Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically

Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by galeforcewinds on Saturday December 16, 2017 @05:24AM (#15938842)

I have understood some drop in fiction book sales to be caused by the wind-up of the Harry Potter series in 2007. A 2011 article from The Guardian (Datablog section, author uncredited) linked to this spreadsheet of Harry Potter book sales numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C6QriM1aMBd5Ab6Tn7hn...

Is Rowling's Potter part of Literary Fiction? The report states "We therefore leave the definition of what literary fiction is, open. [...] What it definitely is not, for our purposes, is poetry or plays. We are looking at fiction." Which causes me to believe it does fall within their definition.

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by axedwool on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:22AM (#15939013)

"Literary fiction" is a category used in the publishing world to contrast "genre fiction". A publisher would consider Harry Potter genre fiction of some kind, whether in fantasy or young adult. I think it would be quite strange if it were included in the survey.

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by pessimizer on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:24AM (#15939018)

Literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction. Literary fiction consists of pointless books about the middle class, by the middle class; genre fiction is everything else.

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by malloryerik on Saturday December 16, 2017 @07:00AM (#15939152)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dostoevsky, Hermann Hesse, Charlotte Bronte, Albert Camus, Philip Roth, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Cervantes, Hemingway, George Orwell, JD Salinger, Bret Easton Ellis, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, (arguably) Homer, Goethe, Harper Lee, and on and on... isn't this is all "literary fiction"?

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by igravious on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:37AM (#15939066)

Here's a quote from a bestselling non-fiction work, “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by ci5er on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:56AM (#15939132)

I'm not sure that the Jubilee Bible was best selling.

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Re:Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically by axedwool on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:34AM (#15939055)

Hey, let's be fair. Sometimes they're resentful books about the upper class, by the middle class.

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