Jason Pinter -- Official Website

Blog - The Man in Black

Necessary Reading from Michael Connelly

Read Connelly's article in the Los Angeles Times here.

James Phelan said...: Hey Jason,
Thanks for sharing this piece. Sadly, what Connelly writes is all too true and it's a world-wide problem. It does all come down to $, and newspapers, like 99% of publishers, will only print what will attract advertising.

I worked for a newspaper called The Age here in Melbourne, Australia, for six years - in both advertising and editorial. The argument that a section (or a mere few pages) may not attract much advertising but does attracts readers is something I've had countless times: and won. I created (rather re-created) a Saturday section by melding a 12 page literary section (with less than 5% advertising volume) into a lifestyle section that had closer to 40%. The result was we could keep those 12 literary pages as the section as a whole became more substantial and grew in ad volume overall. Five years down the road and it's still growing strong. Happy days.

In book publishing I can’t see the point of just publishing what sells in volume now (even though I am a volume selling thriller writer) and overlooking wonderful books that may not fly out the gate but will sell strong on backlist for the next 50-100 years. Look at Hollywood, someone like George Clooney can make his blockbusters and then go and make (relatively) small budget flicks that have to be made. There’s got to be a balance.

Okay, I’ll stop my rant now!

Cheers, and I like the blog.
JP; 8:06 PM