Just learned from a 2018 publishing report that our club's favorite 'literary fiction' pick that year actually sold 80% of its copies in the romance section.

Found this out while digging through old sales data for a presentation, and it totally reframed our whole argument about genre versus literary merit.

3 comments

3 Comments

david_hayes16d ago

Man, this makes me wonder about the whole store layout thing. Where a book sits changes how we read it. If that same novel was on a "literary fiction" table, we'd hunt for deep themes and beautiful sentences. But in the romance aisle, we're just looking for the emotional payoff and the relationship. The exact same words get judged by totally different rules based on the shelf. It's like the cover and the section are a set of instructions for how to enjoy it.

keiththompson16d ago

Yeah, and it goes way past books. It's like how we judge a movie if it's on a "classics" channel versus basic cable. Same film, different expectations. @jenniferc71's friend expecting aliens is a perfect example of that preset in our heads. We see a label or a category and our brain just clicks into a certain mode, ready to look for specific things. It happens with music genres, restaurants, even people's jobs. The context becomes a filter, and it's hard to turn that off.

jenniferc7116d ago

My friend bought a book from the sci-fi shelf. He kept waiting for aliens to show up. Turns out it was a mis-shelved family drama.