This isn't about Sally Rooney exactly
“Everyone’s a bit panicked about fiction,” has been the refrain in calls, lunches, and meetings this year. Literary fiction sales are down. A lot of publisher’s big fiction bets didn’t play out — some of the books they spent large sums of money to make into bestsellers didn’t become lucrative, long-term bestsellers. Readers are buying less fiction in general, and when they’re buying fiction, they’re buying Fourth Wing, etc. Ok, hard times, chew salad, go back to work. The market will correct.
There are a lot of reasons, data, numbers for all of this. But one aspect I keep returning to is how publishers are actually reaching readers. A lot of the buzzy romantasy titles that the publishing industry has been talking about this year were reader-forward phenomenon: they got big on TikTok, through word of mouth online, etc. It is very hard for a publisher to recreate that; people can tell when they’re being pandered to. So there are the outliers that get big online (Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles was an early example of a book that became a blockbuster through online fans) and there’s everything else.
In literary fiction, there’s Sally Rooney, and there’s everything else.
This TIME headline inspired this post:
Which is true in the sense that nothing will ever happen in exactly the same way again, unless there is eternal return, and I understand the truth behind the article especially as it pertains to literary fiction — there isn’t going to be an inheritor of Sally Rooney’s fans, there will just be new phenomenon. But arguably, every six months or so, there already is some sort of phenomenon book or author. There’s a book that spreads by word of mouth through TikTok etc and readers buy that book and the other books by that author so the publishing industry looks to publish more books similar to that author in the hopes of catching ‘for fans of.’ This year several romantasy titles went through that cycle. Fans of Sarah J. Maas talk about her books as seriously as readers talk about Rooney’s. For literary fiction, there was an internet cycle in which Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss was selling over a thousand copies a week, and “everyone” was reading Miranda July’s All Fours this summer (nearly 100,000 copies sold.)
I think what’s most difficult for the publishing industry to grasp is that these phenomenon can’t be manufactured, but there are certainly things that can be done to make literary fiction look cool that could set off that cycle of fandom. I just don’t think the “what’s cool” has been figured out yet, and they’re still trying old methods to reach new readers.
I think about how gatekeeping is usually described in eras of music, where “you had to be there” and the scene is always over when you arrive, and if you found punk from a randomly purchased CD in a stripmall your fandom is lesser than if you heard that band in a smelly basement. I don’t think this gatekeeping is useful. “Nobody’s reading.” We need people to find books that they love and talk about them and then buy more and enjoy those and on and on. If they find those books while scrolling or from a bucket hat, I don’t care. But if we’re worried about literary fiction, we need to do a better job at locating and creating fans of literary fiction.
I actually think the midnight release parties for Intermezzo are a clever idea and I look forward to reading the Cut or Vulture’s coverage of it. Maybe we should be taking more cues from what’s working in genre fiction, like the release parties, the sprayed edges. I almost bought this special Barnes & Noble edition of Demon Copperhead purely because it looked so pretty:
We need literary fiction to look cool.
Thank you for reading my short post on a subject that is certainly going to be oversaturated, and you’re welcome for not discussing any of the divorce/polyamory books.
And because you were clearly going to ask: I enjoyed Intermezzo and I like Rooney’s politics and I hope she gets to drink her tea unbothered.
Thank you for writing this!! I have very little insider knowledge of the publishing industry, but I've always felt that Sally Rooney's popularity was, yes, about the quality of her writing, but more about her subject: love and relationships, the fact that (and I haven't read Intermezzo!) she's very much in conversation with romance. As far as I can tell, contemporary literary fiction doesn't have a robust pool of romance-adjacent writers, like it does, say, speculative writers (Kelly Link, George Saunders etc). Rooney is the main one who comes to mind. Why isn't publishing building that camp of writers? (maybe they are?) I think what happened is Normal People had a lot of crossover with romance readers who craved literary prose and deep psychological character portraits. Instead of replicating Rooney herself, i don't know why the publishing industry isn't trying to respond to the appetite she clearly feeds (also see, Emily Henry, Carly Fortune, who are proving a huge market for upmarket romance with a slightly more elevated prose styles). My completely lay opinion is that I think there's an underfed appetite for literary stories where the romance plot takes up a lot space and doesn't end badly lol but maybe I'm just speaking for myself. Whenever I pick up litfic with a love story, a lot of times I feel it flinching away from the romance at some points, whereas Rooney leans into it, doesn't flinch from the fantasy of it, even if her prose itself is restrained. Romance is wildly popular, but it's been largely cultivated in commercial or upmarket spaces. I truly think Rooney tapped into this pre-existing popularity with a literary flare. And I totally agree that litfic should be learning from genre/commercial fiction!
I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING. Why can’t we have sprayed edges? I got Garth Greenwell’s CLEANNESS as a special edition from Waterstones; it had sprayed edges. I want midnight parties, people gathering (in masks, please), and books as beautifully designed as they are written. I want it all.