Galleycat, one of my favorite lit-oriented blogs, has an interesting entry today about how some authors who are big hits here in the US are curiously under-selling in the United Kingdom – and vice-versa – and why that might be. The examples hauled up are Diane Setterfield, whose The Thirteenth Tale is a big seller here in the US but has sold only modestly in Britain, and Martina Cole, who is huge in the UK but unknown here. Clearly there are folks who are successful on both sides of the Atlantic – a certain JK Rowling comes to mind – but I can certainly think of a number of authors whose fame and fortune is not evenly distributed on both sides of the drink.
This topic is of slightly more than passing interest for me because my novel Old Man’s War is going to have its official UK release this June; it was available as an import before then, but this will be the first time the book is widely distributed in Great Britain and Ireland. It will be interesting to see if it does as well there as it’s been doing here. Naturally, I hope so; my daughter needs a college education. And shoes. And a pony! All right, maybe not so much with the pony.
You need to be logged in to post a comment. Go sign in now.