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!

One Older Reader of Young Adult Fiction

I have discussed various aspects of Young Adult (YA) fiction in a number of posts, which readers can find by clicking on the tag “young adult fiction” at the bottom of this submission.  The YA field is interesting in part because it has in recent years been one of the best, if not the best, performing genre for the publishing industry.

"George & Lizzie" (This review gives the story away)

Warning: this review of “George and Lizzie” gives the story away. Please don’t read it until after you have read the book. Contrary views are welcome.

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 If, on a lark, a bet or a dare, or perhaps because nothing else in life much interests her, a girl decides to have sex with all the starters on her high school football team, what can she expect out of life?

That’s 23 boys by the way – 11 on offense, 11 on defense plus the kicker – and one a week, every week until the “Great Game” is won.

When It Comes To What To Read, Are You a Sheep?

From time to time, I've told people that self-publishing a novel is one of the best ways to assure your anonymity in the ever-increasing surveillance society. Hardly anyone, it seems, makes their own decisions on what to read. Everyone wants to read what everyone else is already reading.

Further evidence of this all-too-human tendency -- essentially we are all sheep, hoping their is a leader around somewhere -- can be found in an article about declining book sales when best-seller lists are discontinued. It comes from an online publication called The Outline.

Conventional Publishing: In This Case, a Two-Year Process

In my previous post, I provided a link to an interview in which an author told how he had self-published a photo-intensive book on the 1970s Punk music era by means of a surprisingly successful Kickstarter campaign.  He went that way because commercial publishers wanted things done their way -- not his way.

Today I am providing a link to a different interview in which an author of a novel about teenagers describes her ultimately successful experience dealing with "Big Book" -- the conventional publishing industry.

A Book Self-Published With a Kickstarter Campaign

"The Ramones were not a bunch of dumb people making dumb songs, they thought about how to make dumb songs."

Ah -- the Punk era, last referenced here in my previous post.

The quote is from an illuminating interview of successful self-published author David Godlis by The Brooklyn Rail, a monthly on arts, politics and culture. Godlis' book, "History is Made at Night," is built around a series of photographs illuminating the 1970s punk scene.

After frustrating interactions with conventional publishers, who couldn't decide if it was a book about art or about music and didn't want to deal with something that didn't fit into one of their pre-determined categories, Godlis finally launched a Kickstarter campaign with the aim of raising $30,000.

At the end of a 40-day effort, he ended up with about $110,000 and 850 pre-sales of his book, which is currently priced at $40 a copy. Getting the book into conventional bookstores is another matter, however, since bookstores, even those that are independent, are closely tied in to the marketing apparatus of "Big Book" as one might call the mainline publishers.

Godlis' explanation of how this all happened is well worth reading.

Why Writers Hesitate to Criticize Publishers

The publishing industry is obsessed with money and celebrity yet writers hesitate to criticize it because in the current environment, their prospects of earning a living are so poor.

That's the view of Jessa Crispin, who I also wrote about in my previous post.  Crispin has been in the news during the past year because she shut down her pioneering literary blog "Bookslut" after 14 years.

How Much Of A Book Do You Actually Read?

In the age of Big Data, publishers increasingly want to know just how much of a book purchasers actually read, or so says a story in the March 15 New York Times.

Amazon, Apple and other purveyors of e-books apparently already have a lot of such data when it comes to people reading books in electronic form, but that is roughly only about 25% of the market and readership of e-books is, at best, leveling off at present, various reports have suggested. Readership data for books on paper is another matter.

To fill the gap, The Times reported, a London-based firm named Jellybooks has a device readers can use, in exchange for free books, to track their reading activity and transmit that data to the company, which then provides it to participating publishing companies, presumably for a fee.

Does Anything Pack More Clout in Publishing Than a Blurb?

"Powerful ... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Unflinching, gorgeously written."  -- San Francisco Chronicle.

Those are known as blurbs, or "short descriptions of a book, movie, or other product written for promotional purposes and appearing on the cover of a book or in an advertisement."

When it comes not just to attracting purchasers, but also to getting a book through the conventional publishing mill, nothing is more important than blurbs, it seems.

Sex Sells, and Sells and Sells and Sells

The Sunday Business section of the New York Times recently carried a lengthy article on Meredith Wild, a woman who, after becoming a very successful independent author of romance novels, started her own publishing imprint called “Waterhouse Press.”

“I wanted something that sounded like it was a real imprint, because nobody takes you seriously as an independent author,” the Times quoted Ms Wild as saying.

After first publishing her own books, Ms Wild began acquiring and releasing the works of other self-published romance writers under the Waterhouse name, becoming what the Times termed “a kind of value investor in erotic prose, pinpointing under-valued writers and backing their brands.”

"Slush Piles" and Self-Publishing

The Oct. 11, 2015, “Bookends” feature of the Sunday New York Times poses the question: “How does the reputation of an author shape your response to a book?”

The word “your” in that question refers to readers, but I think the same question can be asked of publishers and the response of one of the two commentators provides an answer as to why some authors, me included, decide to self-publish.