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Agenda

THE RISE OF LIT LITE

Literary fiction has never been hotter – with book clubs on TV, talk radio, and in every serious newspaper, plus a proliferation of new literary prizes. Riding high on this updraught of popular acclaim is a new kind of literary fiction, defined by the passions and priorities of a mainly female readership. Debbie Taylor reports on the rise of lit lite.

A few months ago I was invited to contribute to a BBC radio documentary looking at who controls a writer’s chances of success. The other two members of the panel were Mark Le Fanu of the Society of Authors and self-publishing success-story Preethi Nair, now with HarperCollins.

Who are the most powerful people in the literary world these days, we were asked. Nair didn’t hesitate. ‘The marketing department at the publishers,’ she said, admitting later that she plies the team handling her novels with cakes to keep them sweet. ‘If they’re not enthusiastic about a book, an editor isn’t allowed to take it on.’

‘Scott Pack at the Waterstone’s head office,’ said Le Fanu, ‘because he chooses which books are going to be stocked and displayed prominently.’ He went on to express the anxiety authors feel about the proposed takeover by Waterstone’s of the Ottaker’s bookshop chain – and the inevitable reduction in the range of titles stocked by a conglomerate that would then control half of all retail sales in the UK. ‘I’d go for Amanda Ross, the woman who makes the selection for the Richard & Judy Book Club,’ I said. Ross’ success with the on-air club has turned the recommended books into overnight bestsellers.

After the recording, I posed the same question to Mari Evans, my editor at Penguin. ‘Has to be Caroline Ridding,’ she concluded. ‘Because she decides which books Tesco is going to stock.’

A world turned upside down

Assuming we were all right, the world of publishing and bookselling has turned upside down in little more than a decade. The traditional arbiters of literary success – fiction editors, prize judges, broadsheet book reviewers – have been replaced by a completely different set of people. The new literary arbiters are the central buyers of bookshop and supermarket chains and the controllers of the new media book clubs that have sprung up on TV, talk radio and in every half-way serious newspaper.

The shift in power in the bookselling world – from publishers to retailers – was crystalised recently when a publisher was overheard protesting to a head buyer: ‘I remember when we used to sell our books to you. Now you sell your shelf space to us.’ According to Liz Bury of the Bookseller, inclusion in a Waterstone’s ‘3 for 2’ offer can lift sales from 50 copies to 5,000 ‘in a single step’. The converse is also true: ‘Rejection by such a conglomerate is enough to kill a book’s chances,’ says ex-Chair of the Society of Authors, Anthony Beevor.

Two new computer programmes are emblematic of this New World Order. The first is Waterstone’s’ Phoenix V9 stock management system – which will be installed in the Ottaker’s shops, too, if the takeover goes ahead. This controls which titles are stocked in each shop, and boomerangs slow sellers straight back to the publishers. The second programme (which reduced one literary agent to gibbering speechlessness when I described it to her) is being developed by Neilsen BookScan, who claim it will be able to predict, with 80 per cent accuracy, the lifetime sales of a new book, by extrapolating from its performance in the first four weeks after publication.

Gone are the days of word-of-mouth hits and slow-burn best-sellers. ‘It is getting rarer for a book to get out there and stay out for a while, before word of mouth kicks in and the book starts to take off,’ complains literary agent Ed Victor. Books like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or The Lovely Bones would be packed off back to the distributors long before they caught the public’s imagination.

The knock-on effect in the publishing houses has created another topsy-turvy upheaval. Almost weekly, reports are emerging of top editors decamping from their posts in disgust at the way marketing departments have usurped their literary judgment. ‘21st Century management isn’t for me,’ snapped literary impresario Patrick Janson-Smith on leaving Transworld to take up a new job as literary agent. ‘I come from a generation where there were a few more mavericks around.’ Gordon Wise of John Murray has gone too, joining a steady exodus of editors into agenting roles that allow them to champion the manuscripts they love.

Meanwhile the editorial jobs are beginning to be taken by booksellers – Waterstone’s’ Suzy Doore swept into Hodder recently as a senior editor, and Alison Bone of the Book Club Association joined Orion – setting the hand of marketing yet more firmly on the tiller of the publishing industry. ‘The market is polarising, with big books selling more copies and a long tail of books selling fewer,’ commented Bone on taking up her new position, ‘so commercial awareness is more critical.’

Double whammy

Agents, publishers and independent bookshops have all been up in arms about the increasing power of the big bookshop chains. But the Booksellers’ Association and the Office of Fair Trading have been slower to call ‘foul’. The fact is that, despite a healthy increase in book sales, Waterstone’s, Borders, W H Smith and the like have all seen their profits fall in recent months, squeezed by an ineluctable pincer movement. On one flank, they are up against supermarkets like Tesco, who buy a small number of titles in bulk and undermine the bookshops on price. On the other flank, they are pitted hopelessly against mighty Amazon, which is able to offer an almost limitless range of titles – far more even than would fit into the giant Waterstone’s in Piccadilly.

