Previously, we blogged about Jennifer Weiner’s battle to shine the spotlight of literary respect on genre fiction written by women.
At Harper’s, Jesse Barron looks at Weiner’s campaigning from the angle of old media vs. new media rather than literary fiction vs. commercial fiction or male writers vs. female writers:
Good romance writers can earn a living without anyone in New York publishing knowing their names, because they publish and promote their work themselves. A traditional publishing house might give an author 25 percent of the net price on an e-book….The e-book distributor Smashwords…returns 60 to 75 percent of the cover price to the author.
Who needs the approval of the literary establishment when you’re already making money writing what you want to write?
