Well, Big Publishing did it again. With the merge of Penguin and Random
House, the powers that be decided there were too many cozy mysteries on the
market. Now it’s slash & burn time as authors find their series
discontinued.
I’m having déjà vu. In the 90’s, as I was finishing my first Christy
Bristol mystery, the bottom fell out of the mystery genre. All the houses were
cutting out one mystery line and retaining only the top selling authors.
Midlist authors were abandoned.
People stepped up to the plate and created independent houses. With
print-on-demand technology and computers, anyone could be a publisher. Amazon
gave validity to ebooks and self-published authors.
I have felt the cozy market was saturated. Every hobby has a mystery,
everyone is an amateur detective with a law enforcement boyfriend or ex.
Authors were even assigned subject matter. The main readers are women. Perhaps
this is an effort to give hard-boiled mysteries a stronger market. Men who
write them already make more money.
If you love mysteries, there are things you can do: follow authors you
love on their Facebook page, webpages, blogs and twitter. Subscribe to their
newsletters. Pre-order your books—first week sales are important. And complain!
Let Random House know how you feel. Here’s the link:
(Editor's Note: Great and timely article, Sunny. And another thing we should all do, whenever we finish reading a book we enjoyed, go on Amazon and write a review.)
