The One Book Every Editor Wants to Publish
The Commercial/Literary Spectrum and the Invention of the Upmarket Book
Before we get to “the one book” we’re going to define a term and do a little Q&A. Prior to the 21st century there were only two classifications of books (necessary hyperbole). Books were either “literary” or they were “commercial.” Times were simpler, as they say.
Even if a novel was exceptional for its genre, something that readers and critics admired, this did not automatically qualify a book as literary. I read The Silence of the Lambs for the first time, spoiler, it’s a great book. Silence, despite being very good, is still a genre book: a police procedural, a thriller, even a horror novel of sorts. That means, in the old days, it was considered a commercial book, not a literary one. The Godfather, commercial. Bridget Jones’s Diary, commercial. Toni Morrison, literature. Philip Roth, literature. Marilynne Robinson, literature.
This clear either/or lasted the entire 20th century and was a heyday for literary snobs: you’re in the club or you’re out. This thinking of course still persists, or, rather, lingers today. It is a basic, unsophisticated definition where “commercial” by default means unworthy and bad, and “literature” means substantive and good.
However, somewhere in the mid 2000s books and their writers didn’t so much change as readers and editors did. The earliest mention of the publishing term “upmarket” that I could find online appears in Writer’s Digest in 2009 in an article by Chuck Sambuchino. It has to be said that he pretty much got the definition spot-on from the get-go:
“Simply put, it’s fiction that blends the line between commercial and literary…Commercial fiction can sell very well because it usually has a tight premise/logline (”Someone is trying to kill the president!”) and people like reading a category like thrillers because it’s exciting…Literary fiction has a harder time selling because it’s not easily defined, and sometimes the premise is not easily explained (or just isn’t that exciting).”
That’s it. Consumers wanted a new way to define something that maybe had some genre elements, had some plot, had some entertainment value that could also be considered well-written and somewhat serious. The designation “upmarket” entered the lexicon and writers started to follow. By and large this designation gave permission to literary writers to “slum it” with genre and plot, i.e. write more of a traditional page turner. On the flip side, commercial writers got the chance to be respected if they elevated their craft. The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather and Bridget Jones’s Diary might all be considered upmarket today.
What followed the invention, or rather naming, of the upmarket book was a great blurring. Over the last twenty years, without the simple literary/commercial binary to follow, no one really knows what literature is anymore. One woman’s literature is another woman’s pulp, and what you may consider “upmarket” may swing either way for someone else. Editors and agents are constantly professing their love of upmarket books over lunch. With this in mind, dear reader, please rate the following books below. Even if you haven’t read them, feel free to click on the links to the description, look at the covers, and see what you think.
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Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney (2017)
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017)
Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2019)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022)
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022)
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (2024)
The One Book
Our friend Chuck also got something right back in 2009, which is that “upmarket” books would become something of a Holy Grail for editors in the 2010s and beyond. His analysis is spot-on 16 years later (and we’ll try to excuse him for asking himself “why, Chuck?” rhetorically):
“Everyone is looking for this genre. ‘But why, Chuck?’ Well, think about it. It’s literary fiction, so it’s pretty damn good writing, but it has commercial potential. It has the ability to infiltrate lots of book clubs and start discussions and take off as a product. It’s a win-win for everyone. I’ve heard a lot of agents say that they are looking for ‘literary fiction with a commercial appeal,’ or something like that.”
Most every editor wants a book that is upmarket (myself included!). Upmarket describes a book that has the potential to have the trifecta: 1) be objectively good 2) sell a lot of copies 3) be respected by critical readers. For both editor and writer, they offer the opportunity to succeed on all of the levels, financially and critically, to eschew the whole tradeoff between the old literary/commercial binary (you could have influence or make money, but rarely do both).
The Wedding People by Alison Espach (July 30, 2024)
The book every editor wanted to publish for the last year and change is The Wedding People by Alison Espach. This novel has as near a universal approval rating as you can get among readers, with over 4-stars on Goodreads with 900,000 ratings and, anecdotally, among editors and publishers of many different stripes. It is the unicorn upmarket novel that has sold over 1.5 million copies. Not only is it beloved by general and professional readers alike, but the publishing matched the quality of the book—it is one of the best covers of last year and has a great title (a clever riff on naming a novel after what it’s about). The Wedding People speaks to the kind of book that can have it all, commercial dominance with literary respect. It’s no wonder it is the type of book that many editors are chasing.
