By Claire Armitstead 
on The Guardian
Finally it’s official: literary fiction is in crisis, and writers across the land are burning the midnight oil in their garrets, teaching or slogging away in unrelated jobs to keep the fire ablaze in the grate.
This Dickensian picture was revealed by Arts Council England today in a report that suggests it may have to shift its funding priorities in order to save a population whose economic and cultural solvency has been chipped away over the years.
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Reblogged this on writerchristophfischer and commented:
A fascinating and scary article for writers and readers alike:
Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically, Arts Council England reports
New figures show that fewer UK writers earn enough to live on, as ACE blames falling sales of literary fiction on the recession and the rise of smartphones
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/15/literary-fiction-in-crisis-as-sale-drop-dramatically-arts-council-england-reports?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=256642&subid=23786111&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
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I am not sure, but it appears that many genre novels, are quite literally, literary, for example, “The Winter Sea” by Susanna Kearsley and “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah, if in fact, literary means: to provoke a poetic or evocative effect on the reader. Thank you for a very informative post and perhaps, the meaning of literary in the publishing world needs an update, that includes genre novels that are beautifully written, poetic and evocative.
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Excellent piece and your commentators are equally interesting!
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Great article!
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Interesting piece, though from my perspective I have a bit of a bias against literary fiction because the term ‘literary’, here in NZ, is used as a term for validating the status, power and intellectual prestige of a very snobbish in-crowd of ‘artistes’ who style themselves ‘wraiters’ (say it aloud…) even if they aren’t, and who use that self-asserted status as a bludgeon with which to invalidate and belittle the worth and skills of ‘genre’ writers. It’s got to the point where it’s impossible for anybody outside their in-crowds to get funding, to be looked at by some of the publishers, or to even be recognised as having any talent. My take? Writing’s about engaging people, and who – really – is going to be engaged by pretentious novels designed to display the ego of its author? The irony is that New Zealand’s highest paid author, who’s regularly on the NYT best-selling list, pens vampire romance fiction…and, when pushed on interview to reveal her usual income, wouldn’t – but said it was more than that of a partner in the law firm she left in order to pursue her novel-writing career…
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I’m left wondering what are they going to do about it? Give arts council grants to the worthy? (which tends to mean those already in the magic circle)
But one or two people have commented that people don’t read much literary fiction anyway and never did.
Actually I think they ought to give money to fantasy poets who have the decency to dabble in prose. It’s a small select group and so wouldn’t cost them too much 🙂
But in reality, it’s an interesting question they ask, but what can they do about it? Write more interesting books? Don’t ask me, if I knew the answer I’d be sitting somewhere warm and one of my interns would be ghosting this for me 🙂
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😀
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