Authors with Longevity

What is it about some authors that have made their careers endure when it seems nowadays that you only get one shot at fame and fortune and then you're passed over for the newer, hotter name no matter how hot and bright you burnt?

Think of Ira Levin, Stephen King, Ian Fleming, PD James, Barbara Cartland and other writers who came of age or came to prominence in the postwar era. For some reason they have careers with longevity, every new book as successful as the last until they've reached near-mythic status.

The generation that influenced them in turn - Poe, Hammett, Christie, Stoker, etc – are beyond mythic, now titans in the field of published fiction.

But look at a lot of the hit authors you know from the last few years like Paula Hawkins, Ernest Cline, Liane Moriarty or Andy Weir. They get a single shot at household name recognition because of (respectively) The Girl on the Train, Ready Player One, Big Little Lies and The Martian, but is anybody who loves fiction still talking about them to the extent we do King or Cartland?

What's different today? Is it simply because there are so many more books being published and – paradoxically – a much more fractured field, making it so much harder to market oneself as a writer with any enduring appeal across a whole oeuvre (whereas writers like William Peter Blatty or Dean Koontz had the benefit of a few decades to seep into the cultural consciousness)?

Is it just because those newer names simply haven't written more than a single good book and therefore don't have long careers to sustain? Whereas Stephen King has published one beloved novel and collection after another since the mid 1970s, I wouldn't have a clue what else Andy Weir has written.

The only authors who've come close to such immortality in the 21st century have been Dan Brown, JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and to a lesser extent EL James. The reason for Brown's phenomenal success with The Da Vinci Code is still inexplicable because (like Cline's Ready Player One) he did not write a particularly good or memorable book.

The same goes even more so for James. Not only did she do nothing particularly groundbreaking with 50 Shades of Grey to warrant such fame and media legitimacy (ebooks had pioneered and established that kind of erotica years before) many can point to dozens of still-obscure books that have far better prose.

The Harry Potter series was certainly popular but – like Moriarty, Cline and the rest mentioned above – Rowling's popularity got a huge shot in the arm from the film version/s of her story.

But even that seems not to prove anything. The Twilight films had as much cultural impact as the Harry Potter franchise, but do you ever hear Stephanie Meyer's name anymore? Her and Rowling's careers have in fact been mirror images of each other – one huge series of five or six parts, then a couple of standalone novels that have made few waves in literary circles.

Maybe Rowling's just smart, keeping herself in the fray by writing the next few movies in the Potter world, rubber-stamping and/or writing the Potter stage show, etc.

But it still leaves us with a question. How do you become a name author we love and read over generations versus a one hit wonder? Was there something in the media, sociological or technological landscape in ages past which made it possible to solidify an artistic legend, but that day's over?