I was agent surfing again and i came across an agent on agentquery.com that has Commericial fiction and Literary fiction as her only fiction genres. What are commercial and literary fiction?
Commercial and Literary?
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Here's Nathan Bransford's take on commercial fiction:
commercial fiction
I don't think anyone has yet come up with an answer on what literary fiction actually means. My view is that it is in the eye of the beholder.
commercial fiction
I don't think anyone has yet come up with an answer on what literary fiction actually means. My view is that it is in the eye of the beholder.
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For me commercial fiction = sales in the stores.
Literary fiction = incomprehensible reviews from the artsy-fartsy post-graduate crowd.
While all literary fiction can be commercial, not all commercial fiction is considered literary.
As in all parakeets are birds, but not all birds are parakeets.
Put me down as being that mad avian who is coo-coo for Cocoa-Puffs. Nuts, but lots of energy!
Literary fiction = incomprehensible reviews from the artsy-fartsy post-graduate crowd.
While all literary fiction can be commercial, not all commercial fiction is considered literary.
As in all parakeets are birds, but not all birds are parakeets.
Put me down as being that mad avian who is coo-coo for Cocoa-Puffs. Nuts, but lots of energy!
My take is that with literary fiction the writing is tighter. More description, less dialogue. And sometimes the term is simply euphemistic for fiction of no particular genre. Which makes it riskier with agents and publishers, since there's less of a precedent for comparison.
Several literary books can have commercial success however. Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Eggers' What is the What, and Holthe's When the Elephants Dance are examples.
Several literary books can have commercial success however. Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Eggers' What is the What, and Holthe's When the Elephants Dance are examples.
I've always liked these definitions:
-Commercial fiction tells a broadly-captivating story.
-Literary fiction uses a story to examine the "complex facets" of human life.
And "literary commercial fiction" uses a broadly-captivating story to examine it's theme. (Resulting in that rare combination of good sales and good reviews which I heard one agent call the "Holy Grail" of the publishing industry. Think The Great Gatsby, or To Kill a Mockingbird).
-Commercial fiction tells a broadly-captivating story.
-Literary fiction uses a story to examine the "complex facets" of human life.
And "literary commercial fiction" uses a broadly-captivating story to examine it's theme. (Resulting in that rare combination of good sales and good reviews which I heard one agent call the "Holy Grail" of the publishing industry. Think The Great Gatsby, or To Kill a Mockingbird).
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Literary fiction wins Pulitzers.
Commercial fiction makes lots of money.
They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Commercial fiction makes lots of money.
They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
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But what happens if you don't win a pulitzer or make a lot of money? What is it then? :|
...
xP
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Yeah. I wanna know, too. I'm looking for an agent interested in lousy novels that won't make any money.
caw
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Did no one read what they were quoting: "They're not necessarily mutually exclusive."
e.g. The Time Traveller's Wife=literary and commercial
e.g. The Time Traveller's Wife=literary and commercial
According to my agent, 'commercial' has a marketing hook which flows from the subject matter of the book ie a detective thriller, a legal-eagle showdown, a courtroom drama etc etc which each have 'defined markets' which a writer can choose to tap into, whereas...
...'literary' focuses on more internal aspects, the journey of the human soul, the amorphous, the nebulous and the obscure and often written more for the benefit of reviewers than the wider populace.
It's like movies: every studio wants to win an Oscar, but they need the genre-driven stuff to bring in the dollars that enable them to blow some on Oscar material that the Academy loves and no-one else understands.
...'literary' focuses on more internal aspects, the journey of the human soul, the amorphous, the nebulous and the obscure and often written more for the benefit of reviewers than the wider populace.
It's like movies: every studio wants to win an Oscar, but they need the genre-driven stuff to bring in the dollars that enable them to blow some on Oscar material that the Academy loves and no-one else understands.
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Oh, a man in a bookstore once clarified this for me and I think he's spot on.
Literary fiction = commercial fiction, except the author must be dead to get onto the literary shelves.
Literary fiction = commercial fiction, except the author must be dead to get onto the literary shelves.
Hmm...Dickens wrote commercial fiction, serialised like in modern newspapers, and now he's certainly 'literary'. Maybe it's like a classic car or film: some films and cars ARE classics when they're made, others are future classics. So commercial can become literary, and literary can become commercial, but that doesn't define them...
'Money or glory?'...that is the question, whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous advances or to take arms against a sea of publishers and, by opposing, write something literary...
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It's not literary until you die. I'm going commercial and reaping the money. People can applaud me when I'm dead and FINALLY gracing the literary shelves.
Both are product of an author's imagination and experiences. However, people may consider commercial fiction as more for mass selling versus its literary counterpart. At any rate, it really depends on the reader whether the material they are reading is worth the amount of money they have spent.
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Ah! so you're selling a commercial service. It's definitely not literary, is it? A fine example of the cookie cutter approach. Derek?? Where r u???
I think I'd rather the quality of money be not strained as it droppeth like a gentle rain before I shuffle from this mortal coil.
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Commercial is popular fiction that makes money. Usually with fewer genre elements so as to be accessible to a wider audience, but not always.
Literary, to me, means a manuscript which places as much importance on the quality of the prose as the story.
Tom Clancy is commercial fiction.
Thomas Pynchon is literary fiction.
John Updike, RIP, was both.
Literary, to me, means a manuscript which places as much importance on the quality of the prose as the story.
Tom Clancy is commercial fiction.
Thomas Pynchon is literary fiction.
John Updike, RIP, was both.
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