David Blum's piece on why Joshua Ferris's debut novel Then We Came to the End didn't become a NYT bestseller immediately following front-page NYTBR coverage irritates me. For all the reasons Sarah Weinman at Galleycat mentions. Sarah says it better than I & she's far more versed in the ways and means of the publishing world, so I leave the heft of the commentary to her.
However. Oh, however. I simply cannot let this slide:
"In the case of Little Brown and Mr. Ferris, some attention to the novel's cumbersome title might have helped. Was "Then We Came to the End" really the best title for this wonderful novel? I doubt it. By allowing his impossible-to-remember title to remain on the book, everyone involved willfully ignored the pragmatic truths of the 2007 literary marketplace: Sometimes the catchier title wins."
Cumbersome title? Impossible to remember? This is the reason it isn't a bestseller? How many booksellers did Blum visit? One Barnes & Noble in which the employees hadn't read the review, didn't know the title and didn't know where to find it (no slam against the B and the N, but I've never found the staff there to know much of, well, anything)? Let us revisit, for a moment, a few seemingly more memorable (they made the list after all) but longer (one has to assume this is what Blum means as the words of Ferris's title aren't difficult to spell or understand) titles that have graced the NYT best-seller list:
- The Yiddish Policeman's Union - I love Chabon, but come on. By Blum's standards this book would never have sold. Yiddish + Policeman + Union? Impossible combination to remember!
- Special Topics in Calamity Physics -- Do readers even know how to pronounce Calamity? Especially when it precedes a douzy like Physics?
- The Bonfire of the Vanities -- So many words, I'm not sure how this ever sold. What is a Bonfire? A Vanity?
- I Know This Much Is True - How to remember a title with six words?
Why isn't Blum talking about the bookstore staff here? How have they escaped scrutiny? I guarantee you that most independent booksellers across the country know the name of Ferris's book and have at least read the NYTBR review. If they've read the book, they hand-sell it if they loved it. Even if they didn't love it, they hand-sell it to the readers they suspect might love it more than they did. The real shame (other than the obvious shame of readers not finding Ferris's book, which is excellent and which has, I believe, one of the funnier and better titles, but that's just me) is the loss of so many great independent bookstores in the past few years.
I do not pretend to be an industry insider. I do not wish to paint myself as the gal who knows the inner workings of it all...and I certainly don't think that the loss of independent bookstores is the only factor in the far-more-complicated puzzle of book economics (see also the issue of hardcover vs. paperback)...but come on. To leave the consolidation of bookstores unexamined when flinging words around like "cumbersome titles, impossible to remember" is, well, not telling the whole story. Book sales and the coveted NYT bestseller list may forever be different because of all the outstanding independent bookstores and well-informed staff that no longer exist, that can no longer guide an unknowing customer to a book they've just finished and loved. B&N staff can, however, easily direct you to The Secret. (Must be the short title, eh?)
