Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (2 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

2.

Edan: "I Write Literary Fiction"
Elly: "The Segregation of Literary Fiction is False Logic"

In this point, the author laments that only genre fiction can find success in self-publishing and that “literary fiction” has no home there. She says the landscape for literary fiction in indie publishing won’t change until Jeffrey Eugenides and Alice Munro use CreateSpace.

Yeah, if your bar is Eugenides-like success, you’re probably going to fall short, no matter what sort of publishing path you choose. Firstly, literary fiction is a hard sell no matter what. Most agents and most trad pubbers are looking for genre fiction. In large part, only very small, very boutique houses or university presses are going to publish debut literary fiction. At the bigger houses who delve into lit fic, they either want the big name with street cred, or the ready-made movie book (or both). Literary fiction writers have the deck stacked against them no matter what, because that’s not what the general reading public buys.

Secondly, as even the author herself points out, literary fiction is as much a niche or a “genre” as, say, hard science fiction. Each has their own specific audience, with limited opportunity for cross-over and cross-selling unless the book meets certain mainstream expectations regarding plot, character, tone, etc. Separating literary fiction out is not only snobbish, it’s false logic. Both self-published and trad-published author will fail if they do not identify their audience and market to it accordingly.