I find it quite strange that literary fiction in particular is sinking when other kinds of fiction seems to be increasingly in a boom. Romance ebooks are taking off, for example. I wonder if it isn’t possible that these literary authors couldn’t move their work to electronic mediums like, well, Medium.
I don't know what "literary fiction" is, exactly. I suspect that, for the most part, it's been a status symbol. Back in the day, one needed copies of the latest stuff on tables and shelves. But on Facebook, one can fake it, based on Goodreads etc. No dead trees needed.
Around one in five, one in four books were bought with no intention of reading. On one hand that's a lot of faking, on on other, the other three fourths is much more and not fake. (Source: Editors I knew, over alcoholic beverages.)
EDIT: "Were", not "are", because I've lost touch in the past years and don't know how it is nowadays. Sales have dropped, the audience may have too. (Still see gorgeous women in the bookshops though.)
Unless a survey asks specially about whether a person bought a book with no intention of ever reading it AND people actually provide an honest answer to that question, then I can't see how a survey could provide the answers.
How do you think sales ratios could provide the figures about people's purchase intentions?
There do exist services for buying books purely for aesthetic reasons, like Books By The Foot. They've got a special now for "Holly & Ivy", for $49 per foot you can buy books with green or red colored spines to give your house a Christmas ambience:
I assume sales to those services are nowhere near as high as 20%, but counting sales to similar services (and Hollywood set designers, bulk orders to interior decorators, etc) could go some way towards calculating a percentage.
Those figures would be interesting, but none of them are going to give accurate numbers for the numbers the original comment was talking about, because they tell you nothing of the number of people who buy the books (with no intention of reading them) by more conventional means. They don't provide any way to infer those numbers.
Editors talk at parties, just like everyone else. If you're invited to a publishing house's christmas party you'll chitchat and learn factoids like that one. (You may also meet your future wife. I did.)
As to how they'd know: Editors are the people who effectively decide what books are published. Their income depends on their insight into customer behaviour. Wouldn't you try to learn why books are bought?
I asked how they are supposed to know. Saying that their job depends on insight into customers isn't explaining how they know. The only explanation you provide is: from taking to people at parties. I fail to see how that is supposed to provide insight into how many books purchased by the public at large are bought with no intention of being read.
Let's consider the problem. Presumably the majority of people who buy books that they have no intention of ever reading would never admit to that fact. How do you then figure out the numbers of such purchases? (Remember that the comment I originally replied to gave specific figures). How does being an editor somehow give you any meaningful insight into those figures?
If I buy it for someone else or out of loyalty to author, is it counted as no intention to read? If I buy it and then somehow am not in mood to read it or dislike it after few pages, how does it count?
Also, majority of games bought at steam is never played. People buy it because they are discounted and there never go around playing. It is not for show, cause nobody see that. Large portion of those 1 in four gonna be like that too.
Arts Council England: "we are saying that there is something so unique and important and necessary and fundamental about literary fiction in particular, that we need to focus on it and support it."
Yeah, right. Because navel-gazing is the only thing in literature worth supporting. We'd have fewer problems in the world if more people read (and appreciated) science fiction.
ACE, I make a gesture of contempt in your direction.
Why do you consider literary fiction "navel-gazing" and why is SF that important?
As a side note, one of the books they give as an example is The Time Traveller's Wife, which involves "a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably", which certainly sounds like an SF-y premise.
There's a strong status separation between SF and literary fiction. If you get someone to read SF that has literary merit, they'll try to tell you afterwards that it wasn't SF.
Format adaptations have catapulted some great SF into the pop culture stardom:
The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, and though looked upon favorably, it is rarely mentioned today without also mentioning the 1938 radio broadcast.
The Wizard of Oz (Baum 1900) is more famous for its 1939 film.
In more modern times, Johnny Mnemonic (1995 film from "Burning Chrome", Gibson 1986), Snowpiercer (2013 film from "Le Transperceneige", Lob and Rochette 1982), and The Martian (2015 film from "The Martian", Weir 2011) have all increased SF visibility through film adaptations.
Without format shift, would general SF readers have pursued these works independent from the film? Probably. Would these works have entered pop culture and have been sought by the everyman, even the ones who don't routinely buy books or enjoy reading? Less likely.
Many of the works that have received the most cultural success have been science fiction.
Of the five top grossing films, Avatar and Jurassic World are very clearly science fiction, Star Wars and The Avengers are arguably science fiction. It's only Titanic that couldn't be claimed to be science fiction.
