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January 5, 2008
Mark Lawson in the Guardian joins the struggle
In an article discussing the changing pressures on publishers of fiction Mark Lawson concludes with the following
"These vicious economic predictions have come into publishing because of a collapse in the market for fiction that prizes prose over plot. At the Christmas parties, many publishers were talking guiltily about new books by authors you might have heard of - winner of a Whitbread 20 years ago, writer of that book that became that film - that they have been forced to turn down because marketing was alarmed. This has happened largely because of a shift in the priorities of libraries, which used to be a guaranteed haven for several thousand copies of hardbacks that take a bit of brain work, but which are now rapidly ceding shelf-space to Citizens Advice Bureau leaflets or DVDs. And pressure on leisure time has made both producers and consumers of entertainment reluctant to sample a product that does not have some advance buzz.
The frightening consequence of these cultural changes is that serious fiction is now almost entirely dependent on judging panels. It is an awesome responsibility with which, literary history suggests, they may struggle"
If only Yinnon Ezra could understand that. Mark Lawson is not really talking about publishers, he is talking about the diverse non populist needs of readers. Meeting these demands is what books do and have done (for both fiction and non-fiction) for a long time in a way that no other creative form yet does. It is about 'social inclusion'- to use the phrase that is bandied.
Posted by Perkins at January 5, 2008 2:21 PM