After some self-congratulatory talk about how worldly the American market has become, Robert Gottlieb from Trident Media addresses the sad state of American fiction: "Fiction is expensive." The support for fiction disappeared alongside the independent bookstore because big box bookstores do not generally employ workers who read the books. I think that makes fiction the spotted owl and Borders the Oregon logging companies. With no one sure how to sell fiction anymore, the future looks bleak. Nonfiction is a safe bet because the subject drives the sales. "Publishers tend to do the same thing over and over and over again," which means the market will be drowning in copycats of current success stories for years to come. Get ready for more I-solved-my-mid-life-crisis-with-yoga-and-international-travel memoirs in the vein of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love and watered-down versions of whatever A New Earth is exactly. I haven't looked at it because I am too frightened by the author's facial hair.
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branchandroot
