Dear Mike (if I may), I've just finished reading Stupid White Men. A tour-de-force: I was amused, shocked and outraged in pretty much all the right places. With one exception... ...But I'm not going to tell you about it. I did intend to, but after your Good Friday message, I thought maybe the last thing you needed was criticism. (I'm sure you're tough enough to take it, but there's a time and place for everything.) As an author, I sympathise with you in every way - especially about this business of delaying publication of books. I mean, how would the people who make these lousy decisions feel if their CEO told them, "Well, things aren't quite how we'd like them to be at the present time, so you're going to have to do without your salary for the next six months. Sorry about that." I mean, WHAT? There is an abiding, universal problem with PUBLISHER LOGIC. Let's just pick apart your situation and analyse it. Okay, so HarperCollins' stated reason (which you don't dispute) for sustaining its embargo on Stupid White Men for four months was that, with Dubya riding high on the scoreboard, the market wouldn't be right for a book which tears him to pieces. Oh-kay. Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that (don't laugh) 80 percent of the US electorate really does "approve" of Bush, then let's do some arithmetic. An 80 percent approval rating implies a remainder of 20 percent who DISAPPROVE. (By the way, in order to disagree with the premise of a poll, you MUST have a strong interest in it, together with a degree of political awareness; conversely, 'approving' of a president can range from "Yes, I approve of Mr Bush, because of A, B and C" to "Errr, I dunno ... Yeah, I guess I ain't got no problem". So our 20 percent is a proportionately stronger group.) Okay, 20 percent of the US electorate - call it 20 million (just for the sake of argument - I'm sure it must be more). If we add in HarperCollins' print-run of 50,000 copies, we've got some starting figures: 1) HarperCollins has to sell 50,000 copies of an anti-Bush book. 2) They have a potential market of AT LEAST 20 million people who AT THE VERY LEAST "disapprove" of Dubya. 3) In order to sell through their entire print-run, only one in 400 (or 0.25 percent) of their potential market needs to buy the book. 400:1 in favour of any proposition is, by any sane person's measure, pretty good odds. 4) HarperCollins concludes that the market is too hostile and decides to delay publication. The trouble is, you and I think according to a process called LOGIC, which was invented in ancient Greece thousands of years ago and has been honed and perfected ever since by some of the finest minds. Marketing people and publishers, however - and especially MARKETING PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR PUBLISHERS - think according to a process of logic invented ... where? Somewhere in orbit around Planet Bob, for all I know - dusted down last week and marinated overnight in Pepto-Bismol. Saving your patience, another example - me. I've had four novels published here in Britain. My agent has tried repeatedly to "break me" (ouch) in America, and consistently failed. It's not that New York publishers dislike my books. On the whole, the verdict has been positive. However... "I liked this book a lot, but I won't buy it because it's not right for an American audience..." AROOGAH!! BOB ALERT!! Excuse me, Mr Publisher, but aren't YOU American? And you liked the book, right? If you'd bought a copy, you wouldn't have regretted your purchase. Of course, you may have a rational reason for your decision, but the only one I can think of is that you, a Great American Publisher, have a taste for books which NO OTHER AMERICAN would like. Isn't that something of a professional handicap? Shouldn't you perhaps be fired? Hell no - you're only speaking from the autocue zapped straight into your brain direct from Planet Bob. And it's not only in America. My own publisher, Hodder-Headline, experiences a triple hernia every time it contemplates trying to market one of my novels, because the books have (don't laugh) "lots of IDEAS in them". The result inside the marketing department is usually TERMINAL SEIZURE followed by coma. You'd never guess that people who actually READ my books almost always enjoy them hugely (including the people clutching their guts in agony at the idea of MARKETING them). BOB LOGIC is also thriving in the movie industry (I suspect Hollywood was its point of entry when it first hit Earth). When the Harry Potter movie came out, it was released in Britain under the original title - Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone. The American studio, though, decided to release it in the US as Harry Potter And The SORCERER'S Stone - because NOT ENOUGH AMERICANS WOULD KNOW WHAT A PHILOSOPHER IS. Again, there could be a rational basis for this. The British press certainly thought so. "American movie-goers - stupidity hits new low,' they chortled. Perhaps this is the consequence of your crumbling public school system. Hell, maybe it's DELIBERATE POLICY. "Jeez, Dick, what does the USA want with PHILOSOPHY fer Chrissake? Is Kant gonna help our citizens chisel their tax returns? Is Neetchy gonna help a kid flip those burgers any faster? Hell no. Our high school kids are gonna learn USEFUL shit, like how to spot a SORCERER at fifty paces." (Maybe they should have introduced this kind of teaching a couple of generations ago - if America had been better informed about sorcerers, they might have been more prepared for those guys who put a half-million majority in the cauldron and turned it into a DEFEAT for Gore.) But of course it's not rational. The majority of Americans know perfectly well what a philosopher is (and most of the rest probably have at least a hazy idea). No, it's BOB LOGIC, and it makes NO SENSE. The closest I can come to a BOB THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE is this: Marketing means getting the BIGGEST POSSIBLE AUDIENCE for your painstakingly cheesy piece of whatever; If there's a chance that SOME people, SOMEWHERE (Buck and Mabel across the street, say) will be PUT OFF your product by, say, the way it smells, or the way it sounds, or the COLOUR, you have FAILED TO MAXIMISE YOUR MARKET. In Bobthink, an unresolvable subroutine ensues, leading to flickering lights, black smoke and sparks, followed immediately by TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF ALL THOUGHT PROCESSES. You and I know Buck and Mabel wouldn't have bought the product anyway, whatever colour it was, but BOB KNOWS DIFFERENT. Anyway, that's my rant. I'd like to say once more how much I enjoyed your book (this prose style is fun to write, as well as read), except for that one gripe, which I'm certainly not going to bring up now... Actually, there was one other problem - the parts about the Florida ballot. Call me infantile, but I found I could only take those passages 99 percent seriously. I couldn't prevent myself smiling whenever I read the word "Floridian". Say it softly to yourself - doesn't it sound like it belongs in microbiology? Or maybe sci-fi. "Oh my god, the Floridians are coming!" (Maybe they're the ones who brought Bobthink to Earth.) "Have you seen their leader, Jeboosh? He's got antimatter voting machines." Only in America. Yours with very best regards. Jeremy Dronfield Author ... Er, that's it. Author. Oh - Dog Owner. Transmitted from the United Scam of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Copyright ©2002 Jeremy Dronfield | |
