Jumping the Shark
AAR ran a style poll back in 2002 which had completely slipped my mind until I clicked on it by accident the other day. (Take a look; it’s got some interesting ideas in it). I was particularly struck by the category “Jumped the Shark,” in which readers selected Amanda Quick, Catherine Coulter, Jude Deveraux, Sandra Brown, Julie Garwood, and Judith McNaught. I wondered if these authors were in fact no longer popular with readers, as predicted. Since it’s been twelve years since their demise was predicted, I thought AAR must have some data to help me find an answer.
Most of these authors enjoy enduring popularity with readers. According to our pollsters, Garwood was the #9 overall vote-getter in 2014, McNaught was #10, Quick was #30, Deveraux was #41 and Brown was #57. Only Coulter failed to place in the top 100 authors. However, “Jump the Shark” refers to a decline in quality production, not a decline in love for a backlist. So were AAR readers right that these authors were headed for a slump?
Data suggests that largely, yes. Despite lingering popularity of their older 80s and 90s titles, not a single post-2000 release by these authors cracked the Top 100 poll in 2014. (I’m using the 2000 poll as a benchmark because there was no Top 100 poll in 2002). Even their backlists have declined in popularity, with each author placing fewer books in 2014 than they did in 2000.
Coulter and Brown didn’t place in the 2000 poll, but they also haven’t placed since. Considering that Coulter released 25 new titles, and Brown released 20, that’s not a lot of success.
Among the authors who placed in 2000, McNaught fell from seven titles to five. She released 2 books, neither of which placed. Amanda Quick had 3 titles in the 2000 poll but only one in 2014. Despite having added fifteen titles to her catalogue, her sole 2014 placement is Ravished, which dates back to 1992 and also placed in 2000. While releasing twelve new works, Julie Garwood fell from eight titles to four. None of her 2014 titles was written after the poll (one new title entered the list for her, but it was written in 1999.) Jude Deveraux placed twice in 2000. Despite releasing 22 titles since, she fell to one book in 2014, the pre-2000 A Knight in Shining Armor.
Overall, therefore, the AAR “Jump-the-shark” metric successfully predicted a lack of blockbuster new works in all six cases. Still, maybe a Top 100 placement is a lot to ask. What about general reviews?
It turns out that some authors fare better by a review metric; others fare the same or worse. Again, due to the small sample size, it’s hard to evaluate Judith McNaught at all. AAR reviewed one of her two post-2002 releases, granting Every Breath You Take a respectable B+. Before 2002, she had earned 5 A grades, and just about everybody would look like a failure up against that.
The 2000s were not kind to Deveraux, Coulter, and Garwood. Deveraux and Coulter released a significant amount of new material but did not earn a single DIK, both topping out at B+. That’s against the five DIKs each earned before 2002. Julie Garwood fell even harder. She earned 14 DIKs on pre-2002 titles. After 2002? Nada. Ouch. (I did not count multiple DIK reviews for the same book. Any DIKs earned on pre-2002 titles rereleased post-2002 in the same or a new form, such as audio, counted towards pre-2002 titles).
By contrast, reviews show Quick and Brown in a more favorable light than the Top 100 Poll does. Quick earned three DIKs before 2002 and one after. Brown had 4 DIKs before 2002 and 3 after. Considering that AAR only reviewed eight of her 20 releases, she may have even more good books out there that didn’t get noticed.
| 2000 Top 100 Poll | 2014 Top 100 Poll | Pre-2002 DIKs | Post-2002 DIKs | |
| Amanda Quick | Ravished (33), Rendezvous (77), Scandal (95) | Ravished (58) | 3 | 1 |
| Catherine Coulter | 1998; not 2000 | none | 5 | 0 |
| Jude Deveraux | A Knight in Shining Armor (16), Sweet Liar (52) | A Knight in Shining Armor (37) | 5 | 0 |
| Sandra Brown | none | none | 4 | 3 |
| Julie Garwood | The Bride (11), The Secret (20), Saving Grace (34), Castles (39), The Prize (56), The Gift (57), Honor’s Splendour (74), The Lion’s Lady (85) | The Bride (29), The Secret (47), Honor’s Splendor (73), Ransom (75) | 14 (not counting repeat DIKs of the same title; counting audiobooks if the work was not previously reviewed) | 0 (not counting audiobooks of pre-2002 releases) |
| Judith McNaught | Paradise (22), A Kingdom of Dreams (23), Almost Heaven (24), Whitney, My Love (35), Once and Always (45), Something Wonderful (49), Perfect (62) | Paradise (28), A Kingdom of Dreams (43), Perfect (71), Something Wonderful (81), Almost Heaven (94), Whitney, My Love (99) |
Obviously, there are shortcomings in my method. Some authors are more widely reviewed than others (see Sandra Brown), giving them more chances to score DIKs. I did not average ratings, or look at how many failures an author had in each time period (there are only so many hours in the day!). Since many readers use previous Top 100 polls to help them fill out ballots, there may be a “grandfather” benefit to books which made prior lists. McNaught’s marginal books at 94 and 99 in particular may still be around because the lists remind people to vote for them. I did my best to count all of the author’s works and release dates, but it was hard to keep track among reissues and other listing format quirks, and I may have missed or incorrectly sorted a work or two. All of these metrics come from within the AAR community, and the community which voted that certain authors jumped the shark may already have been predisposed not to like or read their work. I didn’t use sales data or other numbers (which might also be flawed by distribution bias etc).
With these imperfections fully acknowledged, here is my overall verdict:
Amanda Quick: Did not jump
Jude Deveraux: Jumped the shark
Catherine Coulter: Jumped the shark
Sandra Brown: Did not jump
Julie Garwood: Jumped the shark
McNaught: Disqualified due to small sample size (although you could argue that failing to write is a form of shark-jumping)
That would make AAR voters right in three or four out of six cases, depending on how you count McNaught. Considering that the voters were choosing from a list of 36 authors, it’s not a bad showing. In fact, of all the authors on the list, the only one I think of as a definite shark-jumper who was overlooked is Laurell K. Hamilton. However, I haven’t read all of them.
Do you agree with my analysis? Did I use the right data to try to reach my conclusions? Who did the voters miss from the 2002 poll (who jumped but didn’t get voted for?) Who’s jumping the the shark these days?
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It’s amazing! I think your verdict is correct. It would be very interesting to know real numbers about how much they sell, not only what reviewers think, to know if they sell less these days or not.
Sandra Brown keeps on being an auto-buy for me. I think I’ve read nearly all her books. Suspense is my favourite genre, and the novels I enjoyed more were the suspense novels, more than the 1980s categories. Envy and Lethal (both post-2000) were DIKs for me, but I recognize it’s more because of the amazing suspense plot and not the romantic part.
I’ve read many Amanda Quick and Jude Deveraux books, but I stopped reading them some years ago because of this sensation of sameness.
Catherine Coulter – I just read one of her books. I found it boring and very anachronistic, so I didn’t try another one. The same happens with Garwood’s historicals. I’m surprised but it looks like I’m one of the few that prefers her suspenseful contemporaries rather than her Brigadoonish oldies.
For me, jumping the shark = changing genres or time periods. I read virtually no contemporary romance anymore, so when Jude Devereaux and Julie Garwood stopped writing historicals, they dropped off my auto-buy list. Fortunately, I discovered newer authors like Julia Quinn, Tessa Dare, Julie Anne Long and others. I must say, however, I really miss good medieval romances and would be happy if their popularity returned.
I’ve read a lot of Catherine Coulter, some of which I really enjoyed and some not so much. I’ve read a few of her contemporary suspenses and they are pretty good.
I still adore Amanda Quick because even though her plots tend to be formulaic, I love her characters and the interaction between them. Again, however, I don’t read JAK or Jayne Castle, since I stick to historicals. Doesn’t have to be Regency – I’ll read pretty much any time period through WWII, but that’s just me.
Other than romance, I read mysteries; in fact, it’s pretty much a 50/50 split for me. Like romance, I especially enjoy historical settings like Anne Perry’s Victorians.
It’s not surprising that older books would fare less well in later polls. Not only do they face competition from newer books, but many younger readers will not have read them at all. Some of these novels – Judith McNaught’s, for example – are not even available in e-book formats. (Incidentally, McNaught’s Paradise, which was ranked at No. 28 in the latest AAR poll, is not listed in the above table). That unfamiliarity more than counterbalances sheer inertia or nostalgia in terms of explaining the fact that older novels remain on the list.
Any book published in 1993 or earlier which still appears in the most recent AAR Top 100 list has maintained its popularity for over two decades. That enduring appeal is a very significant achievement.
Exactly. There is no reason to assume that the latest is necessarily the greatest. I can easily think of currently fashionable authors whose appeal is unlikely to survive.
This may not be an example of the jumping the shark theory, but if an author has been publishing for two decades or more I almost invariably prefer the novels published in the 1980’s or 1990’s to those published after 2000. It could be that the freshness is gone, or these authors have already said what they have to say, or simply that they have moved on to new sub-genres. Whatever the explanation, I find it hard to identify counterexamples.
We will get that corrected. Thanks!
Out of the six, I never did particularly care for Coulter or Brown. The other four were my absolute favorites at one time. Deveraux, Garwood and McNaught taught me not to bother following an author to a different genre. The only one I still read is Quick, still an autobuy but I agree that her books are not as good.
A few once-favorite authors that I no longer buy even though they are still writing in the same genre so I consider them to have truly jumped the shark are Victoria Alexander, Janet Chapman, Galen Foley, Karen Hawkins, Sandra Hill, Sabrina Jeffries, Lynn Kurland, Johanna Lindsay, and Teresa Medeiros. I miss them but am content to reread the titles I really loved.
Thank goodness for some newcomers (for me), Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Julie Anne Long, Elizabeth Hoyt for example, who got me out of a reading slump and I’m still buying and reading.
An interesting subject, thanks for the post. I still like to read JAK/AQ, although I’m not too happy with some of the occult stuff and re-use of the same formulas. When she focuses on lively conversations and absurd set-ups, she can be very entertaining indeed (e.g. that classic scene between an abandoned bridegroom and the caterer anxious for the bill to be settled.) As for Coulter, Garwood, etc., tastes have shifted, but also as a writer gets older, I guess it is only natural that the freshness can get lost – humor, good plotting etc. remain, but maybe not the burning interest in romance and sex?
I love the older Joan Wolf books, but she also seems to have trouble keeping up with a changing landscape. There was a book about the biblical Esther – all right but not in a class with her previous stuff. The two medieval mysteries were good – why not more of those?
Will the style of romance we read now be looked at with derision in twenty years? I would not be surprised if the classics from the late eighties/early nineties stood the test of time better than many contemporary best-selling authors.
Coulter, Brown and Whitney have never been on my radar, but Quick and Garwood still are. But I have a different take — as usual — quite a surprise, huh?
What jumped out at me were the books that continue to hold on over time for more than twenty years, like the following:
Morning Glory, Spencer, 1991
The Bride, Garwood, 1989
A Knight in Shining Armor, Deveraux, 1989
The Secret, Garwood, 1992
Ravished, Quick 1992
Honor’s Splendour, Garwood, 1987
Mackenzie’s Mountain, Howard, 1989
The Secret Pearl, Balogh, 1991
And more of course. I do know the focus was on specific authors as opposed to the individual works I posted, but I had been looking at the the lists lately, so…. And if you reduce the time to a 15 year success, more jump out including a no-stopping favorite of mine, The Rake by Mary Jo Putney.
