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Date Posted: Thu, June 15 2023, 19:21:09
Author: CindyG
Subject: QOTD for Friday, June 16, 2023

The following quote is from The Outlandish Companion, Volume 2 by Diana Gabaldon, Part Five, “Romance and the Written Word.” Copyright ©️2015 by Diana Gabaldon, all rights reserved.

“So one day my agent called and said, ‘Well, they’ve finally decided what to do with your book. The hardcover is no problem—it will just go up front with all the other hardcover fiction. But they think they’d like to sell the paperback as romance.’
‘As what?’ I said. By this time I’d read quite a lot of romance novels, and while a number of them were well written and a larger number enjoyable, I was pretty sure that wasn’t what I’d written. “‘ have two objections to that: one, I will never be reviewed by The New York Times. I can live with that, but, two, that will cut off the entire male half of my readership. Men see different things in the book than women do, and I don’t want to lose that.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said my (male) agent. ‘And we could insist that they publish it as science fiction or fantasy, because of the weird elements. But bear in mind that a bestseller in fantasy is fifty thousand in paperback—a bestseller in romance is five hundred thousand.’
‘You have a point,’ I said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Sell it as romance.’
Because, you see, my beloved editor had told me, ‘These have to be word-of-mouth books, because they’re too weird to describe to anybody.’
That being so, I reasoned, obviously it was better to expose the book to half a million readers who would all go out and tell their friends—who would, presumably, be able to draw their own conclusions as to what the book was or wasn’t—than to start with a tenth that number.”

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[> Like the old shampoo commercial, "And then they'll tell 2 friends, and THEY'll tell 2 friends..." And here we all are! -- DianaH, Fri, June 16 2023, 9:40:28


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