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Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

theguardian.com

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Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#21

Post by matt4077 »

jamesrcole wrote: post #12
Arnt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 booksh…

I have no idea how many books are bought just for show, but why would being an editor provide you with insight into the numbers? How could they know?

Surveys? Or, possibly, the book:ebook sales ratios?

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#22

Post by malloryerik »

pessimizer wrote: post #14
galeforcewinds wrote: post #9

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 l…

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.

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"?

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#23

Post by akvadrako »

elorant wrote: post #15
kybernetikos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#24

Post by malloryerik »

kybernetikos wrote: post #7
icebraining wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#25

Post by Arnt »

jamesrcole wrote: post #12
Arnt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 booksh…

I have no idea how many books are bought just for show, but why would being an editor provide you with insight into the numbers? How could they know?

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?

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#26

Post by jamesrcole »

Arnt wrote: post #25
jamesrcole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how many books are bought just for show, but why would being an editor provide you with insight into the numbers? How could they know?

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?

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#27

Post by Arnt »

jamesrcole wrote: post #26
Arnt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I suppose I'd better ask. Look here again in a day or two, please.

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#28

Post by jamesrcole »

matt4077 wrote: post #21
jamesrcole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how many books are bought just for show, but why would being an editor provide you with insight into the numbers? How could they know?

Surveys? Or, possibly, the book:ebook sales ratios?

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?

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#29

Post by buttcoinslol »

fractallyte wrote: post #4

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 di…

> We'd have fewer problems in the world if more people read (and appreciated) science fiction.

You misspelled history.

Re: Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

#30

Post by hardlianotion »

akvadrako wrote: post #20
kybernetikos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

We can quarrel about the merit of most fiction, literary fiction included.
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