Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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Inspired by some of the talk on new novels and why they suck and whatever, here's a rolling thread for discussion of new literary fiction!

ksh, Friday, 9 July 2010 17:27 (fourteen years ago) link

I just got to the top of the library holds list for 'Tinkers' (just won the Pulitzer) - I pick it up today! Sounds good - will report back after I finish bloody Proust.

franny glass, Friday, 9 July 2010 17:52 (fourteen years ago) link

this list of upcoming titles might interest some

oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 19:56 (fourteen years ago) link

i really want to read that shteyngart novel but it apparently doesn't come out here until september

thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:21 (fourteen years ago) link

i keep thinking 'oh, that's coming out soon', and then i check, and remember it's not, here

thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:21 (fourteen years ago) link

You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin

hmmmmmm

Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:28 (fourteen years ago) link

i really want to read that shteyngart novel but it apparently doesn't come out here until september

boy this one has all kinds of buzz, it feels like

I'm cleansing my palate after Your Face Tomorrow with nonfiction...it always takes me forever to finish nonfiction books tho

les yeux sans aerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Friday, 9 July 2010 22:34 (fourteen years ago) link

oh god, i still have that lying around for after i finish the thirty-eight other things i am reading

thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:37 (fourteen years ago) link

its really good dude!!!!! altho i tried reading the "prequel" but it was kinda boring so i read some short stories instead

Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:38 (fourteen years ago) link

today i bought the other two kj parker books and stephen king's new pb. i don't even belong on this thread right now.

thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link

haha u ended up buying the other parkers? im still keeping an eye out for them

on topic: i really liked the imperfections by tom rachman.

Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:55 (fourteen years ago) link

d'you want my copies when i'm done? they're only going to go in a box somewhere, otherwise

i am sure i will have THOUGHTS to share about them on the rolling contemporary nerd fiction thread. i will note in passing that one of the characters is now thinking about 'insurgents'

thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 23:24 (fourteen years ago) link

yah def - i can send you some stuff in return, if youd like. either from the nerd fic thread or this one. i have a whole bunch of nyrb publishing things i can send as well.

also i will be in LDN for a little bit this fall (like l8 sept.)

Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 23:30 (fourteen years ago) link

Current library pile = authors from the New Yorker Top 20 Under 40 list, bits and pieces from that Dalkey ArchiveBest European Fiction 2010, Ann Carson's Autobiography Of Red, and a few recommendations from the other thread (Tom McCarthy's Remainder, Mo Yan's Life & Death...). Had been caught up playing catchup with teen fiction for some freelance pieces - writers like Libba Bray & M.T. Anderson seem to be doing what Shakey wants from fiction, heh. Nothing local's caught my eye lately (I think Eleanor Catton's had some press in the UK?), but I've picked up a few journals.

Anyone read Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad yet?

etc, Monday, 12 July 2010 03:29 (fourteen years ago) link

i think there was talk abt it in some other thread?? cant remember where tho

just sayin, Monday, 12 July 2010 07:48 (fourteen years ago) link

Bit of chat about a UK one here.

GamalielRatsey, Monday, 12 July 2010 09:15 (fourteen years ago) link

(ayo lamp send me your address. tom dot west at gmail dot com)

thomp, Monday, 12 July 2010 10:28 (fourteen years ago) link

hey dudes, it's ksh

I need to get back into the habit of reading fiction regularly again, so I've decided to start off by rereading Coetzee's Disgrace. haven't read any Coetzee since high school, I think, but I'm looking forward to revisiting this one

markers, Sunday, 18 July 2010 04:28 (fourteen years ago) link

C by Tom McCarthy, anyone?

Also I see from the ILB FAP discussion that Steven Hall comes up in that list, and that was reviewed by Tom McCarthy.

xyzzzz__, Sunday, 25 July 2010 19:01 (fourteen years ago) link

Absolutely. The one book I'm excited by this year. I'm in the crowd that thinks Remainder was a bit special, & this is the proper follow-up, so I've been waiting for it for a bit. Should maybe try to shake a copy from the publishing tree this week.

