I used to have all of my rants on the publishing industry organized here: essays on how there are too many writers and not enough readers, analysis of the strategic dangers arising from bookseller tactics, arguments against the absurd literary-genre divide.
A reader once asked why I spent so much time trying to fix the industry and so little time submitting fiction in order to get into it. My snarky response was: “What’s the point of being sailor-of-the-week on a sinking ship?”
That reader finally replied to my return email with: “It’s a lot easier to stop a ship from sinking once you’re on board than to just stand on the dock and watch.” I did not have a snarky response to that.
So, I have removed (password-protected) my commentary on publishing so I can focus on doing what a writer should do, which is to submit stories for publication.
I will, however, leave you with this thought:
“Genre” is about the story’s setting, degree of realism, character roles, plot, and tone. The “literaray” is the best writing in each genre. Some genres, at any given point in history, contain a greater percentage of literary fiction than others, but the idea that a certain genre is literary but the others by definition are not is a crass, miseducated prejudice.
