It always sounds self-serving, if not sour grapes, when an author points out that book sales are actually a very poor indicator of literary quality. The fact that Dan Brown and Tim LaHaye are among the best-selling authors in the world should suffice to conclusively prove the point, and yet some still cling to the notion that insignificant sales indicate an inferior writer.
I’m not bothered by this myself, especially since it tends to work in my favor – wrongly, as it happens – in other fields. But it does bother me when I see it applied to other writers whose books I very much admire. In today’s Black Gate post, I hail one overlooked gem of the recent past.