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August 25, 2005
What Does “Literary Fiction” Mean When You’ve Left the Island?
The recent Associated Press wire story by Hillel Italie —“Pickings Thin for 2005 Literary Fiction”— seems to have sparked conversation in the Off-the-Island Bookworld. It certainly has us scratching our heads and waving our arms in reaction to the presuppositions that permeate the article. Wasn’t the question about literary fiction?
- Fiction buyers have looked to Manhattan and have seen no “blockbuster” quality fiction in 2005.
- Publishers and booksellers struggle to name a book with the kind of “word of mouth” that spread last year for Philip Roth and Marilynne Robinson (though E. L. Doctorow’s The March is “possible.”)
- New York editors believe there are no significant or potentially big, quality debut fiction titles out there because there were no huge auctions.
- And the article somehow links the most mainstream of popular writers (and Marlon Brando) into the search for “literary fiction.”
Whatever “literary fiction” might mean in this jittery world, we’ve been to Manhattan (as BlueHen Books, a division of what once was Putnam), and we know that it’s a great deal harder to find in the biggest windowed offices there than elsewhere in Bookworld.
This is precisely because the article’s two pivotal assumptions are accurate: First, in too many publishing offices, the “quality” of a fiction acquisition is defined by how much the editor paid for it. And second, too often we all do accept as “word-of-mouth” momentum the buzz that marketing dollars can buy for a good book now and then rather than the grass-root excitement that hand-selling and other personal recommendations bring to life.
Certainly buyers at the largest accounts across the country still have the constant opportunity to bring regional (and in the case of the chains, nationwide) notice to good work, no matter where it’s published. We just wish some few books from independent houses had been at closer reach when the AP called. If they had been, would that mean such books had the same chance to be “possible” as the books with the big dollars behind them? As publishers, this becomes the most important question we face each season because we’re talking here about quality fiction not commercial fiction. How do the best books come to light in today’s reading world?
Whatever it takes, independent publishers need to find the way to change the answer to that question.
Many works of quality fiction published in 2005 have not received the kind of “word of mouth” that Philip Roth and Marilynne Robinson and E. L. Doctorow’s fine novels are afforded by their publishers. Some of these titles have indeed been published from corner Manhattan offices. But many others have come from independent publishers across the country.
We are proud of what we — and other like-minded publishers — are accomplishing. But clearly the battle is ongoing when the dialogue on “literary fiction” remains both so marketing-dollar oriented and so provincial.
Fred Ramey
Posted in: Publishers Blog, | Keywords: publishers blog
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Comments
I think most of the burden of continuing the literary tradition is in the hands of the independents.
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Two things!
A. Fantastic to see Unbridled doing this blog! We’ve been trying to get something similar up for the last coupla months, but the word is that one more line of code, and it’ll work.
B. That article bordered on self-parody. You did the best job of anyone in giving a dignified response. One of my authors wondered how literary fiction writers from Holt and HarperCollins were feeling about the head honchos responses. Then again, maybe it’s just expectations management for the shareholders…
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That’s a good question, Richard. And it raises another: Whether such authors—or anyone in the bookselling and promotional chain—can bring readers’ attention sufficiently along to make a quality novel truly successful when it hasn’t been “designated” by the publisher.
We should ask.
(We “designate” every book in each Unbridled season. I suppose that’s a matter of our scale, both the benefit and the imperative of being a small press.)
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Posted by Fred Ramey 08/25 05:15 AM