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Stop Labeling Authors Either “Literary” or “Commercial”
Yes, Alice Munro’s stories and Stephen King’s novels are different, but some people like both
There’s a lot of competition for the title of the Worst Publishing Trend of the 21st Century. Stagnant book advances for authors. E-books with no proofreading and bad formatting. Pink covers on novels by women when James Patterson’s don’t arrive swathed in baby blue. And they all preceded the Covid-induced shifts that may endure, such as the substitution of online for in-store events, depriving bookstores of urgently needed foot traffic.
Then there’s a trend that, if less obvious, may hurt authors more — the practice of labeling novels either “literary” or “commercial,” or high or low culture. The binary taxonomy began in the pre-Amazon heyday of big-box bookstore chains, around the mid-1990s, perhaps because when you have thousands of feet of floor space to fill, you need an easy way to classify books.
But the trend persists now that most chains have died. Remember Borders, B. Dalton and that much-loved regional chain your area once had? The “literary” and “commercial” labels may have helped the big-box stores temporarily, but they hurt authors and readers alike.
