By Edward Nawotka
Today’s lead story looks at how two UK companies are aggressively managing the literary estates and character properties of some long dead — and some very alive — authors.
Literature has long been held as a means for someone to “live forever,” a least in the minds of readers — provided a given author’s books continue to be read. Literary fashions come and go. Literary fashions are cyclical: authors are forgotten and then “re-discovered.” Some authors, as seen by the success of the recently released Autobiography of Mark Twain, have such strong “brand equity” that readers several generations removed can get still get excited by a seemingly new work by an author.
The question is: Do author brands ever die . . . or do they merely fade away waiting to be revived another day?
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Do Author Brands Ever Die?
January 5, 2011
By Edward Nawotka
Today’s lead story looks at how two UK companies are aggressively managing the literary estates and character properties of some long dead — and some very alive — authors.
Literature has long been held as a means for someone to “live forever,” a least in the minds of readers — provided a given author’s books continue to be read. Literary fashions come and go. Literary fashions are cyclical: authors are forgotten and then “re-discovered.” Some authors, as seen by the success of the recently released Autobiography of Mark Twain, have such strong “brand equity” that readers several generations removed can get still get excited by a seemingly new work by an author.
The question is: Do author brands ever die . . . or do they merely fade away waiting to be revived another day?