Ben Meyers on Christmas Bestsellers

Ben Meyers makes his debut as a MobyLives contributor with a very funny piece about this season's Christmas bestsellers:

"Christmas best-sellers" is [a] code-word [for] "lame celebrity, stocking-fillers cash-ins". Books by twats off the telly, basically. Books for households that contain one book-–last year’s lame celebrity, stocking-filler cash in. By twats off the telly.

Here's more:

My point is this: the publishing industry is in a pretty poor state because the publishing industry doesn’t know what it is doing. Too long it has rested on its laurels, signing generic clichéd tat. Chick lit. Unfunny comedy books with quirky titles. Sub-Dan Brown–-and that’s pretty low—cash-ins. You know: meaningless crap that real people don’t bother with. And while regular book shops are doing badly in the UK, bargain bin, end-of-line bookshops are positively thriving. Which is good news for some of us. Because deep in the worst recession of many of our lifetimes, it is more economically viable to buy a stack of novels than it is to buy the equivalent in fire wood. Books will be keeping me warm this winter. Literally.

MobyLives is generally entertaining and often funny. I'm glad to see Meyers added to the mix of talented contributors.