Seen from this perspective, one can hardly blame the booksellers for seeking to combine forces, streamline their activities and focus on sure-fire bestsellers and a reduced range of also-rans. Leaving publishers to follow suit, with consequences we have reported so often recently in these pages: a reduction in the number of new books being published and an explosion of self-publishing by authors who have been sidelined – or beached – by the mainstream. ‘One of the worst things to have happened recently is that you give an author a couple of books and if they haven’t made it, then you have to move on,’ says Victoria Barnsley who heads up HarperCollins in the UK.

Squeezing primary producers

Tesco is at the top of our food chain. We writers may have more in common with Third World coffee growers than we realise

What we are seeing, in our little corner of the economy, is a microcosm of what we all now recognise as a process of globalisation, a process that means that most of the world’s biggest multinational corporations are now more powerful than most of the world’s biggest countries. It’s no accident that titan Tesco is at the top of our food chain. We writers may have more in common with Third World coffee growers than we realise.

‘All publishing houses are under pressure,’ says Anthony Beevor, ‘and they can reduce their costs only by squeezing the primary producers, the authors’. Literary agent Pat Kavanagh agrees: ‘It’s very very tough at the moment,’ she told me. ‘Tougher than I’ve ever known it.’ Kavanagh specialises in literary fiction – clients she represents include Helen Simpson and Julian Barnes – and there is growing evidence that challenging novels with a minority readership are particular casualties of the rationalisation in the industry. ‘An awful lot of literary fiction is not being bought,’ she says. Philip Gwyn Jones, founder of new literary imprint Portobello Books, agrees – though is understandably cautious about raining on his own parade. ‘What seems to be going is the range in literary fiction,’ he told me. ‘More projects are going unpublished at the bigger imprints.’ ‘There’s a lack of confidence in the market,’ confirms Lit Idol agent Jonny Geller. ‘It has been a long while since a big literary hope has emerged from nowhere.’

Yet according to Steve Bohme, who monitors the sector for Book Marketing Limited, actual sales of fiction have never been healthier. ‘The market for general fiction is thriving,’ he told me. ‘There’s been enormous TV and media exposure of books, more than I’ve ever seen before.’

Literary Editor Erica Wagner of the Times was equally upbeat. ‘2005 was an incredible year,’ she says. ‘There were so many fantastic books it was impossible to choose our Books of the Year – they were all books of the year.’ She dismisses my suggestion that reducing the number of titles will mean that literary gems will be overlooked. ‘I don’t believe there are a lot of undiscovered William Blakes out there because of the state of the market,’ she says. ‘If anything, the opposite is the case. I was a Booker judge in 2002 and, my goodness, there’s a lot of crap out there masquerading as literary fiction.’ Along with 69 per cent of a recent poll of booksellers, Wagner believes that, even with the cutbacks in publishers’ lists, there is still too much being published. ‘I get a panic attack when I go into Waterstone’s in Piccadilly,’ she says.

Agreeing to differ

Usually, when I am researching an issue for Mslexia, there is a consensus among the people I interview. In 2000, for example, everyone agreed that poetry publishing would sink without subsidy; in 2003 everyone agreed that the short story was ‘an endangered species’ in the UK. But at the start of 2006, when it comes to assessing the state of literary fiction, there is a dramatic polarisation of opinions.

At one extreme are literary agents and authors, who find themselves knocking at closed doors when they try to get their challenging titles published or promoted. At the other are bullish publishers and booksellers, watching the sales of literary titles ratchet up to record levels following an unprecedented amount of media exposure.

It is more difficult to get literary fiction into print, but those books that are getting out there are being hyped like never before.

So who is right? As usual, the answer is ‘both’. It is more difficult to get literary fiction into print, but those books that are getting out there are being hyped like never before. And this is where it gets interesting. Because the kinds of books that are being chosen by the new literary arbiters are a very particular subset of literary fiction, a subset that is challenging enough to satisfy the little grey cells of the committed ‘heavy book buyer’, but not too off-putting to the intelligent Richard & Judy viewer who might only buy five books a year. It’s a subset that I’m calling ‘lit lite’. And it is big (big) business these days.

Reading group growth

Lit lite is the kind of book beloved of the reading group (see Group votes): sufficiently approachable and gripping to engage everyone in the group, yet still offering something – some stylistic quirk, some moral dilemma, some social issue – for members to discuss when they meet.

