These pictures seemed apt with the following talk of heat and light. Thanks to Rich, my glassblower brother for letting me snap his glassworks.
Just a quick blog today, since it’s a bank holiday here and I’ve only been out of my pit for approximately three minutes.
The Observer’s literary editor, Robert McCrum, who stood down this month after ten years, has written an interesting article ‘Ten years that changed the world of books,’ where he talks about Amazon, book festivals, the kindle, and even ‘Blogs vs Reviewing.’ Excitingly, he says: ‘Now these book blogs – in Britain, for example, a highly responsible site like Vulpes Libris – could take over and hand the power back to – time honoured term – the Common Reader.’
He also says, however, that ‘My view is that the Common Reader generates more heat than light.’
In crass capitalistic style, I couldn’t help but wonder if ‘light’ sells more books than ‘heat’ sells?
And who exactly is the Common Reader? Is it me?- a reader of litfic, chicklit and Andy McNab? Is it my dad? – who reads mostly non-fiction and Tom Clancy? Or maybe it’s my college friend, who reads poetry and erotic thrillers?
Does the Common Reader even have a specific taste, or do they read pretty much whatever comes to their attention? My colleague, Mary, wrote an article ‘Too much of a good thing?’ which contended that there were too many books being published. A commenter on the piece, Jim Murdoch, made the interesting point:
The ease with which one can get a book into print now is a real problem because of the lack of proper editorial control so we are awash with books and how does one tell the good from the bad? So, what do most readers do when faced with a mountain of books? They pick from the outside, from what they can get to with ease.
So where does that leave a small new publisher of literary fiction like Two Ravens Press? Richard and Judy, Tesco and Waterstone’s 3for2s would certainly make these books accessible, but R&J is as available as the holy grail and Tesco and the 3for2s could also be thought of as problematic because of high discounting. Which leaves what? Perhaps word of mouth generated by newspaper reviews and book blog reviews, and the resulting heat of that elusive creature, the Common Reader?
Lisa Glass blogs as part of the Vulpes Libris (Book Fox) collective. Her novel, Prince Rupert’s Teardrop, is out in paperback now.