The Wedding People is not the first or the last “one book every editor wants to publish.” Almost every year or every other year we get a book that’s success commercially and critically feels unique like this. All of the books that you voted on above were at one time the “one book.” And—fingers crossed the data backs me up on this— there is no agreement on where these special novels sit on the literary spectrum of commercial, upmarket or literary. So is The Wedding People commercial, upmarket or literary? There may be no definitive answer but we can look to a few criteria in order to narrow in on our debate.
Readability & Style
This single factor probably causes the most confusion and debate among readers as to what is commercial versus literary. It’s also likely one of the biggest factors as to why the term “upmarket” was deemed necessary and gained popularity. One of the standout criteria before the great blurring was that what determined a literary book was whether or not a book went over your head. Books that were hard to read either on a sentence (i.e. esoteric words, long sentences) or structural level (i.e. abstract, no plot) were literary.
Take the most extreme example on the end of the literary spectrum: Thomas Pynchon. You only need to get to the second paragraph of Pynchon’s long-awaited latest novel Shadow Ticket to know it is a Literary novel:
On the other end of the spectrum, you have authors like Danielle Steele and James Patterson whose books often announce their complete lack of literary pretension just as quickly as Pynchon does the opposite.
But these days, examples like Pynchon (88) and Patterson (77) are becoming much rarer. Almost every book regardless of its designation— literary, upmarket, or commercial—passes this test to some extent. It has become harder and harder to tell the difference between commercial and literary books based on readability and style alone (although the really commercial stuff is easily identifiable). It’s funny to note that back in 2009 our trusty Chuck said that examples of upmarket books included: Water for Elephants and The Lovely Bones as well as Jodi Picoult and Michael Chabon. Actually, it’s hard to think of a list that’s more illustrative of the conundrum of the upmarket novel as these four books that clearly do not belong in the same category. It’s hard to believe that Chabon, who won the Pulitzer Prize, by any standard today would be consider anything but literary. Yet when the qualifiers of “upmarket” were simply readable and enjoyable, one can see how everything became clumped together rather than separated.
Now that the norm has become readable and enjoyable writing across the literary spectrum, what can you turn to next in order to decide which camp a book belongs in?
Sophistication
Step two in the literary spectrum debate is to think about sophistication. The book’s themes. How deep into the human condition does the work delve? Even if a subject matter is serious such as murder, it doesn’t necessarily count as sophisticated. The very concept of “upmarket” has chipped away at the idea that thrillers and mysteries are purely sensational. If a theme is more difficult, more challenging, more morally ambiguous, it is literary. If it is straightforward — good guy catches bad guy— then it is commercial. Somewhere in-between? Well, there’s a lot of room for the upmarket.
Sophistication is even more in the eye of the beholder than readability or style. For instance, a well-stated and illustrated cliche can be an extremely powerful force for many readers. Especially when the reader shares a common experience with the story, a certain type of grief or trauma or frustration for example. Dealing with loss, marriage, and parenthood are three common topics you might see written about in cliched ways that nonetheless are bestowed an upmarket or even literary label. Some of the greatest debates you’ll ever have about books are the ones that people define as “high literature” that you can’t stand. A book that moved another reader emotionally that you think is kind of surface level basic.
Another piece of sophistication is the structure and point of view. Is it a straightforward, linear story? The most commercial structure actually might be two timelines with flashbacks, rather than one straightforward timeline, since this allows a writer much more ease in backfilling information. Daisy Jones & the Six with its oral history structure is more sophisticated regardless of the familiar themes. Likewise, Little Fires Everywhere, which tells the story from many different points of views from wildly different backgrounds (age, sex, race, etc.), gains marks for sophistication. A non-standard point of view or complex structure inherently moves a book up the literary spectrum.
If neither readability nor sophistication can solve the argument entirely then one more thing might help…
Aspiration
Author intent is an odd part of this equation, but one that can often be felt in the writing and conceit of a book. Authors like Sally Rooney and Celeste Ng position themselves as writing literature and have gotten their publishers on board with doing so (Rooney especially later in her career). Not only are these aspirations felt in the style and sophistication of writing each is doing, but they become an important ingredient for how they are received by readers.
