Whatever Happened to the Next John Grisham?

I read a lot.

Usually somewhere between 45 and 55 books a year, which creates a problem I suspect most people don’t have.

I am constantly running out of books I want to read.

Most of my books now come from the public library and arrive on my Kindle. That works remarkably well and saves me a small fortune. But the library can’t solve the first problem: I still have to figure out what I want to read and request it.

So, I am constantly looking.

I scan BookBub. I look at Goodreads. Amazon recommends books based on what I have read before. There are newsletters with editors’ favorites, best books of the year, best mysteries, best thrillers and books everybody supposedly ought to be reading.

Kindle itself provides plenty of suggestions. There are recommendations based on my library and my reading, series I’ve started, and a constantly changing selection of Kindle Unlimited books.

The problem isn’t a shortage of recommendations.

It’s figuring out which recommendations are actually good.

I’ve selected quite a few books from those lists over the years. Some have been excellent. Others have left me wondering what the recommendation algorithm saw that I didn’t.

I put interesting books on my want-to-read list and then see whether the library has them.

That creates another problem.

I may put four books on hold, with one supposedly available in two weeks, another in five weeks and another in two months. Somehow the library gods then arrange for all four to become available on Tuesday.

Library Kindle books generally come with a 21-day clock. Suddenly I have 1,500 pages to read before they disappear.

But that’s another problem I’ve learned how to deal with. I can return a book and put myself back on the hold list.

The problem I’ve been thinking about lately is finding interesting books in the first place.

Where Are the New Guys?

After looking at enough recommendation lists, I began noticing something.

A very large percentage of the books being recommended to me are written by women.

There is nothing wrong with that. Janet Evanovich, Patricia Cornwell, Tess Gerritsen and plenty of other women have written books I enjoy.

There is also a pretty obvious business reason for the emphasis. Women are more likely than men to buy and read books and much more likely to participate in book clubs. Traditional book clubs are overwhelmingly female. Recommendation services, publishers and editors would be rather foolish not to pay attention to their largest and most active market.

I understand.

But guys read books too.

Even if we aren’t filling up the book clubs, throw us a bone every once in a while.

What I really began wondering was not why so many women writers were being recommended. It was why I wasn’t discovering more new male writers whose books I would like to read.

I know what I like.

Over the years I’ve read David Baldacci, Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Scott Turow and a bunch of others.

Crime. Legal thrillers. Suspense. Adventure. Technology. Espionage. A good story that moves.

With a few nonfiction books thrown in for good measure.

The problem is that most of those writers aren’t exactly the new kids on the block.

Grisham is 71. Connelly is 70. Baldacci is 66. Coben is 64. Turow is 77. Koontz is 81.

Michael Crichton died in 2008.

So where is the next generation?

Whatever Happened to the Next John Grisham?

There are younger male writers out there. I know because I’ve found and read some of them.

Over the last three or four years I’ve read books by Pierce Brown, C. Robert Cargill, Joe Hart and Mike Ryan, among others.

They aren’t all writing the same kind of books. Brown is primarily science fiction. Cargill moves between science fiction, horror and screenwriting. Hart writes thrillers and suspense. Ryan writes the kind of fast-moving crime and espionage stories that ought to be relatively easy for someone with my reading history to discover.

These aren’t guys who uploaded their first book last Tuesday. They include bestselling and award-winning writers, and some have already built substantial catalogs.

So the new guys aren’t missing.

Why am I having so much trouble finding them?

Something strange happens when I search for writers similar to the people I have been reading for years.

I frequently get recommendations for more people who have been writing for years.

Looking for someone to replace the old guys leads me to other old guys.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. Maybe recommendation algorithms have decided I’m unusual. Maybe publishers aren’t promoting these writers to readers like me.

Or perhaps something more fundamental has changed.

Thirty years ago, names like Grisham, Clancy and Crichton weren’t simply authors. They were events.

A new John Grisham novel appeared, and you knew about it whether you read John Grisham or not.

Today there may be plenty of successful writers selling lots of books without ever becoming that kind of household name.

Publishing has fragmented. Readers have fragmented. There are more books, more ways to publish them, more places to buy them and more ways to discover them.

Perhaps having more choices has actually made discovery harder.

But then I noticed something else.

Publishers have found at least one remarkably effective way to deal with the problem of replacing enormously successful writers.

They don’t replace them.

Why Don’t Dead Authors Stay Dead?

Tom Clancy died in 2013.

Robert Ludlum died in 2001.

Robert B. Parker died in 2010.

Clive Cussler died in 2020.

They remain remarkably productive.

Walk through the thriller section—or browse Amazon—and their names are still everywhere.

Other writers continue their characters, their series and sometimes entire fictional universes. The original author’s name remains prominently displayed because the name itself has become a brand.

From a business standpoint, I understand that too.

If millions of people recognize Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum or Clive Cussler, that name has enormous commercial value. A publisher knows there is already an audience.

But I won’t be part of that audience. It’s a pet peeve. I read the originals and am not going to read the pretenders.

Launching a completely unknown writer is risky.

Putting a familiar name on the cover isn’t.

But I keep coming back to an admittedly unfair question:

If the new writer is really good, why isn’t he writing books under his own name?

Most probably are. Writing another author’s franchise may simply be one part of a career.

But there is still something peculiar about a publishing industry that seems determined to keep successful writers producing books indefinitely, including after they are dead.

And I wonder whether that connects somehow to my original problem.

Every dollar and every bit of promotional attention devoted to keeping an established author brand alive is attention that isn’t being used to turn an unfamiliar name into the next household name.

I don’t know whether that actually explains anything. But it certainly doesn’t make discovering the next generation any easier.

Maybe the Authors Aren’t the Problem

The more I look at this, the more I think I’ve been asking the wrong question.

The new male writers aren’t missing.

I’ve already found some of them.

What may be missing is the discovery system that once turned a good writer into someone everybody knew about.

Today Amazon knows what I have bought. Kindle knows what I have read. Goodreads knows what readers like me rate. BookBub knows which books get clicked. Publishers have more information about readers than they have probably ever had.

And yet I’m still hunting.

Algorithms are very good at finding books that resemble books I’ve already read.

That’s not quite the same as telling me:

This is a really good book. You ought to read it.

Maybe that’s the difference.

Thirty years ago, there were fewer choices and a handful of powerful gatekeepers. That system undoubtedly kept many good writers from ever being discovered.

Today’s system gives vastly more writers a chance to reach readers.

That’s probably better.

But it may also mean that the next John Grisham can be out there selling a lot of books without ever becoming John Grisham.

So perhaps my complaint isn’t really that there aren’t enough new male writers.

It’s that discovering the good ones has become surprisingly difficult.

I would genuinely like to find the 35-, 40- and 50-year-old writers who will eventually take the places of the authors I’ve been reading for the last 20 or 30 years.

I know they’re out there.

I’ve already found a few.

I just wish Amazon, Kindle, Goodreads, BookBub and the rest of the publishing world were a little better at introducing us.

So I’m still looking for the next John Grisham.

If you know who he is, I’d appreciate the recommendation.

I have a library hold list to fill.