The reading group phenomenon has grown enormously in recent years – and shows no signs of abating. There are Orange reading groups, Penguin reading groups, HarperCollins reading groups, Bloomsbury reading groups; plus a rash of new websites and magazines dedicated to helping them decide which books to plump for. In 2001 there were already an estimated 50,000 such groups in the UK. Multiply that by seven-plus members; now imagine them all shelling out for the same titles... Factor in the additional sales stimulated by nationwide readathons led by the Richard & Judy Book Club, the Daily Mail Book Club, the BBC’s Big Read, and the result is sales of lit lite novels that easily rival those of the mass-market genre thriller and romance titles on the bestseller lists.

So what exactly is lit lite? Andrea Levy’s Small Island, with its sassy dialogue and political-historical content (and sales of over half a million) is quintessential lit lite: a ripping yarn with lots of meaty issues to discuss. So is Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, another perfect reading group book, with its exotic setting and philosophical musings – and sales now nudging a million. Zadie Smith’s Man Booker shortlisted On Beauty is another example: ‘an important book dealing with important themes,’ according to the Daily Mail, yet ‘just as readable and addictive as White Teeth’ – and an immediate strong-seller, compared with the lacklustre performance of her clever-clever Autograph Man (see 7 Elements of lit lite).

Does lit lite imply the existence of its opposite, lit heavy? Yes, to some extent – though I’d prefer to use a less perjorative term, something that alludes to the complex pleasures of difficult literary fiction. These novels might be better termed ‘slow reads’, the literary equivalent of ‘slow food’, that takes time to savour, and appeals to a smaller, more committed, readership.

When a slow read wins a literary prize, sales do improve – but only modestly. When a lit lite novel wins, sales skyrocket as an already approachable book is given the stamp of literary approval. That’s why the 2005 Booker shortlist was so welcomed by the book trade – because it contained crowd-pleasing authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith, firm favourites of the parallel ‘people’s panel’ – and why they felt so deflated when John Banville’s The Sea, with its glum subject matter and clogged syntax, was chosen by the official judges.

Banville’s book had sold just 866 copies before its shortlisting, and racked up a mere 17,328 in the weeks after the prize was announced, compared with the 400,000 quickly achieved by Margaret Atwood’s winning page-turner, The Blind Assassin (another great favourite with reading groups). Banville is reported to be turning to thriller writing – and who can blame him?

‘In commercial terms, getting onto the Richard & Judy Book Club probably means more than winning the Booker,’ comments Jon Wood, Publishing Director of Fiction at Orion. The so-called ‘Richard & Judy effect’, which is credited with upping book sales of its selected titles by £50 million since it started, has sent publishers scrambling for lit lite.

‘They have made everybody aware of how well an extremely readable intelligent book that moves you can sell,’ says Penguin MD Helen Fraser. Other publishers are taking note too. Claire Smith, the new head of HarperCollins’ ‘beleaguered’ literary division, has been given a brief to: ‘buy books of a suitable quality that will appeal to reading groups’.

Good news for women

In many ways, this is all extremely good news for women writers. Women read twice as much fiction as men and constitute the overwhelming majority of reading group members (69 per cent of those 50,000 groups are all-women; four per cent are men-only; the rest are mixed-sex). If the books that are published and noticed are increasingly going be those that women want to read and discuss, literary fiction by women will increasingly be taken more seriously.

This is not to say that women only want to read books by women. Study after study has shown that women are omnivorous in their choice of author (it’s men who shun women’s books, not vice versa). I’m just suggesting that intelligent women’s fiction looks set to get a fairer share of literary acclaim at last.

But there is a down side. Though one might hope that this sudden appetite for lit lite will also ignite a taste for the gourmet slow read, it seems likely that minority tastes will no longer be catered for. To quote Pat Kavanagh: ‘Increasingly it’s only the obvious literary tastes that are being catered for’. Peter Strauss of agents Rogers, Coleridge and White agrees: ‘Everybody is being more cautious about books that are refreshing and surprising but won’t necessarily do well straight away,’ he says.

To return to Tesco, what’s happening in literature is akin to what we’ve been seeing in our supermarkets in recent years: an increase in the quality and availability of the fresh produce we are offered, side by side with the extinction of the rare breeds of cattle and apples that constitute the gene pool from which new varieties can be developed.

This is what concerns me in literature: that with the rise of lit lite, the gene pool of literary innovation may be under threat. True, it is being constantly replenished by creative writing courses up and down the country; but how long will it be before the aesthetics of the marketplace start to filter through to these literary seed-banks too?

Alienation and excellence

Many years ago, after one glass too many of rough médoc at a party, I had a fierce argument with a literary editor about a book he admired. The book was Thru, a slim experimental novel by literary legend Christine Brooke-Rose. The book outraged me. I found it mind-bogglingly impenetrable; self-indulgent and elitist. It represented for me everything I hated about British culture at that time: its ivory towers, the alienation of its minorities and working class. I couldn’t see what possible value this wilfully obscure little book might have; what good it could possibly achieve – apart from further alienation of people I wanted to include.

