By Vivek Shukla
New Delhi: Remember the breathtaking crime novels like The Woman in White: W. Collins,Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Silence of the Lambs : Thomas Harris The Maltese Falcon : Dashiell Hammett,The Spy Who Came in From the Cold : John Le Carre,The Day of the Jackal : Frederick Forsyth, Murder on the Orient Express : Agatha Christie. They were all part of our childhood memories. However, the tragic thing is that now no great crime and mystery novels are hitting the book stands.
Is crime and mystery fiction a dying genre ? It looks if the poor demand for such stuff is any indication. It’s been happening for a while now. Those from the world of publication say with authority that there are not many takers for crime novels. Moreover,more and more authors are finding it harder than ever to get book contracts, to publish new titles in an ongoing series or even to get published at all.
A sales executive of Ram Gopal Sharma book shop of capital`s Shanker Market says that there was a time when readers throng us either for buying or taking crime novels on rent. Now no great novel is coming to us. Hence, readers are not coming. Moreover, there is a decline of reading habits.
According to Baldev Verma, veteran of publishing world. One major fault is the 3-strikes rule in publishing. This states that before ordering a book by any author, no matter how established, well-known, well-loved or otherwise, the executive in charge of ordering must check the author’s previous sales. If the sales of the past three books are declining, then that author is stricken off the order list for good. End of career.
If the author has published two books and the sales of the second one were less than the first, same story.If the author published only one book earlier and that sold badly, ditto. And as for what constitutes bad sales, well, anything less than a fast turnover is bad in today’s quick-sell retail biz where inventory and shelf space costs more than the actual profit earned on any book. In short, it doesn’t matter if the book is a classic and is bound to sell in time, it has to sell fast and even the definition of fast is getting crunched year after year. Three weeks is about the maximum time that a book is allowed to stay on a book chain store shelf now, and that’s only if the book has been heavily promoted by the publisher and distributor.
Author Pratap sehgal says that the other problem with crime or mystery fiction is that they usually feature a series detective and it takes a long time to build a new series up successfully. Before, publishers were willing to wait a decade or more to build an author’s sales with a series.
On the other hand, while mystery and crime have dwindled and are on their last legs, publishing-wise, thrillers have flourished. In fact, thrillers and women’s thrillers in particular are where the readership has gone.