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A review by tony
Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction by John Sutherland
2.0
What is a best-seller? In many ways it’s a misnomer. [b:The Pilgrim's Progress|29797|The Pilgrim's Progress|John Bunyan|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388180479s/29797.jpg|1960084] has sold many more copies than [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1303252999s/968.jpg|2982101], but the critical difference is that the latter sold faster during a brief period. Identifying books as noteworthy primarily for selling quickly started out as largely an American phenomenon. Publishers in the US were proponents of stack-em-high-and-sell-em-cheap, with lurid covers and advertising to the public, long before the British joined in — for most of the 20th Century, book prices in the UK were fixed according to the Net Book Agreement, and most people got their books from libraries (to whom the majority of advertising was directed, through the trade press). The primary UK mass-market publisher, Penguin, believed it vulgar to even put pictures on the covers.
Eventually, however, the two markets largely homogenised, and barring a few interesting and informative differences, the top-selling charts from each country are remarkably similar these days — and, in both cases, largely dominated by big stars who can churn out a several-million-selling book every year or two. (Interestingly, the sales required to be the top seller each year have been consistently rising: the volume required to top the chart ten years ago would barely get you in the top 5 today.) Most are ephemeral: barely read at all a few years later (other than by fans catching up on their new favourite author’s prior work), and — unless they get turned into a movie — entirely forgotten within a few decades.
But, as a snapshot of a particular time, they’re highly revealing. Why were millions of people reading a particular book at a particular time?
This, however, is where this specific book goes awry. It makes this lofty claim — and then fails to deliver on it, instead painstakingly (for which read ‘painfully’) taking us through a hundred years of US and UK best-sellers, with a couple of sentences on each, largely devoid of anything interesting, let alone insightful.
At times this reads like a 19th Century anthropological study. Sutherland is sent into a world he doesn’t seem much to like, faithfully cataloging what he sees, but with no real understanding of it (other than the certainty that it’s inferior to his world). At times you can almost sense him pleading with the series editor: “I’ll gladly write about these books, but please please please don’t make me read any of the beastly things!”.
No matter how he looks at it, he can’t really come up with any plausible reason why people would read best-sellers rather than classics, other than irrationality — down largely to either susceptibility to advertising, or misplaced loyalty to an author or genre.
"Why, when reading is so private an activity, should people want, so simultaneously, the one ‘book of the day’?” he asks. There are many possible answers that a book supposedly all about the topic should really examine, but Sutherland seems largely at a loss. He can’t even seem to fathom, for example, that even though the reading itself might be private, people might actually want to be part of a wider conversation amongst other people who’ve read the same books.
For an introductory overview of the mass-market publishing industries in the UK and US over the past century or so, three stars. For insight into what the best-sellers actually tell us: one star.
Eventually, however, the two markets largely homogenised, and barring a few interesting and informative differences, the top-selling charts from each country are remarkably similar these days — and, in both cases, largely dominated by big stars who can churn out a several-million-selling book every year or two. (Interestingly, the sales required to be the top seller each year have been consistently rising: the volume required to top the chart ten years ago would barely get you in the top 5 today.) Most are ephemeral: barely read at all a few years later (other than by fans catching up on their new favourite author’s prior work), and — unless they get turned into a movie — entirely forgotten within a few decades.
But, as a snapshot of a particular time, they’re highly revealing. Why were millions of people reading a particular book at a particular time?
One can attempt to answer the puzzle by revisiting those years, recovering what one can of the Zeitgeist, and pondering the coincidence of factors – ideological, social, cultural, commercial – which led to the novel’s hitting that particular historical mark. The bestseller, regarded in this light, is a literary experiment that works, for its time. But, typically, only for its time. Regarded carefully, it can be seen to fit the period that gave it birth as a tailored glove fits the hand. Given their diversity, bestsellers can, but often don’t, repay close literary-critical attention. But for what they tell us about the host society in which, briefly, they came good, bestsellers are among the most informative literary-historical evidence available to us.
This, however, is where this specific book goes awry. It makes this lofty claim — and then fails to deliver on it, instead painstakingly (for which read ‘painfully’) taking us through a hundred years of US and UK best-sellers, with a couple of sentences on each, largely devoid of anything interesting, let alone insightful.
At times this reads like a 19th Century anthropological study. Sutherland is sent into a world he doesn’t seem much to like, faithfully cataloging what he sees, but with no real understanding of it (other than the certainty that it’s inferior to his world). At times you can almost sense him pleading with the series editor: “I’ll gladly write about these books, but please please please don’t make me read any of the beastly things!”.
No matter how he looks at it, he can’t really come up with any plausible reason why people would read best-sellers rather than classics, other than irrationality — down largely to either susceptibility to advertising, or misplaced loyalty to an author or genre.
"Why, when reading is so private an activity, should people want, so simultaneously, the one ‘book of the day’?” he asks. There are many possible answers that a book supposedly all about the topic should really examine, but Sutherland seems largely at a loss. He can’t even seem to fathom, for example, that even though the reading itself might be private, people might actually want to be part of a wider conversation amongst other people who’ve read the same books.
For an introductory overview of the mass-market publishing industries in the UK and US over the past century or so, three stars. For insight into what the best-sellers actually tell us: one star.