Creative Apathy - Part 2

Any time spent, in what few bookshops remain on the high street, will reveal a great deal about the current state of affairs in the world of literary fiction. The publishing houses are generally putting their eggs into a peculiarly fragile basket. I like to call it 'zeitgeist fiction' although others have referred to the same thing as familiarity or trend publishing.

You will recognise the various threads of 'zeitgeist fiction' or ZF by their theme or (more latterly) jacket design. Some years ago, you might recall the publishing trend was for books dedicated to harrowing tales of human cruelty towards children with such titles as 'A child called smack me' and 'Forced into sex slavery before the age of seven' and 'Uncle Jimmy made me do it'*. The covers were all very similar - white, with an out of focus image of a child of one sex or another, crying. They were very popular. With some readers. Enough to ensure countless similar stories rapidly appeared, at least.

Vampire fiction was another ZF trend skilfully exploited by many, many publishing houses (and authors) eager to feed the apparent need (or lust) for tales of post mortem exsanguination. Whilst bookshops have always had a space on their shelves for classics by authors like Stoker and Rice, the last few years have seen whole runs of shelves now dedicated to the phenomenally successful glut of pre-pubescent and post-adolescent rape fantasies with fangs.

Sex has reared its head again in the latest ZF offerings and the beginning of the tidal wave of mummy-porn and mainstream erotic fiction with titles such as 'Fifteen shapes in beige' and 'Chained and whipped into submission like a whore' which has meant that such tomes are no longer consigned to the dingy corners of stores like Waterstones, previously only frequented by weird nervous old men in raincoats and butch lesbians, but now (some might think, thankfully) rub shoulders with Ian Rankin, Hilary Mantel and Umberto Eco.

This ZF phenomena is not a worrying new trend, it has happened numerous times in the past. For example, the explosion of Science Fiction in the late 1950's and 60's, the abundance of NHH (or natural history horror) spawned by the likes of James Herbert in the 1970's and the plethora of sword & sorcery tales in the 1980's and 90's. I am not even going to begin to mention the similar literary trending that occurred in the 19th Century.

The interesting thing about these trends are that they begin, often, with just one product, or rather, book.

The book needs only to capture the imagination of the public to become popular.

Popularity of that product ensures that there follows, very shortly, a need for more or similar products and the various producers (competitors in the same marketplace) begin looking for suppliers to meet the increasing demands of the ravenous consumer. Anyone who studies market forces will realise that whilst demand is high, output has be increased to meet it, in order to capitalise on the trend. It is not surprising that some producers turn over their entire production to keep up with demands.

Yet...

If production is targeted only to meet the existing demands of the marketplace, how can new markets ever be created? If suppliers only distribute what is required at a given point in time, what happens when that market becomes saturated? The law of diminishing returns works as well in the world of publishing as it does in any other economic field (no pun intended).

Publishers should not be allowed to put the vast numbers of brilliant undiscovered authors out there in a position whereby they only produce what they think a publisher will want to read. That creates nothing more than creative apathy and imaginative subjugation. The need for integrity and innovation should always be paramount, and certainly the current publishing trends are in danger of destroying countless opportunities and discouraging many new authors.

New. New. New.

New ideas. New thought. New challenges.

Time for a new approach...

*The book titles in paragraph two and four are, obviously, not real. Any resemblance to books with similar titles, are completely unintentional although they do clearly illustrate a point.