The book is about a family of four that goes on a camping trip only to come back after an atom bomb has destroyed Los Angeles; they go live in a cave for the better part of the next year until order is restored.
"Ray Milland," the name chosen for highlighting here, was an actor and director, a former member of the British Cavalry who at one point was Parmount's highest-paid actor, was obviously more famous than Dean Owen at the time (and now) so splashing his name on the cover was probably great marketing, at least until the 21st century when nobody would really know who either of these guys were. (The novelization of Star Wars, written by Alan Dean Foster, was credited to George Lucas, whose name appears above the title, even though Lucas wasn't the household name then that he would become after the movie.)
Movie novelizations go as far back at least as movies; one of the earliest novelizations was "Les Vampires," a movie serial about a journalist investigating a group of murderers; the movie was 7 hours over 10 episodes; the novelization was four paperback-sized books and 3 magazine-sized ones.
Most scholars (?) think that the novelization peak was in the 1970s, blaming videotapes and the internet for the decline of popularity of this art form; the typical essay on the subject will claim that prior to VCRs fans had no real way to re-live a movie beyond the novelization (at least until it came on television) but that would have been true of every era of movies prior to the invention of VCRs, so why was the 1970s the peak, if it was? (I say if because there are never statistics in the sort of pseudothinkpieces that pass for 'journalism' in this area.) I wasn't able to find any list of sales of movie novelizations to say what the best-selling ones ever were.
In 2014, the "junior novelization" of Frozen was the 75th best selling book that year. According to Yahoo!, three novelizations of superhero movies (The Man Of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, and 2002's Spider-Man) made the best seller lists in the year of their release.
In that sense, novelizations, like every other area of consumer culture, seem to be responding to the fragmentation and isolation of the modern entertainment era -- when there is no monolithic structure for entertainment. Back in the 1970s and even 1980s, there were essentially only movie theaters and the big three networks, with everything else being a subculture. Shopping was done in person, rather than online, so stores were a monoculture, too, especially suburban shopping malls. You could put a novel into a chain bookstore and hope to grab not only those people who had seen the movie, but those who had heard of it and were curious or booklovers who just wanted to read something rather than go to the theater.
Now, though, bookstores are few and far between and, as that Yahoo! article notes, shopping is a "destination" thing: you go online or to a store looking for a specific thing. Fewer people are wandering around a store waiting to see what grabs their attention. So if you don't know something exists, odds are you won't find it, which means you won't see movie novelizations for movies you didn't know existed or weren't all that interested in at first.
That type of culture means that 'tentpoles' are more important than ever. That's why every new soda is a Mountain Dew branded variation, why so many shows are being remade, why movies all are spinning around the Avengers or Justice League or Star Wars maypoles: why try to create a new market when you can tap into an existing one, especially one fed by nostalgia, where parents will inculcate their kids into the mythos for you?
That's not necessarily new; this article from 1981 makes somewhat the same argument. But the article notes that in 1979 or 1980 80% of all movies released had a novelization of the movie released. 80%!! That dropped to 50% by 1981, and the price paid to buy the movie rights dropped down to $25,000. (That's $69,000 in 2018 dollars) and began focusing on blockbusters.
That same article also says the novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark sold 900,000 copies. The novelization of E.T. (one of my favorite books ever) was the New York Times' best seller for 1982, and 1983 was topped by Return of the Jedi's novelization. Business learning, as always, the wrong lesson from the bottom line, obviously decided that only blockbuster movies would lead to good sales of novelizations. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I've read novelizations of movies I've never seen (Dragonslayer, for one, and Krull, for another), but that's just me.
It might be that novelizations would be a boost to the bottom line of a movie -- especially because studios could have an in-house writer novelize a movie and release it electronically at first, without hardly any hard costs of shipping or publishing or production. Why some studio hasn't hit on that is beyond me, given that most major films exist simply to generate merchandise sales. You'd think someone would have novelized The Avengers by now -- a move that would probably generate sales to pre-existing fans of the comic -- and set up a bunch of spun-off solo novels a la "Han Solo At Star's End" and the like. But what do I know? I'm just a guy who likes reading.
About the book: Pretty decent condition, no flaws internally, paperback, list price is $9. Comment if you want to purchase.
I read E.T.
ReplyDeleteFor a novelization, it was one of the better ones.
But, mostly, I quit reading novelizations during my teen years because, mostly, they just weren't very good, like books based on franchises weren't very good. That's probably because most books just aren't very good.
I think you don't see a lot of novelizations of superhero movies because books in the superhero genre of traditionally not sold well. Basically, people who want to read about super heroes want comic books. That has changed a little in the last decade but probably not enough to warrant an Avengers novelization when they can do Avenger comics tie-ins. And the comics is where they want to drive readers.
(Sorry I haven't responded to the email, yet. Busy couple of weeks. I was out of town most of last week and will be out of town most of this week, too. But I'll get to it soon.)