The Book Thief and Crossover Sales

2009-03-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

The book club that I belong to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak back in January. It was a brilliant book. The story of Liesel Meminger's life told by the point of view of Death during World War II. I could gush about how much I loved this book and why I loved it so much (it made my cry twice, there I said it), but that is no the point of this entry.

I think the publisher, Knopf (a division of Random House) , has missed a huge opportunity to really sell this book. The book retails for $11.99 in paper, and it can be located in most children's book departments. This in itself is fantastic, I think teens should read this book, it has a lot to say. Though, I am wondering where the adult version of this book is. How many adults will read this book if it is surrounded by other teen books? I know from talking to the manager at the Mequon location of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops that the continued strength in sales of this book lies in adults picking it up for book clubs. So, where is the adult version? One that has french flaps and cut pages? One that retails for a better price, say $14.99? The book completely deserves it.

Let's take a look at a book that did this in reverse, the Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Though, I will admit I have never read this book, I was working in books when it came out, and it sold in the hundreds and hundreds, and quite possibly the thousands. The book came out as an adult book in hardcover, than came out in a trade paper version retailing at $15.00. It could have done wonderful there and never changed a thing about it, but Harcourt (now of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) went out and decided to publish a teen version to capture crossover sales. The teen version came out at $8.99, the same book with a new cover and trim size. They both appeared to have done well as a pair, as they have been in print together for the past 5 years, and they are both staples to a bookshops core back list.

I think in this market, where it seems to be getting harder and harder to have a book really sell over any lengthy period of time, where it seems to be the norm nowadays for books to have only a month or two to catch on before they are dumped as failures, that if a book is really working, capturing imaginations of both the young and old (think of the Harry Potter phenomenon) that the publisher should do everything they can to cross the book over. I have no idea if they have two versions in England, but I do know that The Book Thief is shelved in the adult ficiton section, I would hope they have a teen version there as well.

Simmons Delivers His Best Yet, Drood

2009-01-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I am really, really late on writing something about the new Dan Simmons book Drood (I can hear Daniel saying that I am not helping one of my all-time favorite writers in getting the word out). That said, I think it is never too late. I loved Drood. This book has atmosphere, the dark foreboding type of atmosphere that makes you feel the damp and wet air from mid-18th century London oozing through the pages. This book is perfectly bookended by Charles Dickens horrific train accident, where he narrowly escaped with his life, and on the other end is his sudden death exactly five years after the accident in 1870.

Told from the point of view of Wilkie Collins, he is writing this as a manuscript that is only to be read and 125 years after his death, Dickens fanatically tries to hunt down a mysterious figure he met at the accident, a man named Drood. It takes them to nightly forays into the London underground, opium dens, the slums, and a nice picnic lunch in a graveyard. Dickens becomes obsessive in his search. Collins begins to suspect Dickens of some heinous crimes, but he does not know if he can trust his own drug induced senses, as he drinks laudamum on a daily basis. He takes to following Dickens in the London streets or to his public readings, and Collins becomes jealous at a man who was more famous than him in their own time and afraid that it would always be so, even after their deaths. And, like in the Terror, Simmons once again shows himself a master storyteller in weaving historical and fictional events together to leave the reader in complete suspense. I got chills reading this book.

I warn you, reading this novel will make you want to read other books. I ended up reading both David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (I also talked so much about Drood at the office that Daniel formed our lunch-time classics reading group to read both books). While I know now that I am much more of a Collins fan than a Dickens fan, they both made me stand in awe of the book that is called Drood. Did I mention that I loved this book?

ON THE BACK PAGE

The Book Thief and Crossover Sales

Simmons Delivers His Best Yet, Drood