Several months ago, we posted a story about the debut of novelist Erin Morgenstern and her book, The Night Circus, which has been released, and which I have now gotten around to reading. When I wrote the initial article back in the summer, I was concerned about the way the publishing mavens (whom we call Gamemakers for their Capitol-esque approach) were manufacturing Morgenstern into their next cash cow. I was also amazed at all the hoopla surrounding the release of a book by a previously unpublished author, since such shenanigans are usually the norm for highly anticipated later installments of series like those of Rowling, Meyer, Riordan, and Collins. Yet, for her first novel (and it’s a stand-alone, not a series), Morgenstern got the whole bookstore-themes, entertainment, and costumed fans package we’ve come to expect from books 2, 4, or 7, rather than 1. Is the novel a magical must-read or the emperor’s new clothes? Follow me under the striped big top, and we’ll see.
Come One, Come All (Maybe) to Erin Morgenstern’s Debut novel, The Night Circus
Publishing Gamemakers Desperate to Conjure up Another Rowling
A recent Wall Street Journal article profiles newcomer author Erin Morgenstern, whose debut novel The Night Circus is due out next month. The article posits the question of how far publishers are willing to go to find something to replace the Harry Potter cash train they have been riding . Yet, in profiling Morgenstern, the WSJ (inadvertently, perhaps) reveals much about the way the machinery of the publishing industry resembles the Gamemakers of The Hunger Games, but without ever really noticing that the most popular books, like Hunger Games and Twilight are those which are not so much Harry copy-cats as those which draw on the “bag of tricks” used so adroitly by Rowling. Follow me after the jump for more observations on these paradoxes and more.
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