Author Jory Sherman blogs about the death of the western novel, a genre he excels at.
Now, I see some small signs of life, but the publishing industry continues its
blind slaughter of the genre, a veritable libracide using the tactics of small
print orders, no publicity, no nurturing of new writers and the gradual genocide
of the older ones.Some writers are dropping out, having seen the bold
handwriting on the wall, and turning to the Mystery novel, the Christian, or
other markets. The Western, which has made great strides as our exclusive
American literature, is being ignored by the publishing industry, the
distributors, wholesalers, book sellers, and the reading public.It’s
not dead yet. It will probably never die, because of the power of its mythical
backbone. We are the only country in the world which has the Old West,
and we have the brave writers who continue to explore its oceanic depths, its
big sky heights.But, we’re dying out, too, along with our books which
are being killed off, one by one, by the insidious indifference of all
concerned.The real loser here, is, of course, the Reader, who never saw
the blips on the radar and if they ever did, never cared. They missed a lot, and
that’s a crying shame.