Commercial, upmarket and literary are completely subjective and with the introduction of an in-between category it’s more important than ever to frame the conversation. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow moves itself up the ladder of literary estimation by referencing Shakespeare in its title (one of many upmarket books that have used a Shakespeare association to stamp their literary bonafides). When Sally Rooney writes in stream of consciousness for her latest novel Intermezzo, she’s announcing literary intent through style.
Why, as a reader, should you consider a writer’s aspirations when deciding whether it is commercial, upmarket or literary? It is a helpful tool to frame the debate of the other two categories. What are the writer’s goals versus what they achieve? Aspirations are helpful in remembering that commercial does not mean bad, upmarket does not mean good, and literary does not mean great. These three categories are not inherently value judgments. A commercial book that is boring is a bad commercial book. A literary book that doesn’t get deep or have style is a bad literary book. An upmarket book that is either overwritten or a lot less sophisticated than it thinks it is, is a bad upmarket book. The point is you deciding whether a book is commercial, upmarket, or literary, before you decide whether it is good or bad.
If Every Editor Wants The Wedding People, Why Aren’t There More Like it?
The real truth here, why these debates will never be solved, is not just the subjectivity of all these criteria. It is also because often a book like The Wedding People fits all three of these categories at different junctures within its pages.
When the novel opens, The Wedding People is literary, although the online description subtlety sidesteps this fact (see: upmarket publishing): the main character, when we meet her, is planning to kill herself. This heavy theme appeals to a literary reader by tackling tough material. A thorny subject of the human condition as old as humanity itself.
The book then shifts to becoming something of a squarely more upmarket offering, a balm of the protagonist forming an unlikely friendship with the bride of the wedding. The writing is readable but sharper and far more sophisticated than your average commercial novel as there’s still a depth of layers added by what they are talking about (suicide, depression). But it is also FUN, funny, entertaining, and witty. It epitomizes the “yes, and” of an upmarket novel.
The final shift of The Wedding People is that it becomes something of an, albeit elevated, rom com at a certain point. A commercial type of feel-good plot that leaves your average reader of fiction happy enough to rate it 5-stars.
If you’re debating which category The Wedding People falls in, you simply home in on the part of the novel that most supports your argument. The literary reader argues subject matter. The upmarket reader argues style. The commercial reader argues rom com. And this is perhaps precisely why the book won over so many readers — everyone is right! — and why so many editors can see themselves publishing The Wedding People, from the rom com specialists to the literary tastemaker.
So, if everyone wants it, why don’t we get more upmarket novels at the top of bestseller lists, and more than just one novel that every editor wants to publish each year? Most likely for the same reason people can’t decide what an upmarket book is in the first place. It’s not only rare to find a book that pleases all of these types of readers, but that publishers and editors have a hard time messaging between the two old-school poles and readers have a hard time computing a complex message. It’s much easier to stick to, essentially, “this is a book you won’t be able to put down” (commercial) and “this is a work of genius you have to read” (literary).
All the books included in the quiz above I personally would consider upmarket because they don’t neatly fit either of the other designations. But you can see the wide range of manners in which they are published and marketed. Do you target literary readers like The God of the Woods cover does, or commercial readers like the Lessons in Chemistry cover does? Both are uber successful, but you can see the conundrum for an editor or reader trying to find the next great upmarket book to replicate these successes because neither answer, it turns out, is right. In swinging for the fences and trying to please everyone and have everything, it’s more likely that you miss the mark and are pulled in too many directions. Commercial readers think it’s too slow. Literary readers think it’s too simple. Upmarket readers wanted more of something they can’t put their finger on. But that’s why a Unicorn or Holy Grail are worth chasing, the reward is worth it, and you only need one.
excellently written! I’ve come across the term “upmarket” before, but this makes me think about it with so much more nuance. thank you!
I found this really thought-provoking. As an old person, I struggle with the "upmarket" category--I've always tended to think of the traditional commercial/literary distinction as less a binary than as gradations along a spectrum, with say Harlequin all the way over on one side and writers like Beckett and Stein on the other. I think one reason why so much genre work was traditionally seen as commercial was because not only was so much of the prose completely flat/perfunctory/cliched, but because it was so predictably formulaic--the latter in many ways being the point of that work, re fulfilling audience expectations for it. There is a lot of room between those extremes, and I feel very hesitant about restricting anyone's idea of what's "literary" solely to more challenging kinds of work. Most of the books characterized here as "upmarket" I'd certainly consider literary, and I imagine the writers of that work would as well.