New life for a dying trade

The book world is on its last legs. So how we can bring it back from the dead?

HOW STANDS THE WORLD of light literature here in the spring of 2024? Well, you may not be surprised to learn that everything is very flat — sales are supposedly 20 per cent down on this time last year. You can get into the Sunday Times paperback bestseller chart these days by selling a few thousand copies and ornament the hardback list by shifting a few hundred. The genre known as literary fiction is pretty much dead. Most of the money that does get spent on books is squandered on rubbish. So what, you may wonder, would make the situation better? Here is a brief guide to the things we ought to encourage and — perhaps even more important — the things we desperately need to wave on their way.…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2024

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