Growing up, my favorite thing to do on the weekends was go to the bookstore. I would go most often with my dad, who was also an avid reader, and we would spend hours there—him in the history and classic literature sections, and me in the kid/young adult (and occasionally adult fantasy) sections. I almost always got a book, and I still remember the excitement of the drive home, my new book in my sweaty little hands, promising me hours of adventure.
To be clear, capitalism has been impacting and shaping the publishing world for longer than I’ve been alive; I’m not pretending that making money wasn’t the primary goal of the industry back in the 1980s. Of course it was. And even back then, I struggled to find books that appealed to me. (To be fair, I’m a notoriously picky reader.) Still, I found enough to immerse myself for hours and hours throughout my childhood.
But there’s no denying that the current publishing landscape is vastly different than it was just fifteen years ago, and that change occurred in large part because of how capitalism works. Big publishing houses acquired smaller ones and merged, reducing competition and severely limiting diversity in fiction. The advent and rise of social media accelerated the commodification of literature. Now, a book is only minimally judged by its promises of emotion or catharsis; it’s primarily judged by how similar it is to something else that’s been proven to make money.
Set aside, for a moment, that fiction is artistic expression, not something meant to be manufactured for the masses…
As an author, I can tell you what I’ve learned: To get agented and published by a midsize or Big 5 publisher, what an aspiring author writes doesn’t have to be well-written or thoughtful or even entertaining—it just has to be marketable. The story must be “high concept” (have a catchy, one-line pitch) and have comps. High concept examples: Pride & Prejudice with zombies. Or, The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor. Comps, or “comparable titles,” are successful books that can be compared to the one being pitched. As John Merrick wrote, “For an editor to acquire a book today, a list of comps will need to be drawn up, their sales figures high enough for a book to break even. The book will then be scrutinised by the marketing, publicity and sales departments, where the author’s ability to discuss their work on TV or podcasts is evaluated, their social media followings judged and the chances of review coverage assessed.”
A truly original story is hard to find comps for, and regardless, if those comps aren’t what’s “in,” an author isn’t going to have much of a chance. Getting a literary agent, let alone a publisher, is an uphill battle if what you’ve written is outside the box. (Which is why I’m so lucky to have found my indie publisher, Oliver-Heber Books, but that’s for another post)…
Because we live in a world where value is measured in dollars, originality equals risk.
The end result of all this? The books stacked on the “bestseller” tables at Barnes & Noble are eerily formulaic. To find a story that doesn’t follow the popular formulas would mean leaving the store, since indie and self-published books (that take the risks traditionally published books don’t take) aren’t generally stocked at B&N.
So here I am, a former bookworm, wandering bookstores with an empty feeling in my gut, looking for buried treasure. I’m definitely writing the types of stories I wish I could read, but my need to escape into someone else’s story hasn’t left me, and I don’t think it ever will. I’ve just got to find the right books, which is why from now on, I’m reading indie authors and long-forgotten gems I find at used and independent bookstores.
Wish me luck.