends - even THE GREAT GATSBY doesn’t get numbers that good.

So if we don’t agree with the critics and we don’t trust Amazon reviews, who can we look to for guidance? Many moons ago, when I was an up and coming manager and on the Junior Board of Directors of a well-known industrial company, I was privy to pearls of wisdom dropped from on high. One of these compared a business to a three-legged stool in as much as it needed employees, customers and shareholders in order to survive – if one of them went missing, the stool fell over and the business went down with it. There’s a similar comparison to be made in the publishing industry. A book (be it ‘good’ or ‘bad’) needs an author, a readership and a publisher - without any one of these, nothing much will happen. I think we should discard author’s opinions (for obvious reasons) and we’ve heard from the readers - so what do the publishers have to say in all this?

This is the area where ‘good’ and ‘bad’ start to become muddled with ‘successful’. A publisher isn’t interested in whether a book is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ from the literary point of view, only how that might impinge on its success. On the basis that bad publicity is better than no publicity, some publishers might even welcome it as a means of provoking more sales. (Brief aside : The other week one of the red-tops ran a lead story on how Celebrity Big Brother was in huge trouble because there was a catfight dust-up between two of its female contestants. There’ll be a lot of people watching that on Saturday night, I thought. I’ll bet their publicist got a bonus). Take GREY for example, the latest in the Fifty Shades series. If you read the critics (when they can bring themselves to talk about it) it’s the worst book ever written in the English language. Are the publishers worried? Far from it. The readers (courtesy of Amazon reviews) have rated it with an average of 4.1 stars. And since there were over 5000 of them the last time I looked, they can’t all be E.L.James’ family and friends. It’s phenomenally successful. I can vouch for that. I had the misfortune to be doing a book signing the week GREY came out. Every few minutes someone came into the shop to buy a book – but nobody wanted to talk to me, they all went straight for the shelf with GREY on it.

On the other hand, A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING has won countless plaudits from the critics – they’ve been tripping over themselves to tell us how good it is. It’s also won a number of literary prizes. But the majority of the reading public hate it. For a book of its supposed stature it has a meagre 174 Amazon reviews and the number of 1 star ratings exceeds the number of 5s. From the publisher’s point of view, it’s probably a turkey – all of which goes to suggest that critical acclaim (or lack of it) is no guide to success.

And while I’m on the subject… One thing I noticed about GREY was the lack of endorsements on the cover. Understandable I suppose, as no one with any kind of literary reputation would ever want to admit to even reading it, let alone bring themselves to say anything nice about it. That’s an exception. Most books have some kind of sales pitch to help them along. This often comes in the form of a friendly comment from another author. Take the books in The Richard and Judy Book Club for example. Being in a WH Smith’s bookshop most Saturdays, I get to be familiar with their latest offerings and it came to my attention how the author of one of their books would often show up as endorsing the book of another. Hmm… Sometimes their comments were really incisive, such as ‘Captivating’ or ‘Heart-warming’ or even (wait for it) ‘Unput-downable’. They must have used a lot of grey cells thinking that up. As for bad comments – well, there simply aren’t going to be any.

Here’s another thing you’ll often see on a book cover – ‘Number One Bestseller’. What does that mean for goodness sake? Where? When? Over what period of time? And by whose authority? Without some form of context it’s an entirely meaningless claim. Every time I go into a bookshop to do a book signing, my book is a Number One Bestseller – on the day, in that bookshop (ok so I lost out once to GREY but hey, 99 times out of 100 ain’t bad. 98 times actually. Back in February I did a book signing in Waterstones in Bradford where they have a café and their top-selling item for the day was cake. I still claimed victory). So does this mean I should I be putting ‘Number One Bestseller’ on the cover of my books? Probably not. Statements like these are not intended to help you decide whether a book is a ‘good’ one or not – they’re there to try and persuade you to buy it and thereby make the book successful. And by the way, one good thing about ‘successful’ is that at least it’s objective – we can measure it and know where we stand.

So where does all this get us? Are we anywhere nearer to being able to decide whether a book is ‘good’ or ‘bad’? The critics can be divided and are often out of step with the public. The public consistently over-rate books by means of a flawed rating system and are often out of step with the critics. The publishers only want to tell us a book is ‘good’ because they want us to buy it. Small wonder then that when we do we often end up disappointed and feeling mislead.

Let me leave you with a few final thoughts. As an author, ask yourself these questions.
1. Would you rather write a ‘good’ book or a ‘bad’ book? (On the face of it, that’s a no-brainer – but is it?)
2. If you had the choice (chance would be a fine thing) would you rather be rated ‘good’ by the critics and ‘bad’ by the public or ‘good’ by the public and ‘bad’ by the critics?
3. Would you rather write a ‘good’ book or a ‘successful’ one?

Any the wiser? No? Welcome to the world of publishing.