In Big Fiction, English professor and author Dan Sinykin offers an inside look into how the publishing industry has changed over the past six decades and how those changes have affected literary form and the life of an author. Sinykin explores different sectors of the publishing industry, including mass-market books by brand-name authors, trade publishers that embraced genres in literary fiction, the rebelliousness of nonprofit publishers, and independent publishers that refused to be bought out, as well as how women and authors of color shifted the industry. The book also features exemplary work by a range of novelists, such as Renata Adler, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Stephen King, Judith Krantz, Cormac McCarthy, and Walter Mosley. “This book is not only a narrative of the conglomeration of publishing,” writes Sinykin in the introduction. “It also tells how fiction was transformed. It transformed because conglomeration changed what it means to be an author.”
