rara-avis@icomm.ca wrote:
> Jess wrote:
"In my years as a public librarian I've come to see something
almost sinister about it. . . . Because, I'm beginning to
think, the publishers feel that if they put them in genre
ghettos, where they properly belong, they won't sell or
circulate."
> Interesting. I always assumed mysteries were among
the best
> circulators in libraries.
Oh, they are. All genre fiction--mysteries, science fiction,
westerns, romances--circulate far more than "mainstream"
fiction. And I'm quite certain that they gross, per capita,
far more in the bookstores, too.
And yet given the slightest opportunity publishers will
classify a book as "Fiction" rather than leaving them in the
genre they deserve.
Why? Traditional intellectual hostility to genre fiction, I
think, and a subconscious (or not) desire for
respectability.
> Also, does this mean the publishers define the
library placement,
> not the librarians?
In large part, yeah, although the cataloguers in libraries
have final control over that. But--and I'm not a
cataloguer--from my vantage point it seems that most
cataloguers usually go along with what the publishers tell
them.
jess
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