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| Hearsay: |
Are top novelists being rebranded to meet the purchasing habits of an embiggened sector of stupid readers? I propose we hold a contest here. It’s been awhile. And you probably all have Photoshop by now. So take your favourite literary novelist and “rebrand” one of their titles to appeal to more popular sectors: chicklit, thriller, romance, scifi/fantasy, celebrity kids book, etc. and I’ll post a selection of the winners online in a couple weeks.
At a meeting of alumni in her old Cambridge University college, Newnham, Dame Margaret suggested that she felt pressure from Penguin, to “rebrand” her fiction, The Independent has been told. At the discussion, alongside the novelist Sarah Dunant, she said: “I have had a weird feeling that I’m being dumbed down by my publishers and it’s interesting there’s an agenda of how it should be in the marketplace.”
Dame Margaret, 69, who takes over as chair of The Society of Authors, added: “I’m amazed they are even trying it on.”
Few would doubt Dame Margaret’s position in today’s literary firmament. In a career spanning more than 40 years, she has written 17 novels and seven works of non-fiction as well as earning a CBE. Dame Margaret, who turned up to discuss the state of literary culture with Ms Dunant, revealed to Ms Dunant she had had a tense conversation with her publishers: “She [Dame Margaret] … expressed the view that her publishers wanted to remarket her in some way, that there was some need not to let the work just stand on its own.
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October 7th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Oooh, the challenge is on.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Ingrid, you should have a handicap in this contest…….
October 7th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Okay, consider me handicapped. I don’t want to win anything – but this is just too tempting an exercise for me!
October 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Thank you, George, for the word “embiggened.”
October 7th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
is this really new? I have paperback editions of some great novels that are considered “classics” that have very racey,
sensationalist covers that are very funny in hindsight. The real danger notis so much in re-branding but when the changes
are made “between the covers”
If a lurid cover promising murder, incest, political assination and sex gets people to read Homer, I’m all for it.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Come on, the woman’s name is Drabble. She needs to be rebranded. Are we judging books by their covers now?
October 12th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Wow; it’s really sad that authors feel the need to dumb down what they write… but unfortunately, I can see their concern. It seems that, overall, people don’t want to have to read anything difficult or challenging. We are now so used to having our information fed to us so easily that having to work doesn’t seem as appealing to people. Sad, really.
Thanks for the thought provoking post.
- The Wandering Reader
October 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Wandering Reader – I didn’t read anything in the article about authors feeling the need to dumb down what they write…