![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s this latter phenomenon that Tom Tivnan believes to be of critical importance. Readerly adventurousness has been driven in part by the proliferation of prizes and partly through the enduring impact of book clubs like Richard and Judy’s in the UK and Oprah’s in the US. ‘Book of the month’ promotions in shops can be more influential than prizes. ![]() While this may make for sobering reading for “serious” novelists looking to finance the Provençal writing retreat, their lot is significantly better than it used to be. 2017 fared a bit better (12 of the top 100), 2016 had 10 of the top 100. Tom Tivnan, managing editor of the Bookseller, points to Nielsen BookScan data that shows that of the top 100 bestselling summer fiction titles in 2018 only seven were literary books. Generic labels, though, are the terms that booksellers and publishers think in and for literary novels, the chances of summer success are still relatively slim. I’m aware of how contentious and porous discussions of genre can be. So it is that Normal People by Sally Rooney is currently piled high on the tables of WH Smith’s Travel alongside Lee Child, Jodi Picoult and Bernard Cornwell. The summer fiction market is changing, though, with more and more “serious”, “literary” novels showing up where once there were only thrillers and crime novels, bonkbusters and romances. As Donna Harrington-Lueker sets out in her history of the beach read, Books for Idle Hours, the summer publishing rush is at least a century old, and has typically aimed “airy and froth-like” books on “young ladies” (the quote is from an 1888 work on summer books by Arlo Bates). There are more books sold in the summer than during any other season: the well-established publishing calendar tends to see hardbacks released in the autumn to be given as gifts at Christmas, then repackaged as paperbacks in late spring. S ummer reads, beach reads, holiday reads … at this time of year, the publishing world works itself into a sweat trying to force its novels into our carry-on luggage, or over the ether on to our Kindles. ![]()
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