The situation is probably similar for TV Series too.
The status problems of science fiction are arguably related to its extreme popularity.
That's not entirely true. The "The Three Body Problem" trilogy had a lot of literature tone and it's considered one of the best SF works ever. Obviously not for that reason alone but what I'm saying is that nobody seemed to bother by the prose as long as the science part was solid and the fiction original.
That's usually not considered in the top 1000 best sci-fi books ever and it was written in Chinese, so it doesn't really fit into the english literature categorisation.
How do you figure? I would guess winning a Hugo means the book has a 50% chance of being in the top 10 for that year, but you would expect the yearly contribution to "top 1000 ever" lists to vary wildly.
2015 is too soon to really judge it's staying power and it's hard to judge how much of the praise is because it's non-Western.
I figure that "top 1000" is a lot of books, and there've only been 60 or so Hugo awards, so it seems not unlikely it's in there. I'd also rate winning the Hugo as likely to be better than half a chance of being in the top 10 for that year, I guess that depends how much your personal tastes align with theirs though.
That's quite true. My favorite SF author, Gene Wolfe, is sometimes found in the Literature section in bookstores.
On the other hand, 99% of SF does not have much literary merit, even the well regarded stuff, so if you're interested in the cross-section, Literature might be the more reasonable department to file it under.
I said "literary merit", not merit in general. Sci-fi is very much not about the words used and how they're put together.
The authors that can combine the two are very rare - Wolfe, Douglas Adams, Ursula K. Le Guin, and often Russian authors, though that might be from the translation too.
I believe that some of the best "literary" fiction is also science fiction. For example much of George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, also Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula LeGuin. If you allow for the term "speculative fiction," you really start netting a huge catch. And more and more books once dismissed as "mere" genre titles will be considered to have "literary merit", however vague and dissatisfying that term may be. Isaac Asimov might be an example, also Tolkein.
I have understood some drop in fiction book sales to be caused by the wind-up of the Harry Potter series in 2007. A 2011 article from The Guardian (Datablog section, author uncredited) linked to this spreadsheet of Harry Potter book sales numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C6QriM1aMBd5Ab6Tn7hn...
Is Rowling's Potter part of Literary Fiction? The report states "We therefore leave the definition of what literary fiction is, open. [...] What it definitely is
not, for our purposes, is poetry or plays. We are looking at fiction." Which causes me to believe it does fall within their definition.
"Literary fiction" is a category used in the publishing world to contrast "genre fiction". A publisher would consider Harry Potter genre fiction of some kind, whether in fantasy or young adult. I think it would be quite strange if it were included in the survey.
Literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction. Literary fiction consists of pointless books about the middle class, by the middle class; genre fiction is everything else.
Here's a quote from a bestselling non-fiction work, “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dostoevsky, Hermann Hesse, Charlotte Bronte, Albert Camus, Philip Roth, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Cervantes, Hemingway, George Orwell, JD Salinger, Bret Easton Ellis, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, (arguably) Homer, Goethe, Harper Lee, and on and on... isn't this is all "literary fiction"?
Point is if we lose humanities and its highest expressions, we lose the historical and progressive enlightment how it came for societies more and more complex, in that reverting to simpler, mechanical, narrower, fundamentally brutal models. Less Facebook, then, more sophisticated novels, even the opportunity to choose them when we need them would be good enough.
The negativity here about Literary fiction is interesting. A lot of people implying that readers don't enjoy it or that it's elitist or a status symbol etc...
I think it's important to accept that there is a group of people - perhaps small - that love reading literary fiction. It's not reasonable to assume bad faith, just because you can't see the merit in something. There maybe people that use it as a means of identifying with a group and not out of genuine passion or interest - but that is true of every group. You always have people who attach themselves in this way: programming and tech world are a classic case.
Anyway just because something seems esoteric does not mean the person iis not enjoying it. We all have radically different needs, experiences and interests. And it's OK. Anyone who thinks that because they read literary fiction they are superior in some way is foolish certainly. On the other hand they may quite reasonably say that they consider one form of fiction to be aesthetically superior: that is the nature of aesthetics - we all get our say.
Right, but this post is not about the vanishing of Literary fiction from the face of the earth.
A merely shrinking market is obviously consistent with the idea that some (or much) of it formerly sold to people who weren't really enjoying spending hours with a genre almost defined by not having much in the way of story or ideas, which in turn is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the market was sustained by status signaling.
