I’ve been thinking about this article for a while and it feels important to me to offer up another angle in to this debate.

Publishing, like any industry, creates, sells, and pushes what people are buying. If we are seeing the Big Fives pushing out more romance, thrillers, romantsy, crime and easily digestible “happy ending” fiction, that’s not because that’s the Big Five’s current jam, it’s what readers are buying.

As a literary fiction author myself, I don’t feel that literary fiction is dead—I just don’t think customers and readers are buying enough of it. Yes, there is an era behind us where writers like Tom Wolfe and Jeffrey Eugenides were given the royal treatment because like 87% of Americans were reading THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and MIDDLESEX. Tastes have changed, attention spans have changed and guess what—we are responsible for those changes. Us, not “Them.” Yes, massive companies created smartphones but we don’t have to allow our entire lives and interests to be dictated by what they tell us; we don’t. For the moment, many Americans still have choices of where to spend their money, but most decide to spend their cash at Target, Starbucks, Amazon, Sephora. Yes, algorithms and ad dollars might be pushing them towards these places but we’re not all zombies yet, we can change our customs, we can slowly turn the tide by voting with our wallets. So much of consummation is about is peer pressure and trends.

I just can’t feel tender toward pieces that blame publishing for everything, when in fact, publishers are keeping up with consumer demand. When you read pieces like this one below, make sure that you interrogate your own buying habits before blaming the Big Five. Are you reading writers of literary fiction that come from Big Five imprints? Are you buying books by Garth Greenwell and Marie-Helene Bertino and Hernan Diaz, and buying them from actual bookshops, instead of Amazon? I have witnessed, personally, deep care and commitment to many of my peers’ work from their Big Five publishers and I’ve experienced care and professional nurturing there, myself. But if readers continue to only buy downgrade commercial fiction, publishers will continue to seek it out and acquire it. That’s the law of supply and demand. So change the demand! You have the power to do that. Slowly. Purchase by purchase.

Want more literary fiction from Big Five publishers? BUY MORE LITERARY FICTION FROM BIG FIVE PUBLISHERS.