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American literature today is a mix of great new literary trends – and new bad trends, of old things becoming new, and of new literature rising from nowhere. Memoirs are becoming a real art form, not just a way for some self-centered celebrity to tell their tragic story. But celebrity books are getting million-dollar advances, no matter how trite or how obviously ghostwritten they are. Instead of fifty large publishing companies printing books, we’re down to about six – but to publish all that work that gets ignored by the big companies, small presses are rising up everywhere. We are seeing another resurgence of fantasy literature, spurred on by the success of movies like Lord of the Rings. And the Internet is having as-yet-unpredictable effects on the publishing industry in general.
Memoirs by ordinary people who have lived extraordinary – or extraordinarily ordinary – lives are selling brilliantly – for example, Angela’s Ashes, or Falling Leaves: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter. Still, they share top spots with the celebrity books like Kitty Kelley’s Bush Family. The popularity of celebrity books is partly explained by the compressing of the publishing industry; a few large companies have a lot of purchasing power for the big books, and not much interest in the books that won’t impact their bottom line.
But those books are going to a new place. The Internet, filled with bad writing and inaccurate information though it is, is also the publishing proving-ground of the future. Can’t get anyone to look at your book? Publish it online, either by yourself or through one of the legitimate internet publishing companies that are springing up everywhere. Get some reviews, a few loyal readers, and then run it by another agent or editor.
If you want to read the books by authors that are going to be popular in ten years, you should probably look for them online, not in your bookstore. They’re there.
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