thank you. I start each of my novels aiming for the middle mark within a genre: procedural, crime/thriller, historical fiction. And yet my publisher smiles, then tags my work "literary fiction." It's like a one-way valve. In striving to read writing like mine, I search "literary fiction" then find trope-laden, poorly constructed, badly written crap that I don't finish. In search engines "literary fiction" stands in for popular & commercial (dragons or no). From the buyer's side, "literary fiction" means "books others are reading, you should too." From the author's side, "Literary fiction" mean you failed at finding a genre-based market and oh, yeah, you likely write well, but your books won't sell well because nobody buys literary fiction anymore.
I absolutely loved your reasoning and final definitions! A category is there to tell us what to expect in terms of what the material intends to do, without telling us if it's going to do it generally well or not. If we think of movie genres, this becomes a lot clearer. You know what a romcom wants to do, what a thriller wants to do, etc., but you never know if it's going to pull it off well or not. Category ≠ Quality. Thanks for this article! 😊🙏🏻
"they often seem to leave out the one really common reason work doesn’t get published: because it’s not good enough."
That's an easy statement to make for a cheap guffaw... but it isn't really true.
Publishers aren't looking for good stories, let alone great ones. They're looking for money. Whether we're willing to admit it or not, publishing is a business, and predictable genre fiction sells more than great work. Trash sells even more.
Thanks for letting me know that people think literary means "sad people having affairs and thinking about life."
Means I need to return to my WIP where:
A treatise where a husband with PTSD is confined after returning from beyond and a battle for humanity that he lost. Meanwhile his wife grapples with the grief of losing the husband who left. And there's the new girl in town they're both attracted to as the holidays approach.
I thought I was going to have clean that up. But if that's what people call literary fiction, cool.
I was going to call a Paranormal Second-Chance Christmas Romance.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they're all shifters.
Likewise, then I realized her definition of most literary fiction as "Sad people having affairs and thinking about life" submissions matched one of my works in progress.
I thought I was going to have a hard time selling a Paranormal Second-Chance Christmas Romance, but its Literary Fiction by her definition.
This was a great breakdown. My fiction writing falls within the upmarket-literary realm (whether or not it’s ‘good’ is yet to be determined). What I find so tricky is that while those words have various meanings to other writers and publishers, they often don’t mean much to the general reading public. When I try to talk to acquaintances about what I write, it’s usually something along the lines of ‘stories that are trying to say a lot, but where very little actually happens.’
This was an interesting read. I am hesitant to call my serial novel "literary," because it sounds a tad lofty to me, someone not in the industry. But I want to find readers who are willing to read with care, to let my story grow and change and expand for them. That sounds like the kind of reader who might search for a "literary fiction serial" or something like that, huh?
Shallow take. Literary fiction isn't just about language, its about concepts. Upmarket books aim to entertain the reader with a juicy plot, and gets it across with language that just does the job. Literary books uses fiction to communicate concepts and themes - and the language it uses just happens to be more unique because its innate purpose is more unique. Do you really think George Orwell wrote 1984 aiming to entertain readers? No! It was a warning against totalitarianism. And I should have been warned against reading this article, but here I am, rage-baited again...
Excellent take. I find myself thinking about this a lot. The psychology of marketability plays so heavily into genre which is incredibly interesting. To comment on something you mention at the beginning of your article, while I do think calling your own writing “too literary to be published” is rather self important, and saying that alone may indicate the quality of the persons writing, I think the quality of writing may be (to certain extents) less of a determining factor in publication than the marketability itself. It seems as though the number of people looking for representation is currently much higher than it used to be and the work agents are looking for is often based on trends. As you mentioned, publishing books that will sell is such a huge aspect of what gets published, so I assume trendy plots often move the needle more than quality writing.
