Three Popular Fiction Publishing Trends You Can Expect to Continue
1. More Reading, Fewer Books Sold:
In January of this year, the National Endowment for the Arts published a report titled “Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy” that pronounced this seemingly contradictory message: Americans are reading more (more than half of adults surveyed said they had read one work of literary fiction in the previous year), but the Book Industry Study Group reported that sales in 2008 had sunk since the previous year. Possible reasons for this discrepancy include increased reliance on libraries and the reading of fiction on-line.
2. New Respect (If Not Increased Coverage) for Books in Translation:
Translated works will continue to be big in 2010
Titles like Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog have made the bestseller lists. And while sales of fiction in translation are still only a tiny fragment of sales overall (which are down—see above), there are several small publishers doing a great job of bringing out work in translation. These include Open Letter Books, based at the University of Rochester, which has published 16 books in its one year of life. Since 2005, Europa Editions has done an excellent job offering trade paperbacks of (as the name implies) European works and was the publisher behind Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog and her more recent Gourmet Rhapsody. Archipelago Books is a nonprofit publisher that goes beyond the usual French/Spanish to locate and translate works in everything from Norwegian to Basque.
3. Men Continue to Rule the Roost:
There was a bit of a kafuffle in the industry in November of this year when the magazine Publishers Weekly published its list of the ten best books of the year, not because the venerable trade publication dared to pass judgment, but because not a single one of those ten books was written by a woman. As Juliana Baggott points out in this excellent piece in The Washington Post, anyone wanting to find success as a writer ought to arrange to be born male. Men are still winning the majority of prizes and earning the big bucks. Book buyers, however, continue to be largely female.
- Natalie Danford is the author of Inheritance, a novel published by St. Martin’s Press. She is also co-editor of the annual Best New American Voices anthology series, which introduces emerging writers. An experienced freelance writer and book critic, Natalie has published articles and reviews in People, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, and many other publications.
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