Never had an impulse to read Steven Hall - he was recommended to me by a couple of people, but I think they were maybe assuming I'd like something a bit meta because I read curious things.

At the mo, enjoying the bloodsport reviews of Craig Raine's novel. Sounds awful, but I might read it in a bookshop. Intrigued by the bile it's generated.

tetrahedron of space (woof), Monday, 26 July 2010 10:09 (fourteen years ago) link

Almost finished and I can confirm that Tinkers is wonderful.

franny glass, Monday, 26 July 2010 17:59 (fourteen years ago) link

tempted to go pick up the Gary Shteyngart tomorrow in store, which I pretty much never do

markers, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 06:43 (fourteen years ago) link

^i have it on hold at my library

recently finished 'atmospheric disturbances' which i liked a lot

johnny crunch, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 11:58 (fourteen years ago) link

Just chatted about C to a decently connected publishing person - acc to him, a few ppl are saying it's a masterpiece, easy best novel of the year, etc. But I don't really trust the insider perspective (especially as McC's properly represented and with a big house this time), so I'm ready to be disappointed.

Think I want to read Atmospheric Disturbances.

tetrahedron of space (woof), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:11 (fourteen years ago) link

If man's autocracy, his genius, his powers of generation, have all passed to the machine, and if the pulpy, material base for the refined and abstract thoughts and emotions that we read in books has been revealed to us, then how can we understand poetry or prose as the sublime self-expression of autonomous and elevated individuals? Melville's answer is as implicit as his question: we can't, not any more.

wut

no, you're dead right, it's a macaroon (ledge), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:15 (fourteen years ago) link

also am generally suspicious of anyone who writes about marinetti with breathy enthusiasm.

no, you're dead right, it's a macaroon (ledge), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:26 (fourteen years ago) link

Booker longlist 2010:

Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue: Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen Dunmore: The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy: The Long Song(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy: C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet(Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore: February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray: Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain: Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner: The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Thoughts? I've only read one of these (The Slap, fucking brilliant) so I feel unqualified to really comment.

franny glass, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 19:50 (fourteen years ago) link

Shit--have read none, though I've bought but not yet opened the Paul Murray.

The great big red thing, for those who like a surprise (James Morrison), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:00 (fourteen years ago) link

I've read the Paul Murray. It's enjoyable but it didn't exactly wow me and i'm not sure it really justifies it's length. Kind of surprised to see it on here tbh. Quite refreshing not to see Ian McEwan on there though.

Number None, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:09 (fourteen years ago) link

still need to buy & read Solar. so out of the loop u_u

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:16 (fourteen years ago) link

you really dont

max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:18 (fourteen years ago) link

is it bad? i've read a bunch of McEwan and the only thing I really wasn't a fan of was Amsterdam

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:18 (fourteen years ago) link

by a bunch I mean, like, four of five

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:18 (fourteen years ago) link

he kinda sucks, i think

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:19 (fourteen years ago) link

Yup

Number None, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:20 (fourteen years ago) link

i don't think he sucks at all, but that's not the point. curious to hear max's opinion

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:25 (fourteen years ago) link

oh i was just being flippant. i didnt read it. i dont like him, or what he 'stands for.' he comes across like an asshole in interviews. but i met him once and he was vaguely nice.

max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:28 (fourteen years ago) link

oh cool. I think I've seen like one interview with him or something, but that was a long time ago so I don't really remember it. my opinion of him is more or less based on just reading his stuff. we were assigned Atonement in 11th grade or whatever and I read Amsterdam, Cement Garden, and Saturday after that -- all in high school and right after I graduated -- and then I picked up On Chesil Beach when it was released back in 2007. i liked Saturday the best

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:30 (fourteen years ago) link

actually not sure if I even read all of Atonement

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:31 (fourteen years ago) link

you missed a pretty crucial ending, dumbass

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link

a "twist" ending

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link

yeah

max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link

youll never know if 'atonement' 'occurs'

max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link

hey Que, can you shut the fuck up and leave me alone?

