SOURCE: "Does True Crime Pay?," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, September 26, 1994, p. 39.

[In the essay below, the critic remarks on the publishing industry's views on true crime.]

As recently as a year ago true crime was considered the hot genre in nonfiction mass market books. Now publishers question where the category is headed; many say it has run its course.

"True crime will move out of its cycle and become a less published area," declares Bantam's Irwyn Applebaum. "A lot of bad books were put out by a lot of greedy publishers in a short amount of time. After a while the titles get indistinguishable from one another."

"The category is not as big for anybody as it used to be," agrees Lou Aronica at Berkley. "The amount of titles being published has diminished the overall impact on the market. There was a time when these books sold several...