I must admit that when I saw Kate Figes’ piece in the Guardian Review, my heart sank just a little bit — because this is an idea I’ve been kicking around for ages but hadn’t gotten around to implementing. So since she’s done it first, I’ll happily piggyback onto the concept and solicit any helpful suggestions from agent and editor folk: which books did you think would sell like gangbusters and didn’t perform to expectations? And which books would you have loved to publish? For those who are still checking in, send us your picks and we’ll post them throughout this holiday week.
In terms of the books mentioned in this particular piece, I can’t say I’m all that surprised that Chris Cleave’s INCENDIARY ended up being more fizzle than success — unfortunate timing aside, the writing style ended up masking the concept and it was awfully tough to warm to the main character (and if it only sold 12,500 copies in the UK, how well could it have possibly done in the US, where it seemed to disappear about 2 seconds after publication?)