Here's why Fleming is dead wrong.
First, the sales increase is relatively modest, and any savvy publisher will admit, it is easy to "book" revenue that is not there, by publicity and in particular, Oprah's endorsement. As "A Million Little Pieces" shows, "booked sales" does not translate into revenues. Particularly when books get remaindered, unsold, and thus must be destroyed or sold at huge discounts, eventually finding their way onto balance sheets at times when it is more savvy to "take the medicine" of losses in one quarter.
Tellingly, no break-out of the 6.5 million sales of hardbacks for the trilogy combined is offered by country. When a report fails to break out the numbers, rest assured there is every incentive to hide bad numbers or news. It is a very good bet that most of the sales were in Germany, not the US. If you hit up most people in random US shopping malls, and asked them who Stieg Larsson was, or JK Rowling, or Stephanie Meyer, the latter two would get instant recognition, and the former none. Even given "Dragon Tattoo" most Americans would not have the foggiest notion of what the book was about. Dragons? Jessie James and Kat Von D from "LA Ink?" The phrases "Best-selling," "Swedish author" and "American audience" do not go together.
Next, the very fact that Larsson is the e-book champion, is telling. Who has e-readers, and thus can purchase e-books? Tween girls and their mothers, who flocked to Twilight? Kids under 14, who made JK Rowling the richest woman in England, more wealthy than the Queen? Nope. It is the glitteratti and wealthy, who are globally mobile, who crave e-books because the convenience and status-symbol dovetail nicely with finding it hard to get books in say, Dubai, or Singapore. The Kindle is $189 to $139, still a luxury to most hard-pressed consumers. While the Kindle has gotten better, and cheaper, it is still a niche market.
Mobile Opportunity, an excellent blog (go there and read the whole post) notes that:
Ebook usage is growing fast, but it's still small. Roughly 2% of American book buyers over age 13 are active ebook users, meaning they obtained an ebook or a reader device in the last year. About half of those were first-time ebook buyers, so the usage of ebooks has probably roughly doubled in the last year. BISG is doing multiple waves in the survey, and says it found a 25% increase in ebook usage just over the holiday season, so it was a pretty good Christmas (and Hanukah) for ebooks.
The most-used device for reading an ebook is a personal computer (47%). Amazon Kindle is number two (32%), followed by Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch (21%).
The other notes are that PC users still dwarf the dedicated e-readers, Apple is gaining share rapidly, but most of the sales seem casual, the best-selling e-book of all time is the Bible (don't expect Hollywood to remake the Ten Commandments any time soon), Apple users are younger and more male, Kindle users older and more female.
How many Kindles are really in use? As far as I can tell, Amazon hasn't released any Kindle device sales figures, other than a quote referring to "millions" of users. Several analysts have jumped on the use of the plural as evidence that at least two million Kindles have been sold. But I think the BISG survey doesn't support that. Here's my math:
--About 2% of book buyers have ebooks and/or ebook devices.
--About a third of them have Kindles (that's 0.67% of active book buyers).
--If 0.67% of book buyers in the US is two million people, then there are 300 million active book buyers in the US. That is the entire US population, including infants and people who don't like books. I don't know what the base of active book buyers is in the US, but my guess is it's not over 200 million, meaning the installed base of Kindles would be about 1.3 million.
It's tricky to play with survey results when the percentages are this small -- the margins of error become very significant. But for now I think the BISG survey raises some questions, and I'm not willing to accept the two million figure for the Kindle installed base without some more rigorous evidence to support it.
Go read the whole thing. But e-book readers and sales are still marginal. Over time they will become far more important, but they are not, unlike hardcover and paperback book sales in the US, indicators of massive popularity.
The long lines and midnight events for the release of the Harry Potter and Twilight novels made making them into films a no-brainer. EVERYONE knew what they were, and merely reaching the existing fans of the books guaranteed success, as long as the movies did not run gargantuan budgets.
As noted by the AP, Bertelsmann's success was driven mostly by advertising, the RTL and Gruner + Jahr divisions, and by Random House's general publishing activities including traditional publishing and e-books. Recall that e-books do indeed, cannibalize sales of hardcovers, and paperbacks, and offer lower margins and revenues. Remember what we are NOT seeing, the kind of near-hysteria among fans for the novels, and characters, associated with the Harry Potter and Twilight novels.
Then there is the source material, questionable at best in its appeal to anyone beyond the self-loathing literati and feminized Euro elite. Twilight's appeal is easy to understand. A doll-like stand in for any woman, is fought over by two superpowered, hunky eternal men. For Harry Potter, a boy becomes a powerful wizard, with soap opera relationships for girls and the "magical" boarding school out of a never-was English past.
In the novel, a middle aged failure and drunken journalist, Blomkvist, teams up with a damaged, abused, Asperger-y young woman with tattoos, a fairly icky and sordid sexual past, who is a hacker genius and the ass-kicker of the two. Blomkvist is basically a castrated, asexual creature, who does not even "get the girl." Who is not worth getting in and of herself. Little appeal to men, Larsson's book (and trilogy) centers around "Daddy was a monster" and "everyone is a victim" standard for the Communist Party to which Larsson was a lifelong member, in Sweden the book was titled "Men Who Hate Women." Ignoring of course the very real hatred dished out (to Swedish women) by Muslim immigrants inside Sweden.