But – Max Eilenberg, if you’re reading this – I think I was wrong. Just as the militant outriders of feminism expand the boundaries of what women can be and achieve, so we writers need our literary pioneers and prophets: to keep the middle ground where most of us create as wide and diverse and fertile as it can possibly be.

DEBBIE TAYLOR is the founder of Mslexia and now works as a novelist, journalist and writing tutor, and tours with Mslexia’s roadshow. Her latest novel is Hungry Ghosts (Penguin, 2006).

This feature has been selected from the Mslexia archive. For the latest on the writing world, publishing and creativity subscribe now. To sample more Mslexia features or to find out about the latest issue click here.

From Issue 28 ◊ Jan/Feb/Mar 2006

7 elements of Lit Lite

• STRONG PLOT It must have clever plotting, with a driving page-turning narrative, a sense of suspense and a satisfying resolution
• CLEAR FORM It may include one or more tricksy elements (e.g., flashbacks, parallel narratives, vernacular speech), provided they do not overcomplicate the plot
• FEMININE ASPECTS It should appeal to women, with at least one major female or child character and at least one close relationship as a plot element
• EDUCATIONAL It should incorporate a significant amount of unfamiliar non-fiction material, such as a foreign, historical or futuristic setting
• ENGAGING CHARACTERS It must have a small cast of (up to four) strong, well-rounded characters, with believeable motivations and distinct points of view
• THOUGHT-PROVOKING It should include a moral dilemma and/or a global or social issue through which several (ideally) controversial arguments are explored
• TEAR-JERKING It may be witty and/or ironic, provided this does not detract from the emotional impact of the plot on the characters

What the editors say

• JANE MAYS, Literary Editor, Daily Mail Book Club
  INFLUENCE: Daily sales of the paper average 2,369,698 and comprise 19% of newspapers sold (compared to 3% for the Guardian; 6% for the Times). A majority of readers are women. Sales of the monthly featured Book Club books have rocketed.
• CRITERIA: ‘Daily Mail readers feel a huge connection to the publication and seem to trust what we recommend. We select books that will be reasonably challenging, but not difficult enough to put people off. Something a bit different, not only about relationships, though our readers do like that kind of thing. We are very much a women’s paper, so that influences our selection. Five of us read a long list, along with a team of outside readers. We then choose a shortlist, which I present to Paul Dacre (the Editor), who has the final say.’
• RODNEY TROUBRIDGE, Chief Fiction Buyer, Waterstone’s
  INFLUENCE: Biggest upmarket bookshop chain in the UK, with annual sales of £429 million. Its planned takeover of Ottaker’s (annual sales £115 million) would bring an estimated 50 per cent of retail bookselling under one management.
• CRITERIA: ‘About 1,000 fiction titles, accounting for 10 per cent of all sales, are ordered centrally by me. The publishers tell us what marketing they’re planning, and we look at the cover and previous sales of the author. But it’s also about gut instinct; sometimes it’s good to take a bit of a plunge. The literary middle market has grown a lot, and Richard & Judy have been really helpful promoting the book group book. I like literary fiction, but it must be something that grips me. And I like intelligent science fiction and crime fiction that borders on the literary.’
• AMANDA ROSS, Producer, Richard & Judy Book Club
  INFLUENCE: An average of two million switch on daily and an estimated 500,000 ‘non-book buyers’ bought books following Richard & Judy recommendations in 2004. The 20 titles in the first two series sold a total of 7.5 million copies, worth nearly £50 million.
• CRITERIA: ‘My degree was in drama and theatre art and I’ve always loved reading. I’ve been working in popular television for 21 years now. We have a team of people reading the submissions, but I make the final choice. Bookshops can be really intimidating places. We take the pain out of choosing books. We’re looking for books that will introduce people to new things and stretch them a bit. The books need to offer something people can think about and discuss.’
• CAROLINE RIDDING, Buying Manager for Books, Tesco
  INFLUENCE: 15 million books sold in 2005; plans to increase this to 20 million in 2006. Focus on a relatively narrow range of 10,000 titles (compared with over 100,000 at Waterstone’s) means being stocked at Tesco can create an instant bestseller.
• CRITERIA: ‘Although our initial focus was to provide our customers with great value chart paperbacks and hardbacks, we have been working to diversify the range to include bespoke backlist titles. In doing so we have been able to offer an increased and improved number of titles, including nominees and winners of the Man Booker, Orange and Whitbread Awards. Customers have told us that they want a wider choice of titles and genres while maintaining great prices.’