I’m a midlist author with an imprint at a big-5 publisher writing literary fiction. That basically means that I write, but I’ll never be big enough to be a household name.
That being said, I often have conversations with folks who ask what I do, and I’ll tell them I write fiction, and most of the time they’ll say they love books/reading/etc but will ask “what kind of fiction?” I’ve always found that question odd, and when I answer “literary fiction,” I get a blank stare.
Is literary fiction an industry term, or does a general reader have a sense of what this term entails?
by esseintes_tortoise