For women, there is even less appeal. There is no man for the central female character to "win." She remains a bisexual freak, unable to form any close relationship, a loner, socially isolated, intent on revenge, with the only male in her life a much older man made into a castrato. The appeal is pretty narrow, basically wealthy, upscale lesbians. And no other women. None of the things that interest women, such as marriage, family, children, winning the "right" man while avoiding the "wrong" one, and of course, consumption porn, are present in the book (or the trilogy). Larsson's major theme is the "strain of Nazi-ism still festering away in Swedish society." Yes, those Swedish Nazis are a major threat, as Sweden becomes rapidly, Muslim majority, and ruled by an alien people. Needless to say, the vast majority of American women are not really interested or concerned about fighting Swedish Nazis. They'd rather follow a story in which the girl gets the really, really hunky guy! And lives young and beautiful forever! With mind-blowing sex, that literally breaks bones! The end!
Hollywood literally has no clue. Dragon Tattoo will be a massive, colossal failure for Sony Pictures, and cement Daniel Craig as Box Office Poison. The movie will be a massive hit among American Communists, and Lesbians intent on wiping out the menace of Swedish Nazis. In a nation so feminized, that boys (never MUSLIM boys mind you) are made to wear dresses in Kindergarten to make them less masculine, and there are laws against peeing standing up (again, never enforced against MUSLIM men).
Massive jeremiads against how "awful Daddy was" might work in Hollywood treatment readings, but audiences crave something else. For men, its action and adventure where manly courage gets a girl worth getting. For women, it is traditional romance and female friendship. "Margot at the Wedding" did a fraction of the box office business of say, "27 Dresses" or "Sex and the City." But Hollywood is desperate.
Hollywood LITERALLY cannot write stories appealing to either men or women. They must outsource that to long dead comic book writers, who created characters in some cases 70 years ago, or popular novelists who are proven successes. It is a measure of Hollywood's executive stupidity that they are chasing stuff like "Dragon Tattoo," which will make Sony long for the box office success of "Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World." It is worth noting that the few successes not based on existing comic books ("300," "Batman Begins / Dark Knight," "Iron Man") or books/TV series ("Sex and the City," the Twilight and Potter movies) come from outsiders like Luc Besson ("Taken") that play to traditional material Hollywood long ago abandoned in decadence. What does it say when a movie-maker from FRANCE makes a more rousing affirmation of traditional male values than Hollywood can make?
Don't believe the hype. This movie is "Scott Pilgrim" all over again.
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15 comments:
I have a nit to pick! Just one, because the article as a whole is spot-on.
Sweden doesn't make kindergärtners wear dresses. Well, lets put it another way. It isn't the norm, according to my wife, who is Swedish and comes from a teching family. There may be some crazy teachers who do it based on the recommendations in those educational magazines of theirs but if the majority were doing it, there would be a huge hue and cry. Despite the image held up abroad, and despite the best efforts of the government, most swedes are still very socially conservative. They tolerate other people having their little foibles and sexual pecadillos but they would raise an almighty stink if their own kids were actually being forced to wear dresses in school. I can see it taking root in urban mad spots like Stockholm or Malmö, but not in Dalarna or greater Kalmar.
I went to see Scott Pilgrim the other day. Funny film, but your earlier review of it was spot-on: it doesn't appeal to anyone but people like me. It's a nerd film through and through.
Incidentally, any thoughts about Inception?
GWTDT will be a smashing success.
You wanting it to fail is wishful thinking on your part. You hate Mr. Larsson because he is poison to HBD-ers: an anti-racist who is loved by all for his fight against white supremacism and cannabilistic capatilsim.
It is worse than you think: Islam mandates pissing in a sitting position.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/2181
Praise be to Allaah.
A Muslim may do wudoo’ in whatever way is easy and practical for him, whether sitting or standing. He may also drink standing or sitting, although it is better to drink sitting down. He may also urinate standing up if necessary, as long as no one can see his ‘awrah (private parts which should remain covered) and there is no danger of the urine coming back on him. It is better to urinate sitting down, because this is how the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) did it in most cases.
(Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa’imah, 5/202).
I also hate to nitpick, but the film 300 was based on an existing comic book. Frank Miller wrote and drew the comic 300 in 1998, and the film -- which followed the comic's narrative and visual style very closely -- came out in 2006.
Archonix I stand corrected.
Sorry I was not clear, yes "300" was based on a comic book by Miller.
Anon -- Nope. GWDT will fail. It has not caught the imagination of the US consumer, any more than:
Scott Pilgrim. Jonah Hex. Kick-Ass.
All projects that generated a TON of hype, and failed miserably.
You certainly *CAN* make money by making "anti-capitalist" movies ... requiring huge amounts of capital. "AVATAR" is proof of that. But it has to hit buttons, in the case of AVATAR, the idea of living as "King of the Noble Savages" with a "really hot furry chick."
