Cash Versus Creativity

Auckland-raised author Fay Weldon mourns the death of literary creativity in a passionate column for The Times. “Time was when popularity was the mark of artistic failure,” she complains, “These days it’s the other way round. ‘Bestseller’ betokens artistic success … A ‘good’ book is, by inference, an easy book. A ‘good’ book is one that sells.” Weldon blames the dominance of marketing over editorial departments, the rise of the sequel and prequel, and the rumoured control large bookselling chains have over publishing houses for what she terms the “tyranny of the bestsellers.” A version of the same article also appeared in the Royal Society of Literature Review.