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:33 (fourteen years ago) link

you follow me into every fucking thread, and at this point it's more or less harassment

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:33 (fourteen years ago) link

hey, just saying. Atonement has a twist ending and if you didn't read the whole thing, you missed something crucial.

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:35 (fourteen years ago) link

i'm not fucking kidding about the harassment, dude. i never did anything to you as far as I remember, but you make it a point to make my posting experience here way less enjoyable everyday. i understand you don't like me, and i don't care about that or if you actually still think i'm a sock, but you need to just leave me alone

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:36 (fourteen years ago) link

**SPOILER ALERT**

Part four

The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.

It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. Robbie Turner died of septicemia caused by his injury on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. The truth is that Cecilia and Robbie never saw each other again after their half-hour meeting. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends.

Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she told the readers the pitiless truth. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:36 (fourteen years ago) link

sorry i called you a dumbass dude. i hardly post anymore, so i don't know what you mean about following you into threads. but i will leave this one, ok?

Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:41 (fourteen years ago) link

it's ok. there are a million times where you've showed up and attacked me for what I thought was pretty innocuous stuff -- all I'm asking you to do is to back off it

markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:44 (fourteen years ago) link

There certainly are already a lot of books

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Monday, 24 April 2023 23:37 (one year ago) link

Perhaps still more books than shows, as unlikely as that sounds.

The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 23:51 (one year ago) link

I don't mean to view the days of literary rock stars through rose-tinted glasses. In lots of ways that world sucked. That world of big-time book critics, literary publishers and authors seemed very clubby. Lots of mediocre work was championed and there was more than a hint of sexism in some of the attitudes. But on the other hand, maybe having that clubby world controlling book review sections in major periodicals and newspapers at least allowed some critical mass to coalesce around certain authors and books, enough to cross them over to a wider mainstream audience and get people interested in literature who otherwise might not have given it the time of day. Those hyper-masculine literary lions were caricatures in some respects, but at least they had an appeal that extended beyond ivory-tower eggheads and hoity-toity rich folks. We can indulge some nostalgia for those dinosaurs even while admitting their kind will probably not walk the earth again.

o. nate, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:20 (one year ago) link

So…it was like the recording industry?

The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:25 (one year ago) link

To me at least it seemed like a smaller world than the recording industry was.

o. nate, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:28 (one year ago) link

Many authors write with just enough racial awareness to flatter their readers into thinking they’ve read something bold and insightful, all the while avoiding any exploration of truths that would make both author and reader uncomfortable. It’s literature as lifestyle affirmation art.
What a sweeping generalization, fair takes my breath away. Does our Omniscient Narrator offer many examples? So far this statement puts me off reading any more of the piece.

dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 03:50 (one year ago) link

(Back to Mr Palomar.)

dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 03:51 (one year ago) link

the narrator is specifically talking about Asian-American writing, and gives several extremely specific and detailed examples xp

imago, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 06:47 (one year ago) link

I don't think you can call something that starts with "many authors" a sweeping generalization, it's saying from the off that it's not everyone.

Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 09:20 (one year ago) link

Many authors are saying…

The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 10:12 (one year ago) link

Out of context, v. off-putting (incl. "Many"): made me cynical about that author's cynicism, re clickbait. Good to know there is more to it.

dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 18:19 (one year ago) link

But would have to read all the authors cited, each in context, to see if the judgement seems fair.

dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 18:21 (one year ago) link

(& think I'm gonna try to finish Mr. Palomar today, because it deserves more than my declining-toward-bedtime mind.)

dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 19:20 (one year ago) link

I don't think we need rockstar male authors, but I think it's true that public literary reception has become increasingly moralistic and that sometimes that makes for less interesting work, I don't think Knausgaard would have published those books in the current atmosphere

but that goes for authors of any gender/ethnicity/sexuality, this article makes some good points imo:
_Many authors write with just enough racial awareness to flatter their readers into thinking they’ve read something bold and insightful, all the while avoiding any exploration of truths that would make both author and reader uncomfortable. It’s literature as lifestyle affirmation art._

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/06/asian-american-psycho🕸


I’ve got to say, I read this and think it’s bullshit. The demand that authors of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds write books that “complicate” or “make abject” or “politicise” those backgrounds is as much a function of white supremacy as authors only including “the polite bits” or whatever. Writers don’t owe anyone writing that fulfils specific ideological goals, and that the idea is taken seriously is truly mind-boggling.

Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 19:42 (one year ago) link

All the big rockstar male authors are still in print, you can still read them if you want.

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 27 April 2023 00:28 (one year ago) link

Yeah, they never seem to go out of print.

The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 27 April 2023 01:28 (one year ago) link

True, but on the other hand, I feel it would be difficult for a Philip Roth or John Updike to rise to the top these days. The "selfish misogynistic asshole describes his sexual/romantic life" genre does seem fairly done and dusted.

Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 27 April 2023 01:33 (one year ago) link

Growing up in the 80s, the whole phenomenon of quality paperbacks (Vintage Contemporaries, Vintage International, Penguin American, and so on) really gave a sense of quality and excitement to new books, the "rock star" energy mentioned above. And for sure there was Richard Ford and Barry Hannah, but there was Lorrie Moore and Ellen Gilchrist and so on as well.

underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Thursday, 27 April 2023 04:06 (one year ago) link

Who else among us remembers the promotional blitzkrieg that launched The World According to Garp?

The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 27 April 2023 05:12 (one year ago) link

Sounds relevant.

MY BOOK IS OUT TODAYY ✨✨I loved writing this book and I hope you can feel that - it’s a project from my heart + hope it’s a valuable contribution to the conversation around housing, how it impacts every part of how we live and how we must make home a right for everyone ✨✨✨ pic.twitter.com/y21hBa8MdH

— kieranyates (@kieran_yates) April 27, 2023

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 27 April 2023 12:25 (one year ago) link

Did you belong to QPB, Eazy? Quality Paperback Bookclub, for those of yall who missed it: trade pbs, quite a good variety, like omnibus editions of olde American authors coming back around (Dawn Powell!), also ones from other countries, fiction and nonfiction. A fair amount of erotica, believe it or not.
So I finished (read straight through, then back through some of)Mr. Palomar. I should read back through some more of the smooth, friendly, inexorable, guided tours, sunny lectures, really, of the perceptions and thought processes of Mr. P., a seemingly afternoon, middle-aged gentleman, trained to think in terms of prototypes and models, the rightness of principles, however much he actually knows or knows that he knows or believes about them---but now he wants to see things as they are, because that's what increasingly seems right.
He's a seeker of the everyday (cue" "At home he's a tourist"), getting down to basics in a spaced out way that can disappear into tiny details---my own mind blinks and misses some, I admit, but in short chapters that bump into invisible walls of the much valued world: "the surface of things," into and from which he means to peer, balancing on the window sill, but being seen, as also embraced, can be tricky: he walks past a topless sunbather several times, determined to thereby express just the right, rightest, most enlightened state of mind, until finally (you can guess the rest).
At the zoo, he gets too wrapped up in the implications of the apes---until his little daughter (he seems to be a late-life Dad), tired of the damn apes, pulls him toward the penguins, aieee-it's okay though, he needed some kind of change.
Which can be agreeable, like when he and his wife choose, or at least he does, to watch a gecko on the terrace window over TV: they or he can see the translucent gecko belly welcoming another bug, and even a butterfly.
The ugly nasty usual pigeon clouds over Rome get bumrushed by sparrows in late autumn---Mr. P. can find no adequate account for their behavior---forming, at one point, a wheeling word balloon of sparrows, the vessel of a vast fast message, comment of sparrows, so complex, but perhaps it can be read by someone or something (sparrows?)
But there's also an accruing sense, eventually spelled out in passing, of the limits, limited value and rightness of conjecture, of what he once took to be "supreme intellectual exercise," of words themselves yadda yadda I notice that the original Italian edition of this is copyright 1983, two years before the author died, and seems like he had some sense of that, falling further into place, in the comedy of thought, under the sun and moon and stars.

