How come the bad authors almost always score big?

E.L. James is a best-selling author; she also has not talent whatsoever in my unvarnished opinion. How else could you describe a trilogy with wafer-thin plots, one-dimensional characters and an insipid writing style? To cap it all off, it was not even based on an original idea: Twilight fan fiction was the basis for James’ infamous Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy; a work of “literature” about as wholesome as dirty laundry. However, her much-vaunted trilogy has not won so much as a single award. The Pulitzer Prize folks do not visit the urban fiction section to hand out accolades. Yet James continues to rake the bongo bucks by pandering to primitive (perverted?) instincts.  

Meanwhile writers like Jason M., and Scott J. and I cope with lean budgets, bills to pay and rents to make. If we can’t do the last two with the first, our lives will collapse into money-fueled chaos that, in turn, forces our writing careers (and dreams) onto the back-burner.

“What’s wrong with being a hack?” asked writer David Barnett in this 2009 opinion piece. Well David, the biggest thing wrong with it is when they hog the spotlight undeservedly.

I frankly resent the success of no-talent hacks like E.L. James. On the other hand, such grossly undeserved success by bad authors is a fact of life when it comes to a writing career.  No-talent hacks somehow win big while real authors scrimp along. Occasionally we get our big break (just look at William Kent Kruger, Dennis Lehane, David Housewright, etc.); but more often than not these days, the hacks beat us out.

It seems the more base an emotion an author appeals to, the more books they sell. However, I refuse to write a work of pure smut just to make ends meet; there are much better things to devote my talents to. Like, say, a historical novel that dramatizes the historic 1942 Doolittle Raid of WWII in a manner best described as Thirty Seconds over Tokyo meets “Band of Brothers;” or short stories that range from short historical fiction yarns to stories of oppressed people who finally rise in rebellion. Write dumb literature just to make money? I don’t need to write no stinking dumb literature! How about you, fellow authors?  Would you stoop as low as E.L. James did, or do you have scruples too?

Image courtesy Sara Dobie's Wordpress blog.