The Sky Is Falling, The World Is Ending

Yesterday Dorchester Publishing, the publisher of horror line Leisure books, announced they will no longer be producing mass market paperbacks, instead publishing their titles as e-books and print-on-demand, with some books eventually appearing as trade paperbacks. Reaction has been frenetic, to say the least. 95 percent of the comments are some variant of “this is the end of everything”, while the other 5 percent are fairly gleeful (this 5 percent is made up of some small press publishers who believe this means they have vanquished an enemy and some authors who were rejected or dropped by Leisure and are enjoying the revenge). Everyone has an opinion, and I’m here to tell you what sort of supplies and weapons you should stock now that the apocalypse is here…

No, actually I’m here to say “Don’t panic.”

I enjoyed Leisure Books, well enough to be a subscriber. The low price for home delivery made it cost-effective to try new authors, and some of the books they published were pretty good. I’m not the e-reader type, either, probably because I’m too old to embrace new technology, although I do think the CD is going to replace vinyl. I enjoyed all those paperback horror lines of the 80s and early 90s, too, though, the Signet and Berkeley and Zebra and so on, and I survived their passing without having to live in a bunker. Maybe it is the end of the book era, but that is a lot to lay on the passing of a publisher known more for the quantity of titles they published (24 a year, huge in today’s market) than for their actual sales. It’s hard to know exactly what their sales were, since that is usually proprietary information, but it’s a safe bet the top Leisure titles didn’t equal a bad day for the Harry Potter books.

As I’ve said before, the horror genre of storytelling goes back as far as there are records. Both Beowulf and Odysseus battled monsters, and still do on the printed page today. It is safe to say that there is still a basic human desire for what we call horror, and horror stories are not going away. There is still a question as to what format these stories will be printed in, but it is still too early to tell and speculation is rampant. (For those who see the e-readers as Satan, you might be heartened to know that some tech people are predicting e-readers such as Kindle and Nook will be obsolete themselves in a year, driven out of the market by the tablet-sized readers).

Leisure’s departure from the mass market paperback market leaves a hole, one that another publisher may at least partially fill. Leisure titles may not have been block-busters, but they did produce some sales, and other publishers will be considering whether it is worth the investment to move into the void. Perhaps Leisure published too many titles a year, and could have been more profitable by concentrating efforts on fewer, quality titles. Perhaps more promotion would have helped. Perhaps Dorchester is being laid low not by poor sales as much as internal problems. Time will tell. I'm certainly not implying, by the way, that this may not be a hardship for authors who depend on Leisure for income, and I am sorry for them.

My prediction is this: If there still exists a market for mass-produced paperback horror, then sooner rather than later another publisher will take advantage of it. If there isn’t such a market any more, well, that sucks, but the makers of buggy whips and vacuum tubes feel our pain.

So, stay calm, and remember the aluminum foil has to be at least three sheets thick in your hat to protect you.
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Sometimes It's The Little Things

Recently I’ve been kind of depressed about the state of the written horror genre. Not the economic aspects of it, that’s more of a problem for those who have to eke out a living from it, but prevailing attitudes of many of those who constitute the bulk of its community. The small presses, for a long time a vital part, seem to be imploding under bad business practices, and a common delusion that the packaging of a book is more important than its content. Incestuous little groups of amateurs who have achieved success by shrinking the world to their own group and becoming the principle consumers of each other’s work. “Professional” authors with only a small credit or two who feel compelled to share with the world the secrets of their writing habits or how to attract their “muse”, even if the world doesn’t care. A seemingly endless stream of bad zombie novels, imitative of the few good ones at best, borderline illiterate at worst.

I’ve loved horror fiction all of my reading life, but the willingness to devote time to anything but good writing has pushed me near the point of chucking it in.

Tuesday, as I posted here, was the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Karl Edward Wagner, a great writer, editor and enthusiast in the genre, who does not have the appreciation he deserves. This intensified my feelings of dissociation from horror, as it seemed to represent the decline and decay of the field. In addition to my post here, I started a remembrance thread at Brian Keene’s message board, The Keenedom. I really didn’t expect much of it. I thought it would be mostly ignored except for a couple of friends of mine who I knew were also his fans, or that people would ask who he was. A thread a while back on another message board had elicited the infuriating comment “He was nothing but a drunk.”

A funny thing happened, though. Some people who I respect, including some who rarely post, came out of the woodwork to express their thoughts, including some very good writers like Keene himself, Ed Gorman, Norman Partridge, and J.F. Gonzalez. Many of them had known Wagner and talked of their personal experiences. The thread became a small virtual community, which is what message boards aspire to, but rarely achieve.

It may sound strange, but the response to the memorial thread has gone a long way to improve my state of mind in regards to this horror thing of ours. Yes, there are many writers, readers and publishers who are complete nabobs. But in the hidden heart of horror, there are still those who appreciate those talented people who sweat blood to wring out that one soaring turn of phrase after another to elevate their stories into something that can affect you in profound ways, and do so for an hourly wage that would make a grocery store cashier blanch. And as long as this heart remains healthy, I feel a new confidence the genre will remain as un-dying as many of the creatures who live in it.
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Government Ratings For E-Books?

Lately, there has been a lot of blather in some portions of the small press about how print is on its way out, the future is going to be digital e-books, etc., etc. While I disagree with this, it does seem likely that e-books will become much more common, with readers such as the Kindle and others catching on more than other attempts in the past, and it probably will be a mechanism for generating some quick cash for a few authors.

With that in mind, here's a cautionary note: Congress is now contemplating establishing a rating system that would govern all forms of electronic media (and possibly some non-electronic forms), with the usual justification of "protecting the children." Given that a large portion of the genre output of today tends toward the extreme in sex and/or violence, this has the potential to be a fairly chilling device toward the expansion of e-books.

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid about the government trying to grab a little more control. For a more balanced and intelligent analysis, click here.
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Everybody Hates Remakes

Yet another of my pointless rants against the anti-remake crowd.

I’ve been seeing a lot of statements lately to the effect of “They keep making dumb remakes and sequels when ________ (name of book) would make a great movie.” Even though filming ___________ would be impossible or would cost $600 million because of special effects shots. I can commiserate to an extent with this sentiment, since I am always reading a novel and thinking “This would make a great movie, even if the special-effects shot of the giant slug eating Philadelphia would be cost-prohibitive.”

But the idea the latest remake or sequel took the place of a movie version of one of your beloved books is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Movie production is not a zero-sum game. If Friday the 13th doesn’t get remade, it doesn’t mean the studio automatically has to make another horror movie in its place. They allocated the funds to make Friday the 13th because they believed the name had a certain amount of marketability (and because they made money with the similar Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes remakes). So don’t blame the latest remake for the fact there hasn’t been a big-budget version of Bunnicula, The Vampire Bunny.

I realize I’m tilting at windmills here.
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