I think again to say "defined by not having much in the way of stories or ideas" is a level of dismissal that suggests something stronger than mere indifference. A lot of people have bad early experiences with literary fiction and I'd agree that when it's bad, it's the worst. But when it's good it can be exceptional. It also does not preclude strong stories, or idea driven stories. Of course a great deal of it is about capturing subjective human experience in a way that - when it fails for a reader - leaves them with nothing. But when it works it can be incredible.
Generally what I find is that once peoplelike a work of literary fiction they no longer think of it as "literary" - they sort see it in a category of its own.
Most of people who dismiss that category of books this way do it out of prejudice and never read them. It is no different then rejecting SF as stupid without ever bothering to read much of it.
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." – Mark Twain
I have natural 'aversion' for literary fiction. It's hard for me to get started, so I very rarely read them. But when I finally stumble reading one, I'm usually happy that I did.
Example: I have only read one book from Dostoyevsky: 'Notes from Underground'. I chose it because it was short. But oh boy was it deep, heavy and mind bending. I still carry that book with me (figuratively).
I don't hesitate to admit that I'm dirty commoner when it comes to literary, but I'm honest enough to admit that there are things 'that would be good for me' and I would love to have read those books but I'm shutting myself out of them. I'm sure literary fiction is full of crap but the best of them are far ahead of commercial genre fiction (there is intersection of genre fiction and literary fiction of course).
That's all well and good in the abstract. In practice, literary culture has long been notorious for cliqueyness and big egos (even narcissism).
Affirming general propositions of the form "just because X, Y is not necessarily true" is logically fine. It is just a bit odd to be using glittering generalities to defend, of all things, literary fiction (which is concerned above all else with nuance and particularity).
My wife enjoys literary fiction and I enjoy reading scifi (most recently Chinese scifi). We spend quite a bit of money on new eBooks, books, and audible books.
Everyone gets to decide what they enjoy and how they spend their time. I generally enjoy good writing and good movies over spending time with miscellaneous web browsing and network TV. I have friends and family who love watching TV or hanging out on Facebook and that is fine because everyone gets to decide how they spend their time.
It is important to me that producers of great content get paid so even though I enjoy spending time in my local library, I prefer to purchase entertainment material.
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." -Kafka
John Le Carre, Salman Rushdie, John Banville, Anthony Horowitz. All had superlative novels out this year.
Also just started Francis Spufford's Golden Hill. Absolutely sublime way to spend a snow bound winter night.
The crisis is obviously in readership. Not writing. And the chaotic divergence of attention.
It may be true that the text no longer acts as Bildungsroman. The primary method to impart moral and spiritual character to young influence-able minds.
But then the Mountain must come to Muhammad. And the great works rendered as digital classics.
46 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 23.6 ms ] threadEDIT: "Were", not "are", because I've lost touch in the past years and don't know how it is nowadays. Sales have dropped, the audience may have too. (Still see gorgeous women in the bookshops though.)
How do you think sales ratios could provide the figures about people's purchase intentions?
https://www.booksbythefoot.com/shop/pc/Holly-Ivy-3p232.htm
I assume sales to those services are nowhere near as high as 20%, but counting sales to similar services (and Hollywood set designers, bulk orders to interior decorators, etc) could go some way towards calculating a percentage.
As to how they'd know: Editors are the people who effectively decide what books are published. Their income depends on their insight into customer behaviour. Wouldn't you try to learn why books are bought?
Let's consider the problem. Presumably the majority of people who buy books that they have no intention of ever reading would never admit to that fact. How do you then figure out the numbers of such purchases? (Remember that the comment I originally replied to gave specific figures). How does being an editor somehow give you any meaningful insight into those figures?
Also, majority of games bought at steam is never played. People buy it because they are discounted and there never go around playing. It is not for show, cause nobody see that. Large portion of those 1 in four gonna be like that too.
Yeah, right. Because navel-gazing is the only thing in literature worth supporting. We'd have fewer problems in the world if more people read (and appreciated) science fiction.
ACE, I make a gesture of contempt in your direction.
As a side note, one of the books they give as an example is The Time Traveller's Wife, which involves "a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably", which certainly sounds like an SF-y premise.
Format adaptations have catapulted some great SF into the pop culture stardom:
The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, and though looked upon favorably, it is rarely mentioned today without also mentioning the 1938 radio broadcast.