As long as you have jaw dropping special effects. The re-release of AVATAR opened at #12 and dropped from there.
JK Rowling offered a PC re-interpretation of an idealized late Victorian / Early Edwardian never-was British past, complete with kindly wizards at boarding schools, steam trains, and the deeply ingrained desire to be "special" along with soapy relationships for girls.
She's the richest woman in England, despite the writing being fairly poor. Because she hit emotions.
Do you really think there is an audience for a self-castrated "leading man" and an Aspergery tatted chick into stuff MEN are into, literally castrating guys? Without ONE hunky guy fighting for her?
The Lovely Bones, based on the "best-selling" novel of the same name, came out last year, and did $49 million domestically, not even covering the $65 million production budget (add another $30 million to the P&A cost).
This is what you're looking at.
Women like stuff about relationships and hunky guys and consumption porn: Sex and the City, Twilight, etc. Men like getting the girl through manly adventure. The girl must be worth getting, though. I've yet to see a film built on "anti-racism" or "anti-capitalism" make any money.
Yes, agree, the movie will probably suck…and suck bad…
because they will pander to an American audience and manage to work a "romance" into the plot, which was never the author's intention. And more than likely cast one of America's perky sweetheart actresses in the lead role.
Not gonna work!
"None of the things that interest women, such as marriage, family, children, winning the "right" man while avoiding the "wrong" one, and of course, consumption porn, are present in the book (or the trilogy)."
Some of us chicks also enjoy "guy things" - crime dramas, mystery, action, guns. And we still like guys. And wear dresses and makeup and stuff like that.
Re Ebooks:
Several months ago one of the ebook sellers remotely removed an ebook from its customers' devices. That ws enough to tell me that ebooks are not a good way to build a library.
I would change my mind to a degree if I knew that an ebook device is capable to copy the book file to an USB flash-drive.
JAD -- Daniel Craig has been cast, some young actress I've never heard of, reportedly there is no romantic plot, the age difference being taboo.
Hmmm ... James Bond as a sexless, self-castrating drunken failure?
Yes its true there is an audience for action stuff among women. But by the numbers, its dwarfed by the Sex and the City folks, or the Twihards.
For example, contrast/compare "Salt" and its take vs. "Sex and the City." Audiences have not exactly embraced ass-kicking women, vs. say shopping / romance women.
I am an oddball; 'tis true! Absolutely loathe SATC and chickie flickies. Will be interesting to see how Daniel Craig handles the role; and personally, I did like the foreign version of the movie; hard to imagine an actress who can top the existing performance.
The WSJ still thinks women want to see "ass kicking babes with guns":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465672667170524.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth#articleTabs%3Darticle
It's pathetic. I'm still waiting for one enterprising filmmaker to make a movie in which the "ass kicking babe" pulls her Karate chop on a man, he shrugs off the weak blow and then knocks her out (which is, of course, what would happen in the real world.) Of course, such a film would never be greenlit.
I saw that. The focus groups have no clue. The stuff will all flop.
I haven't seen the movies, but if they are anything like the books, almost every detail of the plot is wrong. In the books, Blomkvist isn't a failure (well, apart from most of the first book; in the two other books he's a nationally acclaimed celebrity journalist), he's not drunken (it's specifically mentioned that he generally doesn't drink more than one or two beers per night), he's most certainly not castrated or asexual (he beds most women he comes across, though this has apparently been cut out in the movies), he does get the girl (well, in the sense of having a relationship of sorts with her for an extended period of time), he does kick ass (he's a former Special Forces man and beats up a hired killer with an Uzi, etc) and so on.
Whiskey,
Others are seeing what you are seeing about hollywood:
'Alpha-Male' Role in Hollywood Is a Dying Trend, Experts Say
Published September 03, 2010
| FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/09/03/alpha-male-role-hollywood-dying-trend-experts-say/
The masculine, alpha-male movie star – brought to life in films such as “Rambo,” “Die Hard,” and “Rocky” – is becoming extinct in Hollywood, according to actress Michelle Rodriguez.
“The alpha man is dying in film, the warrior is dying,” she told us. “Hello geek.”
It may seem like an outlandish statement, considering the success of recent action films, but Rodriguez's claims begin to take on new weight upon closer inspection.
I have to say that you are right....but dead wrong.
A lot of the books happen in a scenario I´m well aware of, I grew up there. Much of Lisbets life is my life. Much of what she went through I also went through. The people are the same....
I also live here and I see the things happening. I also know my history, something most swedes DONT.
The nazi heritage is true, I´m ashamed to admit it but it is.
But yes, I do believe that a lot of housewife's wants to read about love and cute guys....but I think its ok to have a strong woman be the hero at times.
Sweden is one nation to the outside world, has always been...but under the surface lies a lot of dark secrets. Some of them was revealed in the trilogy....
It's sure gonna be ironic when all those swedish feminists looking for neo-nazi rapists under their beds have to wear chapel veils to avoid being spit on and worse by their muslim neighbors.
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