If you write and think about the reader then it's not literary.
thank you. I start each of my novels aiming for the middle mark within a genre: procedural, crime/thriller, historical fiction. And yet my publisher smiles, then tags my work "literary fiction." It's like a one-way valve. In striving to read writing like mine, I search "literary fiction" then find trope-laden, poorly constructed, badly written crap that I don't finish. In search engines "literary fiction" stands in for popular & commercial (dragons or no). From the buyer's side, "literary fiction" means "books others are reading, you should too." From the author's side, "Literary fiction" mean you failed at finding a genre-based market and oh, yeah, you likely write well, but your books won't sell well because nobody buys literary fiction anymore.
I absolutely loved your reasoning and final definitions! A category is there to tell us what to expect in terms of what the material intends to do, without telling us if it's going to do it generally well or not. If we think of movie genres, this becomes a lot clearer. You know what a romcom wants to do, what a thriller wants to do, etc., but you never know if it's going to pull it off well or not. Category ≠ Quality. Thanks for this article! 😊🙏🏻
"they often seem to leave out the one really common reason work doesn’t get published: because it’s not good enough."
That's an easy statement to make for a cheap guffaw... but it isn't really true.
Publishers aren't looking for good stories, let alone great ones. They're looking for money. Whether we're willing to admit it or not, publishing is a business, and predictable genre fiction sells more than great work. Trash sells even more.
A helpful article with a great sense of humor. Now you've got me analyzing my own sentences to see which ones might catch a reader's attention.
Honestly a very long article but I loved the philosophy
Thanks for letting me know that people think literary means "sad people having affairs and thinking about life."
Means I need to return to my WIP where:
A treatise where a husband with PTSD is confined after returning from beyond and a battle for humanity that he lost. Meanwhile his wife grapples with the grief of losing the husband who left. And there's the new girl in town they're both attracted to as the holidays approach.
I thought I was going to have clean that up. But if that's what people call literary fiction, cool.
I was going to call a Paranormal Second-Chance Christmas Romance.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they're all shifters.
I clicked as soon as I saw Spiderman lmao
Likewise, then I realized her definition of most literary fiction as "Sad people having affairs and thinking about life" submissions matched one of my works in progress.
I thought I was going to have a hard time selling a Paranormal Second-Chance Christmas Romance, but its Literary Fiction by her definition.
I hope you know I reference this article in half of my videos and think about it at least once a week. so helpful!!! ty ty ty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TwhYAJIxUw
Amazing article. Is Women’s Fiction a genre? Or would one get more specific, like Family Drama?
u just made litfic make sense to me ty
This was a great breakdown. My fiction writing falls within the upmarket-literary realm (whether or not it’s ‘good’ is yet to be determined). What I find so tricky is that while those words have various meanings to other writers and publishers, they often don’t mean much to the general reading public. When I try to talk to acquaintances about what I write, it’s usually something along the lines of ‘stories that are trying to say a lot, but where very little actually happens.’
This was an interesting read. I am hesitant to call my serial novel "literary," because it sounds a tad lofty to me, someone not in the industry. But I want to find readers who are willing to read with care, to let my story grow and change and expand for them. That sounds like the kind of reader who might search for a "literary fiction serial" or something like that, huh?
This is absolutely fantastic. A stroke towards world clarity
Shallow take. Literary fiction isn't just about language, its about concepts. Upmarket books aim to entertain the reader with a juicy plot, and gets it across with language that just does the job. Literary books uses fiction to communicate concepts and themes - and the language it uses just happens to be more unique because its innate purpose is more unique. Do you really think George Orwell wrote 1984 aiming to entertain readers? No! It was a warning against totalitarianism. And I should have been warned against reading this article, but here I am, rage-baited again...
Excellent take. I find myself thinking about this a lot. The psychology of marketability plays so heavily into genre which is incredibly interesting. To comment on something you mention at the beginning of your article, while I do think calling your own writing “too literary to be published” is rather self important, and saying that alone may indicate the quality of the persons writing, I think the quality of writing may be (to certain extents) less of a determining factor in publication than the marketability itself. It seems as though the number of people looking for representation is currently much higher than it used to be and the work agents are looking for is often based on trends. As you mentioned, publishing books that will sell is such a huge aspect of what gets published, so I assume trendy plots often move the needle more than quality writing.