What will people want to read nine to 12 months from now? That, more than distribution systems, e-publishing and a dozen other red-herring—like questions is what preoccupies publishing people most. Especially this year, what with the most contentious (and exciting) presidential primary season in recent memory, one that will likely turn into an equally contentious (and maybe as exciting) election this November. “I'm not publishing any big fiction in the fall,” one publishing executive told me recently, echoing many others. This is only logical. Since much of the educated populace is fixated on newspaper and CNN coverage of political battles, we're wondering who'll have time to read something as ephemeral as a novel.
Which may be why the “big” fiction of the year seems to pool around June. Salman Rushdie, for example, a fall fiction guy if there ever was one, has publication of his The Enchantress of Florence scheduled for June. Likewise, some “smaller” novelists—I'm thinking Jennifer Haigh, Aleksandar Hemon, Ethan Canin and, say, Tim Winton—are also coming soon. And even big, nonpolitical nonfiction seems shut out of the fall: I might have thought Alice Schroeder's much-discussed, high-ticket Warren Buffett book would have waited for the leaves to change. (It's due in June, too.)
It's not just reader interest, directly, that accounts for these scheduling decisions; promotion has plenty to do with it. While, for example, Jon Stewart doesn't tend to promote novels so much in the first place, you can bet that pretty soon, he'll be too busy talking politics on his show to cover them at all. (And given the months of political talk he missed because of the writers' strike, he'll surely be releasing lots of pent-up promotional energy.) Even Oprah—the champion of the midlist novel—has already begun turning her attention to nonfiction, both in her book club and in life; between her 10-week tutorial with Eckhart Tolle and her stumping for Obama, even a blockbuster like, say, The Corrections probably couldn't catch her eye. In other words: what's an already beleaguered publicist to do? Sit out the fall, I guess.
The good news is that from now through the summer, fiction fans have plenty to live for, whether it's Andre Dubus III's The Garden of Last Days or Hari Kunzru's My Revolutions or the eerie Knopf debut The Sister by Poppy Adams. And come the fall, we can start reporting on all the election analyses that will surely be signed up. Remember the contested election of 2000? Publishers do, too, but whether they'll learn from their mistakes—even megastar Jeffrey Toobin's Too Close to Call was a disappointment—remains to be seen.
Then again, some elections have inspired very successful books—most of them nonfiction. Quick, what became a giant bestseller soon after the great (and razor-close) race of 1960 in which Kennedy beat Nixon? TheMaking of the President 1960 by Theodore White, that's what. And after the bitter 1968 election, Nixon's victory at the height of the Vietnam War? Ah, even more interestingly, Joe McGinniss's The Selling of the President. So, don't despair. This electoral season may well make for a story worth reading about later.
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