(no subject)

[supergee]

One sometimes hears that books become bestsellers because they're shallow and ill-written. So why don't all the shallow, ill-written books in the slush piles sell? It seems obvious to me that the only way a book can succeed (in the marketplace, as a cult favorite, as an academic cult favorite a work of serious literature) is to do something right, though in some cases it's incompatible with literary values. Jo Walton applies this sort of thinking to a Hornblower in Space book.