Today I’ve been busy on the day job, but I have found time to nick some interesting content from elsewhere. The excellent Andrew Wheeler has found a chart showing total sales by genre in the USA. Like he says, this is a point that can’t be made often enough.
And if you check out the NYT article where Andrew got the chart you’ll see that 91% of those romance readers are women.
Notably missing from the chart, of course, is the military/thriller genre. Anyone have data?
I think the military/thriller genre is regarded as non-fiction by the NYT.
Another question: Is “Classic Literary Fiction” a combination of “Classic Fiction” and “Literary” fiction? Or does it exclude literary fiction that isn’t classic?
…not that non-classic literary fiction sells in quantities large enough to even register on this graph.
Oh, looking at the original article, military/thriller romance is a really popular sub-genre according to someone in the biz.
I am guessing that by Classic Literary Fiction they mean fiction that has literary aspirations but without the taint of genre cooties. No Reginald Hill, no Patricia McKillip, no Greer Ilene Gilman. Although a few suspect characters like Thomas Pynchon and Margaret Atwood are allowed inside the tent based on God never being mistaken or something similarly Calvinistic.
I hear Tom Lehrer’s “Smut” right now… 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pva35TFiBfI
I would like to think that these sales figures reflect that “literary” fiction actually is a much narrower genre than sf/fantasy. But then, mystery is even narrower…