30 things I've learnt from 5 years being published: no 22 – genre snobbery is real - and annoying
September 6 2023 marks 5 years since my first novel was released 😲
I’ve now published 6, and have 2 more under contract.
To celebrate, I’m sharing a new post about what I’ve learnt from being published EVERY DAY throughout the month. This post is part of that series!
Click here for the rest →
Gah I am so scared of turning this into a rant. But oh-my-goodness, I was not prepared for the genre snobbery when I first got a book deal.
First up, let me be clear: I believe that reading is primarily a form of entertainment, and that a ‘good’ book is one that achieves this goal.
A ‘good’ book in my opinion is NOT one that’s so wordy and convoluted that I have to re-read each page four times to work out what it’s trying to tell me.
I write commercial fiction, but I am not an idiot. I am smart and I can use big words and long sentences and overuse adjectives.
I can spend hours crafting oblique but oh-so-clever metaphors.
But for the most part, I choose not to. Because I want my books to be enjoyable.
I trained as a journalist when I first left university and I remember one of my tutors telling me that to write for a ‘red-top’ newspaper like The Sun, you had to limit the vocabulary you used so that anything you wrote could be easily understood by a ten-year-old.
And let me tell you, there’s a skill in condensing information so that it can be assimilated without effort. A real skill.
As the saying goes: easy reading is hard writing.
But the literary world is often still so stuffy and old-fashioned, and the majority of books that people see reviewed in the newspapers aren’t the sort of books that the majority of PEOPLE want to read.
The books that win all the prizes, the books that are discussed as ‘real’ literature are of course, all worthy in their own right, but in my opinion, the writers of those books are no ‘better’ than the writers of the books that entertain millions of readers.
They are writing for a different market, and that’s fine. But it’s not superior.
And yet, the responses you get when you tell people you write suspense fiction are so depressing.
Commercial fiction written by women, of course, is still massively dismissed as not being ‘real literature’.
For example, one of my author website clients writes saga novels.
I hadn’t really been exposed to the genre much before I started working with her, but once I did, I learnt that saga is HUGE.
My website client sells tons of books. She has a hugely dedicated fanbase of readers who pre-order her books in the thousands. She publishes two books a year and makes a lot of money for her publisher.
She brings a great deal of joy to her readers. And really, isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t that worth more than ANYTHING?
But she also told me that saga, as a genre, is hugely overlooked not just by the literary press (she very rarely gets reviewed in magazines or newspapers) but also by the publishing industry in general.
She said sometimes it feels as though the industry is embarrassed by the saga genre.
Which is so ridiculous given how much money it makes publishers!
There was an interesting piece in The Guardian a few years ago about science-fiction, and the prejudice it comes up against.
I hate this kind of thing. I really do! Can you tell?!
And don’t get me started on the attitudes towards ‘chick-lit’ or ‘romance’.
I write suspense fiction - forever in the shadow of the more-respected ‘thriller’ and ‘crime’ genres, which you’ve guessed it - tend to be dominated by male writers.
It’s exhausting.
And annoying.
And I’m ranting.
But I hope the more this stuff gets talked about, the more people will stand up to it.
Just say no to genre snobbery people.
Hey, I write novels, but I also build websites!
If you’re an author and don’t have one yet (or you have one that’s so awful you never tell people about it!) then check out how I can help →
