At Kirkus: The Trickle-Down Effect of Genre Bookselling

My latest column on Kirkus Reviews combines a couple of things that I’ve been looking to talk about for a while now: how did major changes in the bookselling industry change how books were being written and sold to publishers?

There was a bit of a convergence of topics here. Last week, I looked at the rise of paperback publishing and how that impacted the SF world. This week was a bit of an extension of that, looking at the effects of a paperback boom on authors. At the same time, there were a number of other things happening in the bookselling world: bookstores were rapidly changing as major chain stores rose out of suburban shopping malls, while the paperback boom ended, killing a lot of careers.

Paradoxically, we see some of the genre’s best known authors doing exceptionally well for themselves as the 1980s progressed: authors such as Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke each made millions on their new books, due in part to the way books were sold in the new stores.

Go read The Trickle-Down Effect of Genre Bookselling over on Kirkus Reviews.