Literary vs. commercial

#shorts #publishingtips

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ABOUT ME:
My name is Alyssa Matesic, and I’m a professional book editor with 7+ years of book publishing and editorial experience. Throughout my career, I’ve held editorial roles across both sides of the publishing industry: Big Five publishing houses and literary agencies. This goal of this channel is to help writers throughout the book writing journey—whether you're working on your manuscript or you're looking for publishing advice.

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[wordfullyyours]

That explains it very well. Thanks for this!

[tdd]

Literary: a focus on elevated prose and liberty to break narrative conventions. And often can have a strong plot, but the plot may only serve to make a point. I'm thinking of Percival Everett's event release _James_ as a good example of the plot serving to explore a larger idea. (Brilliant book, by the way.)

And of course so many "literary authors" can straddle that line. Cormac McCarthy's _Suttree_ is pure literary, and I only recommend it for serious readers. But _The Road_ and _No Country for Old Men_ (also by McCarthy) are both very literary and very commercial. The artfulness of his prose is without peer.

[jimgilbert]

In my writing, I'm not trying for a Pulitzer, nor a Nobel in Literature. So my writing will always be commercial.

I'm just trying to write stories that are entertaining and leave my readers with a feeling of being satisfied and happy that they visited my worlds/universes.

My favorite authors, my inspirations, do that, and they never won the Pulitzer or Nobel, but they have fans who love their stories and don't care if they ever win those two prizes. Those authors won something better: they won their fans' hearts. That's what I want, too.

[mlfaria]

Contemporary literary fiction basically means that it is a pretentious book without any story