We've received many e-mails in response to The Need to Read Stephen King , a My Say by Forecasts Editor Jeff Zaleski. To our surprise, the mail has run 100% positive. We invite you to share your thoughts with us too .

Meanwhile, here's a sampling of the mail we've received.

Thank you for your essay regarding the need to read Stephen King. It is curious to me that an opinion that is so obvious should be considered controversial. The words "We assume that literary excellence can arise in any type of book," are some of the most empowering I have read in a long time. -- Bob Self, Publisher Baby Tattoo Books

I agree with your article 100%. The public should help determine the authors who are honored. These readers are the ones paying our salaries by buying our books. I am a firm believer that what is good will sell. Some of these books are not of the highest literary quality but maybe Shakespeare wasn't considered "literary" in his time.

Thanks for a good article. -- Sharon Roth

Your article about genre and commercial fiction is the best commentary I have read in a very long time. As a genre author and writer of commercial fiction for the last 16 years, I want to thank you for taking a stand for those of us in the literary ghetto. We hold Mr. King in high esteem, for his humanness, his accessibility, and his grand mind.

I have never forgotten one of his interviews years ago on one of the early-morning television shows, when the interviewer said to him, "You're a good writer. Why are you writing hamburger when you could be writing steak?"

Stephen replied, "I like hamburger."

Thank you for taking a very public stand, and for writing an eloquent and honest article. -- Jill Barnett, author (Carried Away; Wicked; etc.)

An iindustry that literally shoves publishing contracts onto any celebrity without regard to whether they can spell their own name has a lot of nerve criticizing the work of Mr. King or any of his high-profile colleagues. I have never read a book by Mr. King, and I may never do so. Nevertheless, I know he is a dedicated professional writer who strives to create a meaningful reading experience. If it wasn't for writers like Mr. King, many people wouldn't visit a bookstore or library at all. -- Russ Pottle

Many thanks for your thoughtful comments on the value of our often undervalued popular writers. To my mind, Stephen King is an important, deeply American writer whose body of work has enriched my own life and has, I believe, enriched American culture as a whole. The belief that popular commercial fiction is intrinsically inferior to mainstream "literary" fiction is an absurd but enduring notion, and writers like King—and Peter Straub and Dennis Lehane and Clive Barker and too many others to name—have, to my mind, helped break down an essentially artificial barrier. Genre fiction at its best is as vital and valuable as any other form of fiction, and it's high time the literary community realized that. The National Book Foundation's decision to recognize King's achievement is a long-overdue step in the right direction. Thanks once again for your cogent—and sensible—remarks. -- Bill Sheehan, author (At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub)

All I can say is THANKS for pointing out what we "romance/women's fiction" authors have known for years. If Nora Roberts was a man writing "literary" novels, she'd have made the cover of Time by now for her outstanding success. Let's hope everyone out there in publishing takes note of your view. -- Jill Marie Landis, author (Lover's Lane; Summer Moon, etc.)

In numerous interviews, King pointed out that there's always been a great divide between commercial and literary fiction; the former is considered a literary ghetto, the latter the place where "real" writers belong. As early as college King realized this was an artificial distinction, that good writing is good writing no matter where it was published, and he felt that writers could have it both ways: If you were honest as a writer, you could be a critical success AND a financial success. You could have it both ways.

As we've often heard in our industry, writing may be a craft, but publishing is a business—one fueled, in large part, by bestsellers. Writers like King will always raise the ire of the elitest writers who feel they should get the kudos and the cash because they are REAL writers; and King and his ilk are just commercial hacks.

King's body of work speaks for itself and the award is not, as his critics have complained, undeserved but, in fact, long overdue. -- George Beahm, author (The Stephen King Companion)

Thank you for so gracefully reminding your colleagues not to be such snobs. :) -- Christopher Golden, author (The Gathering Dark; Of Saints and Shadows; etc.)

PW welcomes Letters to the Editor. We may edit letters for clarity and length.