The snob factor in publishing…
Many writers have faced it. Indie writers are always fighting it because the likes of Stephen King, James Patterson, Lee Child, Douglas Preston, and many others equate indie books to the old vanity press paradigm, notwithstanding successes by Andy Weir (The Martian), Hugh Howey (Wool), and E. L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey). The old stallions from the Big Five stables I just named all write genre fiction, so that snootiness isn’t motivated by an erudite attitude of a critic’s-determined literary giant.
Of course, the latter is also a source of snootiness. “Literary giant” means a person who writes books that are considered literary fiction, as if genre fiction is somehow not up to the quality of these “masterpieces of literature.” Here’s an SAT type of question: modern classical music is to popular music as literary fiction is to X. What’s X? Answer: Genre fiction. Modern classical music is boring crap erudites, mostly academics, write for other erudites. Same for literary fiction.
Genre fiction carries on the age-old tradition of exciting and entertaining storytelling. Literary fiction supposedly tells a story, but it’s often not entertaining—just boring and ponderous. A lot of classics can be described by those two adjectives. Modern literary fiction can often be described by the same two, mostly because nowadays it’s written to impress erudites and achieve academic promotion and not to entertain. Even those old classics were written to entertain—they just became boring and ponderous because modern genre fiction has evolved so much.
Indie books push the frontier of publishing, even for genre fiction. That’s because old wizened editors reminiscent of J. K. Rowling’s bank gnomes in the Harry Potter series often turn an entertaining story into something not so entertaining. They destroy authors’ voices because they’re anachronisms who live in that “golden age of publishing” before paperbacks appeared on airport racks and ebooks filled people’s Kindles. People look for entertainment in many places now, but they want to be entertained—not bored to death.
Traditional publishing often looks for relevance among the boring books of literary fiction, but I still believe the traditional publishing paradigm is valid, even for genre fiction. Many small presses and imprints carry on the tradition of publishing exciting fiction. Many also minimize the stultifying bureaucracy an author faces with the Big Five, providing warm, working relationships for authors, especially writers who don’t want to bother with finding formatters, cover artists, and/or PR and marketing gurus. Nowadays an author has to participate more in book promotion than before, unless she or he is one of the Big Five’s mares or stallions. (Some small presses promote themselves as publishers of literary fiction. I’m not sure that’s smart.)
A recent op-ed article in the NY Times (placed in the June 11th Saturday edition by Times’s editors in order to minimize ripples, I suppose, from literary fiction reviewers and the Big Five) discussed the snootiness of literary fiction. Jennifer Weiner in “The Snobs and Me” mentions how “literary critics” went after her for writing genre fiction. A quote from the article: “Surely, Princeton would disown a writer whose books sell in airports.” This Princeton graduate had feelings of inadequacies when attending Princeton class reunions. I’m sorry she felt that way. My answer is always, “Madam (or Sir), you don’t have to read my books, but some people like to be entertained.” Especially on an airline flight. You need something to take your mind off that long wait in security, and Umberto Eco or Svetlana Alexievich just won’t do it. Weiner might, Preston might, and I might, but literary fiction won’t.
But back to that other version of snootiness. I’ve seen the formula expressed too often: ebooks = indie = self-publishing = vanity press. The Big Five are doing their best to keep this formula seared into the brains of readers. First, they price their ebooks at almost the same level as paper versions (except for those paperbacks on the airport racks, which are usually later editions of more expensive tomes). Second, they use organizations like Author’s Guild and their members to put down indies—even books from small imprints (if a small press is successful, one of the Big Five gobbles it up).
Third, the Big Five and their muscle often encourage bookstores to propagate that formula. Indies rarely appear in big book barns because they’re really just extensions of the Big Five’s paradigm, lackeys to huge corporations. Small presses fare better. Mom&pop bookstores, often run by old dowagers who think Jane Austen is a big deal, turn up their noses at genre fiction, especially indies. (I have never had a good experience with a mom&pop store.) Finally, public libraries, often having small budgets, limited shelf space, and no way to handle ebooks, eschew indies and small presses—the Big Five rule there.
There is more to this prejudicial treatment than snootiness, of course. There is fear of change. There is an upheaval in the publishing industry going on. It’s easier to publish a book now than any time in history, so there are more good books and good authors out there. This is a boon for readers, not so much for writers—competition for readers is ferocious because, with other entertainment possibilities, the number of readers is diminishing. The internet is taking over retail and maybe writing. Certainly millennials are more likely to buy online and read blogs than deal with any kind of book.
I often am amused at people’s reactions to cultural paradigm shifts. Take music as an example. Mozart was considered revolutionary in his time. So was Beethoven. Debussy and Revel were considered radical and Stravinsky’s ballets caused rioting. All their work is now considered classic! I remember when the Beatles started. I listened to the White Album the other day and wondered why I thought it was so radical back in the sixties—it now sounds pretty tame. Presley’s hip gyrations are nothing compared to what goes on today (was that famous Super Bowl snafu intentional?). Books don’t really suffer such a revolution, at least as far as good storytelling goes. But books we now consider classics were genre fiction in their day (all of Dickens, for example), so there is that parallel.
But the snootiness doesn’t help. It hinders rational discourse. As we move through this paradigm shift, I don’t want readers and writers to suffer the way people suffer in political revolutions—snootiness is akin to Trump’s attacks on Hispanics and Muslims. Every reader has personal tastes and those should be respected, but looking down your nose at an author is simply bad education. You should judge a book by its contents, not its provenance. There’s no place for snootiness in the book business or politics. Things always settle out in a revolution, but the naysayers often end up suffering more than the revolutionaries. Let’s keep that from happening in the book business.
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In libris libertas….