dow, Thursday, 27 April 2023 19:44 (one year ago) link

Sorry! Starlings, not sparrows!

dow, Thursday, 27 April 2023 20:09 (one year ago) link

four months pass...

Better late than never, I guess: 20 years after winning the Nobel and 29 years after its publication, the translation of Elfriede Jelinek's magnum opus Die Kinder der Toten is forthcoming at @YaleBooks ! pic.twitter.com/wQRogDXR5x

— Karl (@underreadgerman) September 12, 2023

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 10:40 (one year ago) link

I have been emailing YUP about this book since 2005-ish and developed rapport with people as they came & went from the job. I read an extract of this in a US publication, a scene with a bus crash; it was kind of classic Jelinek, hopeless and violent....I'm a fan, I"m excited for this

J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 12:20 (one year ago) link

Is that extract online?

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 13:26 (one year ago) link

no, it was in a paper journal, a very small affair. I have it around here someplace but I am pretty disorganized, books in stacks all over the house & also at the office which is half an hour away (I suspect it's out there) -- the journal is/was called Dimension 2 and the editor was a good correspondent and I see from our correspondence that I promised to send him some stuff and I probably didn't, I'll remedy that today (six years late). It's in vol. 5 no. 3 -- I believe it's the prologue, I had originally heard it was the prologue & the epilogue but I don't recall the latter.

J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:32 (one year ago) link

oh wait I did find a part of it online: here. still if you have space on your shelves it's so cool to get some obscure journal that just happens to have an excerpt from a book that won the Nobel but that most English readers can't be bothered about, fun book adventures imo

J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:34 (one year ago) link

Excellent, hope it's not too tough to source in the UK.

Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:35 (one year ago) link

Thank you, J Crawford, for the link. Shall read that soon.

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 21:10 (one year ago) link

three months pass...

Two more for the year:

- Jose Donoso. There is an incomplete version available in English:
https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-obscene-bird-of-night/

- Maria Gabriella Llansol in June: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175403640-a-thousand-thoughts-in-flight

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 2 January 2024 16:44 (eleven months ago) link

Cool!

The Glittering Worldbuilders (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 January 2024 22:47 (eleven months ago) link

seven months pass...

At this time of so much—too much—death, I wrote about the unheeded politics of Elias Canetti‘s powerful posthumous text, The Book Against Death (translated by Peter Filkins & published by @NewDirections in English), for @thebafflermag: https://t.co/qQUudJG8bJ

— Sanders Isaac Bernstein (@Return2Sanders) August 13, 2024

xyzzzz__, Friday, 16 August 2024 10:42 (three months ago) link

Also have a copy of Children of the Dead so will be getting round to it in a couple of weeks

xyzzzz__, Friday, 16 August 2024 13:12 (three months ago) link

Looking good for Latin AM reissues:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/08/16/on-asturiass-men-of-maize/

https://www.nyrb.com/products/bomarzo

xyzzzz__, Monday, 19 August 2024 22:17 (three months ago) link

i thought this was pretty crazy. from a Granta article i read yesterday:

"The editor-in-chief of an independent publishing house recently told me that she believes there are about 20,000 serious and consistent readers of literary fiction in America and publishing any novel of quality is a matter of getting that book to them by any means necessary."

https://granta.com/literature-without-literature

scott seward, Monday, 19 August 2024 22:27 (three months ago) link

it didn't seem like that many people!

scott seward, Monday, 19 August 2024 22:28 (three months ago) link

Agreed. Seems low.

