"I felt funny adding to the hype of an author that was so clearly over-hyped," Scott Esposito says about the way he "tried to use [Roberto] Bolaño’s moment in the spotlight to recruit as many readers as possible to his books."

Which prompts me to ask a question I've been thinking about for some time now: at what point does hype become overhype? When is an author too popular? "The Savage Detectives has sold 22,000 copies in hardcover," Esposito says, "a very modest success by the standards of publishing in general, but a great success by the standard literature-in-translation." Forget for a moment the fact that you can't even sell out a major league sporting event anywhere in America with 22,000 people, or that a single video game just sold six million copies in one week*. Is a readership of 22,000 for any author really too high?**

I know it's the unstated official mission statement of litbloggers everywhere to promote the success of lesser-known authors against authors that do attract wider readerships. Fine. But if we're ever successful at it--by which I mean, if litbloggers alone can cause a book to sell over 22,000 copies, just to throw a number out there--will we then feel obligated to shut up about the author completely, knowing that he or she has "made it," is officially "overhyped"? Do we, collectively, have a love-hate relationship with the readerships that make books known? If the Litblog Co-op had "worked," would it have had to have destroyed itself anyway?

I hereby propose that we banish the notion of overpopularity from the litblogosphere. Surely it's an idea that can do well on its without further help from us.

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* - No, I didn't buy it. Yet. I plan to, though. And if that means my opinions mean less, then, in the words of Happy Harry Hardon, "So be it."

** - Which, by the way, I should point out, would be a perfectly desirable number of readers for anything I might ever put out, myself. Let me choke to death on the fumes of my own hype machine: I will survive it.