The Wizard of Oz (Baum 1900) is more famous for its 1939 film.
In more modern times, Johnny Mnemonic (1995 film from "Burning Chrome", Gibson 1986), Snowpiercer (2013 film from "Le Transperceneige", Lob and Rochette 1982), and The Martian (2015 film from "The Martian", Weir 2011) have all increased SF visibility through film adaptations.
Without format shift, would general SF readers have pursued these works independent from the film? Probably. Would these works have entered pop culture and have been sought by the everyman, even the ones who don't routinely buy books or enjoy reading? Less likely.
Of the five top grossing films, Avatar and Jurassic World are very clearly science fiction, Star Wars and The Avengers are arguably science fiction. It's only Titanic that couldn't be claimed to be science fiction.
The situation is probably similar for TV Series too.
The status problems of science fiction are arguably related to its extreme popularity.
2015 is too soon to really judge it's staying power and it's hard to judge how much of the praise is because it's non-Western.
On the other hand, 99% of SF does not have much literary merit, even the well regarded stuff, so if you're interested in the cross-section, Literature might be the more reasonable department to file it under.
The authors that can combine the two are very rare - Wolfe, Douglas Adams, Ursula K. Le Guin, and often Russian authors, though that might be from the translation too.
You misspelled history.
Is Rowling's Potter part of Literary Fiction? The report states "We therefore leave the definition of what literary fiction is, open. [...] What it definitely is not, for our purposes, is poetry or plays. We are looking at fiction." Which causes me to believe it does fall within their definition.
I think it's important to accept that there is a group of people - perhaps small - that love reading literary fiction. It's not reasonable to assume bad faith, just because you can't see the merit in something. There maybe people that use it as a means of identifying with a group and not out of genuine passion or interest - but that is true of every group. You always have people who attach themselves in this way: programming and tech world are a classic case.
Anyway just because something seems esoteric does not mean the person iis not enjoying it. We all have radically different needs, experiences and interests. And it's OK. Anyone who thinks that because they read literary fiction they are superior in some way is foolish certainly. On the other hand they may quite reasonably say that they consider one form of fiction to be aesthetically superior: that is the nature of aesthetics - we all get our say.
Right, but this post is not about the vanishing of Literary fiction from the face of the earth.
A merely shrinking market is obviously consistent with the idea that some (or much) of it formerly sold to people who weren't really enjoying spending hours with a genre almost defined by not having much in the way of story or ideas, which in turn is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the market was sustained by status signaling.
Generally what I find is that once peoplelike a work of literary fiction they no longer think of it as "literary" - they sort see it in a category of its own.
I have natural 'aversion' for literary fiction. It's hard for me to get started, so I very rarely read them. But when I finally stumble reading one, I'm usually happy that I did.
Example: I have only read one book from Dostoyevsky: 'Notes from Underground'. I chose it because it was short. But oh boy was it deep, heavy and mind bending. I still carry that book with me (figuratively).
I don't hesitate to admit that I'm dirty commoner when it comes to literary, but I'm honest enough to admit that there are things 'that would be good for me' and I would love to have read those books but I'm shutting myself out of them. I'm sure literary fiction is full of crap but the best of them are far ahead of commercial genre fiction (there is intersection of genre fiction and literary fiction of course).
Affirming general propositions of the form "just because X, Y is not necessarily true" is logically fine. It is just a bit odd to be using glittering generalities to defend, of all things, literary fiction (which is concerned above all else with nuance and particularity).
Everyone gets to decide what they enjoy and how they spend their time. I generally enjoy good writing and good movies over spending time with miscellaneous web browsing and network TV. I have friends and family who love watching TV or hanging out on Facebook and that is fine because everyone gets to decide how they spend their time.
It is important to me that producers of great content get paid so even though I enjoy spending time in my local library, I prefer to purchase entertainment material.
John Le Carre, Salman Rushdie, John Banville, Anthony Horowitz. All had superlative novels out this year.
Also just started Francis Spufford's Golden Hill. Absolutely sublime way to spend a snow bound winter night.
The crisis is obviously in readership. Not writing. And the chaotic divergence of attention.
It may be true that the text no longer acts as Bildungsroman. The primary method to impart moral and spiritual character to young influence-able minds.
But then the Mountain must come to Muhammad. And the great works rendered as digital classics.
http://joycestick.com/