Nonfiction Is Struggling. Publishers Are Making It Worse

THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY is in the business of manufacturing stories. Not just the ones that live between the covers of the books it sells but the narratives crafted around those books in order to sell them.

Take, for instance, the debut novel. In Middlemen, a recently published study of the literary agent, Laura B. McGrath coins the term debut phenomenon: “a carefully orchestrated publicity event, designed to turn an unknown, first-time author into a professional writer.” The engine of this transformation is the debut narrative, in which various details—biographical facts about the author, the heat of the bidding war, the heft of the marketing push—coalesce “into a unified whole, launching book and author as two mutually reinforcing products.” A splashy first novel, in other words, is not a freak weather event. It is a calculated bid that success can be manufactured if decision makers tell the right story.

A number of systems exist to buttress this gambit. Like the early announcement of the deal. The industry website Publishers Marketplace contains an entire category for sales made in the “Fiction: Debut” category, emphasizing an author’s entrée into the genre even if they have already published in others. (Additional labels on the site sort fiction into more familiar piles like “Literary” or “Horror.”) Numerous prizes, which publishers often must pay to submit to, are contingent on the author’s debut status or age: the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Book Award Foundation’s 5 Under 35 list (debut narratives, McGrath notes, “tend to focus on youth”).

To read the full article on thewalrus.ca, click here