Why Most Fiction Constitutes a Bunch of "Me Too" Books

Have you ever had the feeling that most of contemporary fiction is little more than a bunch of "me too" books? Where everyone seems to be writing more or less the same thing in any given genre?

Of course the characters have different names and different characteristics and the plots have different twists, but fundamentally the differences are not that great. Perhaps you like that: since you bought and presumably read a particular book, publishers are pretty sure your would like another that is very similar, and based on sales, that seems to be the case.

If you're an author, and would like to write something different, in most cases, you can forget it, or publish it yourself and hope to heck you are far better at marketing than you are at writing, no matter how good a writer you are.

My basis for saying this is an article called "Comping White" in a recent issue of the "Los Angeles Review of Books," by Laura B. McGrath.

While Ms McGrath was trying to determine why the American publishing industry remains dominated by white folks, her extensive study is actually just as interesting from a different perspective. Ms McGrath, by the way, is an associate director of the Stanford University Literary Lab, a research collective that applies computational criticism, in all its forms, to the study of literature. I couldn't find a definition of "computational criticism" on the Lab's website, but it appears to involve counting things up and then drawing certain conclusions, much easier to do in the digital world than previously.

Ms McGrath apparently did a great deal of counting. "The question of counting, and who counts, in literature is an important one to me," she said, conflating two meanings of the word "count."

McGrath focused on publishers' seasonal catalogs from 2013 through 2019 to figure out that has been going on in the industry, extracting in the process "metadata about 10,220 new fiction releases."

What she discovered, with the help of one editor, is that what matters most when it comes to deciding whether or not to publish a new book is whether it is comparable to existing, successful titles.  In other words, is it "me too" fiction?

"The logic is straightforward: Book A (a new title) is similar to Book B (an already published title). Because Book B sold so many copies and made so much money, we can assume that Book A will also sell so many copies and make so much money. Based on these projections, editors determine if they should pre-empt, bid, or pass on a title, and how much they should pay in an author advance. Above all, comps are conservative. They manage expectations, and are designed to predict as safe a bet as possible. They are built on the idea that if it worked before, it will work again."  So says McGrath in her LA Review of Books article.

The nature of a particular author is also a significant factor in all of this, the article says.

“You get into the type of author that somebody is, and the type of audience that they’re reaching more than you do content," McGrath quotes another editor as telling her.  In other words, if you've written a successful book, it doesn't much matter how good what you next write is. You'll get published again.  This is called "author-audience alignment." And, well, your first book probably was a success because it copied the approach of a book that was previously successful.

"Comps perpetuate the status quo, creating a rigid process of acquisition without much room for individual choice or advocacy," McGrath said, terming prevailing publishing industry practices "basically systems of exclusion."  Her point is that such practices help keep the industry racially white; my point is that even if you are white (as I am), if you don't want to write a "me too" book, forget it.

"Manhattan Morning," by the way, is not a "me too" title, and now you know what that means. You haven't read it!