How will Harper Lee's latest book do?

Harper Lee's latest book was discovered in attic after 50 years. The entire publishing world and especially the publishers are electrified.

The cover tells us the more about the readers than the author. If people have to be told who harper lee is by mentioning "to kill a mocking bird", on the cover, either the quality of reading has gone downhill, or the publisher didn't want to take chances.(Image courtsey www.theguardian.com)

The real fun will be to watch all the "literary critics" falling over each other to proclaim it as the next classic, and how harper lee still has it, why harper lee is harper lee. Criticism of the author would just be like spitting at the sun.

Once a decade such and event happens when a book is a sure bestseller in the literary world before it's even published, just riding on reviews. No one will talk of the reorders that will come, just the number of copies in print.

This is what will happen.The only winner here will be e-books. People will flock to the store to buy their showoff physical copy. Go to coffeeshops and read it there. Sit and read it on the trains and airports . Will quote from it.

All in effort to create that perception of taste and intellectualism. The book will reach NewYork Times best seller list, as anyways Harper Lee is a brand name when her books have been prescribed reading in entire america. Some rumours will also surface from "real literati" if this book too is authored by Truman Capote, and in rarified atmosphere this will be a good topic of discussion for 3 months.

After that the machinery will stop. The rumour mills and the world will move on to the next hip thing. Re-orders perish. Stock stuck. A brief surge during year end when the best books of the year list comes out, or harper lee is given a second pulitzer.

Some push for the Nobel prize in literature given all the racism in news and political focus. But i am sure that publishers would have bet on a HUGE print run, and even after all this, i feel You will be buying this book for 2 dollars next year for sure on the 70% off MarkDown table.

Very possibly another "Rhett Butler's People " in the making. If the author had not published it for 50 years, may be there was a reason. You just don't write a book and then just forget about it.

I hope that for such an author my predictions turn out wrong and i eat my hat. But in the world of 50 shades of grey, i doubt that will happen.

Are you planning on reading this book?

(Disclaimer : These are my personal views and predictions on what will happen, they are not aimed at hurting any business or sentiments, but based more on experience of what has happened in such events)

(BBC channel 4 news asks if Harper Lee's second book will live up to expectations)

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[Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and don't reflect views of any organization i am currently with or might have been associated with]