I’m not going to post the cover of John Locke’s The Love You Crave, because it’s kind of racy for our standards in these parts. And I’m not even going to link to the e-book, because you can find it if you want to. I do not in any way endorse Locke’s Donovan Creed novels, of which The Love You Crave is the first I’ve read (and, I’m relatively certain, the last). But there are things to be said about the series as a phenomenon, and not just “Tsk, tsk.”

The Donovan Creed novels are a series of “humorous” thrillers about a government agent and assassin. He’s a little like James Bond on cocaine. The books (judging from this one) are full of violence and sex, and attempts at humor which (according to reviews) work for some people, though I’m not one of them.

The book suffers from a severe lack of likeable characters. The hero (not himself very likeable) tries at one point to figure out one of his friends whom he can trust with his life. He realizes that most of his friends have tried to kill him at least once.

If I were giving advice to a writer on how to craft a “light” series about a professional killer, the first thing I’d tell him, I think, is “Keep the innocent bystanders out of the line of fire. Nothing kills the buzz like seeing noncombatants killed, especially if it’s your hero killing them.”

But what do I know? I’m a struggling author in what is laughingly known as the “midlist.” John Locke is laughingly lugging suitcases of cash to the bank.

Not to say that our hero, Donovan Creed, is entirely amoral. He would feel bad about killing a large number of innocents. He tells us so. But killing one here or there, when it suits his purposes, doesn’t bother him in the least.

There’s also a young woman in this book, just getting started as a professional killer. She got her start, we’re told, when she murdered her boyfriend with a knife in the midst of the sexual act. Later she kills a couple businessmen, plus the prostitutes who are in a condo with them.

She is also meant to be a sympathetic character, if I’m reading it right.

As you may have gathered, I didn’t care for this book much. The violence didn’t excite me, the sex didn’t arouse me, and the humor didn’t make me laugh. Or smile.

And yet, the books are selling like mad. According to his Wikipedia page, John Locke was “the first independently published author to sell over 1 million Kindle books using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform….”

I don’t believe these sales figures can be explained by the quality of the writing, or even by the debased sensibilities of the public.

I think the real lesson is one publishers ought to hear—John Locke identified and filled the unmet need in the publishing world. He figured out that books are too expensive. He went back to the grizzled Dime Novel template—roll out sensational literature as fast as you can, and charge a price most people can afford, even if they’re between jobs. American readers groan under the price of their reading habits. E-publishing offers a splendid opportunity to undersell traditional publishing.

Companies that heed that message are likely to prosper.

Maybe even with books that are actually good.

Lars Walker is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is West Oversea.