The Zing from Another URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 19 August 2024 22:54 (three months ago) link

the number is more likely several times that.

butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, 19 August 2024 23:55 (three months ago) link

As a very rough proxy, the number of English degrees awarded per year seems to be about 50,000 (though falling every year)

https://datausa.io/profile/cip/english

jmm, Tuesday, 20 August 2024 00:32 (three months ago) link

Ha, there are plenty of English degree graduates who only read what they’re assigned and fuck all else.

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, 20 August 2024 00:48 (three months ago) link

maybe they meant people who are always buying new books. plenty of people probably only buy a handful of new lit fic books a year. some zeitgeisty ones. some bestsellers a la kingsolver.

scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2024 01:17 (three months ago) link

Edwin Frank, the editor of New York Review Books, had that number at 50,000 around 2012, maybe it's gone down?

with hidden noise, Monday, 26 August 2024 08:56 (three months ago) link

I interned at a large(r) indie publisher in 2012 (mostly nfic, but still) and the "big" authors usually had print runs b/w 10-20,000, rarely exceeding that. I'd imagine Fiction to generally have larger audiences but unfortunately prob not that much more.

That said, there are a lot of assumptions/presuppositions though w/ "serious", "consistent" and "literary" that gets you to that 20K number quoted above. I'd guess something like Rachel Kushner's new book out next week I'd guess a print run around b/w 35-50,000. Of course many people who read this stuff will get it via library, audiobook, ebook, borrow, etc.

Federico Boswarlos, Monday, 26 August 2024 21:04 (three months ago) link

also, this stuff pops up when i google:

"According to Electric Literature, novels published by traditional publishers typically sell between 2,000 and 40,000 copies, while novels published by independent small presses typically sell between 500 and 10,000 copies."

"In general, a book that sells more than 5,000 copies is considered successful in the publishing industry. For first-time authors, selling a few thousand copies may be considered a success, while well-established authors may need to sell hundreds of thousands of copies to be considered successful."

"One figure that often crops up is that the average traditionally published title can expect to sell 3,000 copies in its lifetime."

https://jerichowriters.com/average-book-sales-figures/

scott seward, Monday, 26 August 2024 22:21 (three months ago) link

What about different kinds of nonfiction? Maybe I should say sold as nonfiction, though we all love a good story, however real it's supposed to be (thinking of the older people I know who say they read only self-help, biography, memoir, history [as in WWII etc]).

dow, Tuesday, 27 August 2024 03:21 (three months ago) link

The publishing industry hates me with a passion. I read an average of a book a week, but I read at least 50 public library books or books I've bought used for every new book I buy.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 27 August 2024 03:41 (three months ago) link

If you’re in a lot of countries that aren’t the US, writers still get paid if you borrow books from a library.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right#:~:text=A%20public%20lending%20right%20(PLR,as%20books%2C%20music%20and%20artwork.

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, 27 August 2024 11:41 (three months ago) link

Google tells me there are 43000 bookshops in the US alone. I imagine a significant portion of them sell a selection of contemporary lit, and that they sell at least a couple for each new title. Online bookshops probably count for a few as well. I can also confirm that other countries import contemporary American lit, we even translate it, but I'm sure that's not serious and consistent.
Hell, on Goodreads new titles get tens of thousands of reviews, and that can only be a fraction of the readership.

Anyway, I'm sure it's possible to check how many prints your average new contemporary book gets.

Nabozo, Tuesday, 27 August 2024 13:20 (three months ago) link

A bestseller in Denmark supposedly sells 15,000 copies or more - these U.S. figures sound very low

corrs unplugged, Tuesday, 27 August 2024 18:35 (three months ago) link


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