Monday, 4 February 2019

Literary Atlas academics fail to notice the Angel Mountain Saga


Should I laugh or cry, or throw things? I have been checking the web site of the Literary Atlas of Wales, and have discovered that in their wisdom, the academics responsible for it have completely ignored the 8 novels of the Angel Mountain Saga on the atlas database.  On the map, they have marked the locations of 567 Welsh novels (written in the English language), including 250 published in the present century.  I think we can safely assume that the great majority of the included titles are extremely rare in that most people will never have heard of them.  Also, I suppose that the majority will not have sold more than a thousand copies, since most books sold in Wales sell just a few hundred.  So my books, with accumulated sales of c 100,000 copies, might reasonably be called Welsh best-sellers.  (Most of the BIG best-sellers in the "Welsh fiction" category are of course published in England -- and it's wonderful that some of them have sold more than a million copies -- probably including titles written by Iris Gower, Alexander Cordell, Catrin Collier an Kingsley Amis.)  I'm rather chuffed that my books have sold well in spite of being published and printed in Wales without any subsidies or grant aid of any kind.  That's actually rather rare.......

It looks as if the map is as finished as it was intended to be, although there is a note on the web site inviting suggestions as to other titles that might be included.    But what does it say about the awareness of the map compilers that they have not even noticed the existence of Wales's best-selling titles?  Not impressed.......

I have written to the Atlas compilers to complain about their unprofessionalism -- and I expect a reply along the lines of:" Oh dear, we just sort of omitted the 8 titles accidentally......"

Believe that if you like...

http://www.literaryatlas.wales/en/library/?fbclid=IwAR0bRSnAzNW9YOpmc-XYqbVk3VeTvtuJ92xmjiGvlIrbkz-hgo5nsm6qdaw

PS.  I have a reply from "The Literary Atlas" -- note that there is no name attached -- so nobody takes responsibility.  The excuse is that there has been a technical problem with the web site, and that the web developer is being asked to look into the matter.  Are we REALLY expected to believe that nonsense?


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