Book Cover Illustrations

Mother Jones magazine recently published “The Death of Fiction“ which suggests that while magazines that publish fiction are being flooded with submissions these days, the publications have fewer and fewer subscribers and readers. From this the author concludes that fiction, especially short stories, is dying.

Well, maybe.

But one is reminded of the old Mark Twain speech in which he noted, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Of course that becomes a cautionary tale when one considers that those rumors of Mark Twain’s death eventually became true.

Today there’s certainly a glut in all the creative fields, including writing. And the current gatekeepers in the literary marketplace (agents and editors) have been swamped, making choosing quality writing ever harder and more time consuming. It seems likely that a lot of quality writing gets lost in the slush pile.

At the same time, there are some marvelous stories being written today, and it’s my experience that there are more gems in the flood of words than one might imagine.

So I would suggest that things are not quite as clear-cut, and that pronouncing the patient dead and moving on is premature.

In my view, one of the problems publishers are facing is that of connecting a book or story to its whole potential audience. Magazines have tried to maintain the distribution and subscription systems basically devised in the beginning of the twentieth century, and books haven’t changed that much either (though both are now in the process of gearing up for the ezines and ebook market).

A whole lot has happened since the beginning of the last century. There’s a whole world of potential readers not easily reached by the tradition methods of marketing books and magazines; the field is ripe for the creation of niche markets.

And let’s be blunt: Some of the magazines mentioned in the Mother Jones article have spent too much time being coyly intellectual and clever with insider jokes (often at the expense of “the common man”) and not enough time actually publishing material that the average Jane and Joe want to read. Catty remarks may give an editor or author a certain smug status, but they don’t necessarily sell magazines.

At the other extreme, some of the major publishing houses are selling books the way McDonald’s sells burgers. The menu is small, bland, and generalized, usually a novelized movie, or the current darling politician or movie star. They do sell lots of products.

Yet they miss a huge market.

Right now the marketplace needs the equivalent of ethnic restaurants, mom-and-pop eateries, and corner venders who can offer products for those with more refined or diverse tastes.

Think Netflix for books.

Netflix beats Blockbuster because Netflix can deliver offbeat movies that capture a niche market nation-wide, even though no single city has enough potential viewers to justify carrying the movie in a single, locally based rental store.

Or think blogging for the short story.

Or maybe some twitter-like tweet of speeds a new chapter of a novel around the globe.

With potentially billions of consumers online looking for entertainment, there’s a huge market to capture. When savvy sellers and writers figure out how to do this, we will see a new Golden Age of literature.

I would argue that the chrysalis of fiction isn’t dead.

There’s a beautiful butterfly waiting to emerge.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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