(To be fair to publishers, there is evidence that a portion of the reading public does indeed enjoy being herded to the same pasture day after day, to graze upon a single flavor of grass. In truth, however, it also springs from most publishers’ conviction that the reading public is composed of well-defined herds of sheep, each of which can–and must–be driven to the same pasture from which it has grazed previously. This desire for sameness springs partly from the publisher’s need to develop and sustain a market niche for the writer, “branding” him in the same sense that Campbell’s Soup or Log Cabin Syrup is a brand. Most publishers–not all–believe that a successful writer must produce always in precisely the same genre, delivering characters and plots and themes that are comfortably familiar to his readers, working reliably in a narrative voice that strikes the same note in story after story. (To be fair to all publishers, it is an undeniable truth that a great many successful writers are so egomaniacal, so temperamental, so consumed by envy of other writers who earn even two dollars more per book, so stubborn, so humorless about themselves, and so mean-spirited that if they were elephants, their fellow pachyderms would turn them over to criminal poachers with instructions to make knickknacks from their tusks and umbrella stands from their feet.) If in fact the lawyer (or cop, or boiler repairman) is the same lawyer (or cop, or boiler repairman) by name–in other words, a “series character”–the publisher will not only swoon at the mere mention of the author, but will pretend, with convincing earnestness, to like the author as an artist and as a human being, no matter how thick his disgust and how poisonous his hatred for the author may actually be. If each of these lawyers (or cops if the writer is a cop novelist, or boiler repairmen if the writer spins boiler-repairman tales) is like all the others, in terms of his world view, psychological makeup, and narrative voice, then the publisher will beam with delight at the mention of the writer’s name.
From story to story, if the writer always features lead characters who are lawyers, for example, the publisher will smile and pat him on the head. They don’t care if he bathes only on the summer solstice, drinks himself into a stupor every day by 2:00 P.M., lives in sin with a llama, thinks SpongeBob SquarePants is the greatest actor of his generation, and spits on the floor–as long as, at the keyboard, he can slavishly repeat himself manuscript after manuscript. Most publishers are happiest with a successful novelist when he or she writes the same book every time.
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