Monday, November 29, 2010

Mediocrity sells, sometimes

I was wandering through the romance section on Amazon yesterday and came across an erotica with a rather silly title. I downloaded the sample, and it was really terrible-- the writing was like something a teenager might have written, if she'd never taken an English class. I mean, we're talking lack of commas, random capitalization, short, choppy sentences, telling rather than showing... pretty much bad writing all around.

Anyway, I looked it up on B&N today and noticed that it's in the high hundreds, rankingswise. Wow. Just... wow. I can't imagine taking a look at this sample and deciding to pay $2.99 for the book. I have to admit that when really, really terrible stuff does well, it annoys me-- I'd like to think that the good stuff rises to the top, but I guess sometimes the bad stuff rises, too. Maybe it's petty of me to be annoyed, but maybe it's a bit of self-interest, too; I honestly hate for people to think of books like this when they think of indie publishing.

I am intrigued to know why it's doing so well, though. I shall Google and try to figure out what the author's secret is. There must be some reason it sells!

3 comments:

  1. I hope you come back and tell us what you find out. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't tell why it's selling, honestly. I don't even see a website for this writer. I do see that she listed (erotica, sexy) in her title. Maybe people just go for that, but it seems like you'd at least try the sample, and that most people wouldn't buy it if they tried it first. It does have a few bad reviews (one called it the worst book she'd ever read and said that her third grader writes better. Ouch!). But it's still highly ranked in the B&N store. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete