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Is the western dead?
By Terry W Burns

It’s hard to sell an acquisitions editor a western these days. Is the western genre dying out?

Walk up to any book rack, particularly in a chain store, and the offering in the western section will be as high as 80% Louis L'Amour, if they have a western section at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking him, I love L'Amour, and always have. I have the full leatherbound set of his books and often re-read them. Anybody that can still dominate a book rack 20 years after their death is doing something right. And what he is doing right is telling a good, simple story and telling it well. He connects with the reader on a level they can relate to.

Having said that, this mix begs the question from me, "Is he still such a big seller because of public demand, even so long after his death? Or is the public demand there because his books continue to be what is primarily offered?"

Oh, I know, it’s very much to the publisher and the distributor's benefit for him to continue to be such an icon. It saves any publisher a ton on publicity going with name authors rather than trying to establish a replacement for them. But when do we reach the point where every reader of westerns has all of his books and no longer wants to buy one? What happens then?

Or have we reached that point already because booksellers failed to start offering very many titles by other authors, so readers simply switched genres which was immediately interpreted as a drop off in western readership? To what extent is the tail wagging the dog here? How often have public reading habits changed and how often have acquiring editors decided that some book failing to do well meant readers were tiring of the genre and dropped it. Readers can’t read books that aren’t offered to them. Sometimes that can be self-fulfilling prophesy.

Then again, maybe the western isn’t falling off as bad as many think it is. Maybe part of it is the fact that it is simply ‘diversifying’. What do I mean by that? A lot of books have moved away from the "western" label and have published as historical romance or historical fiction, or some like my Mysterious Ways series were listed as “Inspirational Fiction set in the late 1800’s.” My western writer friends call them Christian westerns. Are these other genre designations adding to the strength of those new genres and further promoting the idea that people aren't buying westerns any more?

The notion has been wide-spread that the western was passe' both in print and in TV and movies as well. Yet what few western offerings that have been produced have always found a significant audience.

Will stories of King Arthur and Camelot and the knights of the round table ever die out in England. I don’t think so. There are always times when people need to read about men who valued honor and respect and who were a little larger than life. That period of time for our country was the old west. Whether we are reading gritty tales of men and women fighting the elements and seemingly insurmountable odds, or like the knights of old reading of the larger than life cowboy or lawman who can stand up to any challenge, they are stories to offer escape from the day to day. They are stories that uplift us and reinforce the pioneer spirit that still lies within us.

I love westerns because I grew up on them. I played a major role helping Roy and Gene clean up the west every Saturday morning. I also had a part time gig doing the same in connection with Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel and The Rifleman on television. I wanted to grow up and be a cowboy. I wanted to continue helping to tell their story.

Kids today didn’t get that introduction. My new book coming out from BJU Press is a young adult, and a delightful western. Of course, the only difference between a young adult and an adult book is the age of the central character. Adult readers who read it will find they enjoy it very much as well. and hopefully it will help introduce new readers to the genre.

Did I get to be a cowboy? I’ve worked on ranches and farms. I’ve fixed fence and worked cows, have been with the rodeo and done some windmill repair. I’ve also been a chamber of commerce manager doing PR and promoting the communities that I’ve lived in. But I still want to tell those stories

America has always been in love with the old West and a generation is waiting to discover it. The western genre per se has always been cyclical, maybe more so than some other genres. I believe this new generation are the ones buying the L'Amour books, because all of us lifelong dedicated readers of the western already have them. So instead of just producing titles for the new readers, why don't we produce a larger fare for that substantial base who have always bought westerns, and the new readers will buy them as well.

And in today’s difficult economic times, don’t we need to read some stories that remind us how our ancestors faced much worse, and did it with grit and determination?