The more prolific authors cannot be fairly judged, since the votes are dispersed over a larger number of books. I know I always have AQ/JAK/JC books in my favorites, divided between older titles and newer ones, but my favorites may not coincide with others.
Authors in the original list that used to be auto-buys for me but no longer are: Janet Evanovich, Linda Howard, Suzanne Brockman and SEP. Some of the others I still read, but get from the library since they often are hit-or-miss for me. Others just don’t write (that much) any more, though I wish they did! (Jennifer Crusie and Cathleen Gilles Seidel, I’m looking at you!)
They still ought to succeed in the review tally – those books are assessed individually. That’s what saved Quick and Brown.
Since 2002, AQ has put out 12 books, out of which AAR has reviewed (that I can find) about half. Again, I think that very prolific writers, other than NR, suffer for the quantity of their output.
I thought Sandra Brown’s Rainwater was horrible, but haven’t read many of her other newer releases. However, I would no longer classify her as a romance author. Her books sometimes have romantic elements, but she’s more a mystery writer now.
While I still have mad love for many of Amanda Quick’s older, one-word titles, I have enjoyed most of her paranormal books as well. I recently reread all of her books (maybe 2 or 3 years ago now) so it’s not just the nostalgia factor for me. I think many of her earlier titles were just better written. But she’s still a comfort read author for me. Even a “”bad”” Amanda Quick is better than a “”good”” book by many other authors.
I haven’t read McNaught in years. And the others were never favorites of mine.
I think many titles remain on the list because people have fond memories of them but also because people use the older lists when compiling titles for the newer lists. But for authors who are very prolific it may be more difficult for people to agree on the individual books. So the author may be getting a lot of votes but for different books so they don’t end up scoring that many on the list.
Nostalgia voting is a pet peeve of mine in the Top 100 poll. I reread anything on my list that I hadn’t read in over a decade. A lot of things I had thought were wonderful fell off, including every Julia Quinn on my keeper shelf. In the age of Duran and Milan, frothy wallpaper like Garwood just doesn’t keep up for me.
That’s the interesting part of polling. There are rules that each reader uses when compiling a list and when we talk about the Top 100 Romances the field becomes wide open. These are books that readers love so much that they would openly recommend them to anyone which of course brings in nostalgia.
Julie Garwood is still in my Top 100 even though I haven’t read her since she started contemporaries (my jump the shark point) but I can’t help but remember how excited I would be when her historicals would be published. The minute a new book came out I would sit in my room for the entire day until I finished her latest release.
So I know for myself nostalgia plays a big role. I guess looking at the AAR Annual Reader polls would be more telling as they are for the current years publication.
CindyS (Pollster)
I don’t know some of these authors well enough to hazard a guess. In the few instances of McNaught and Garwood, their characterizations seem very outdated in their creations of helpless, vulnerable, manhandled women and ridiculously beefy and macho men. I’m surprised that contemporary readers would gravitate to them but I know there are readers here that do. Garwood and McNaught particularly strike me as blasts from the pasts where they need to stay.
Most of the authors you cite that I have stopped reading was because they changed genres, or in Judith McNaught’s case, stopped writing altogether. Linda Howard is a name you didn’t mention because her change of genre seems to have been successful, but I didn’t like her change, so I don’t read or buy her current books & continue to re-read her backlist.
Yes, unfortunately, I would put Linda Howard in the list of authors that have changed for the worse. I have not liked any of her new books in years.
Recent shark jumpers: Suzanne Brockmann
As far as Sandra Brown, she is so hit or miss with her books that it can be easy to predict one year that she is jumping the shark and the next that she is a genius beyond compare. Her books Rainwater and Lethal were outstanding but followed by the awful Low Pressure and then the good but not brilliant Deadline. I think she is one of those rare authors that you just can’t predict anything about.
Pretty awesome that AAR readers nailed the others according to your statistics.