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[quote=Anonymous]There used to be more strictly genre fiction published. For instance, some publishers like St. Martin's Press published shorter length mysterys that featured a detective solving a crime. There were romance novels published by Harlequin and others that were of a certain length and had a predictable plot arc. Harlequin even had writer's guides for authors outlining what they wanted. Sci Fi was similar with some very prolific authors though some books, especially fantasy, tended to be longer. There was a clear distinction between genre and mainstream fiction, but nothing called literary fiction. So you had Edna Ferber and William Faulkner in the same category.

The writing workshop model produced literary fiction as a separate category and divided it away from an overarching category of mainstream fiction. At this point there was literary fiction and commercial fiction.

In the 90s there was a blurring and widening of genres so that genre fiction expanded and books got longer. Someone like Norah Roberts expanded her romances into longer books and started writing crime fiction. Most bestselling books were expanded plots of what would have once been genre mysteries.

There are also many, many subgenres now as well as YA, which was a very small category 40 years ago.

More people read literary fiction now and it tends to be written by and for women. Most of these authors are products of  MFA workshop training. The training helpd writers learn to not only write but edit and is often a way into the business via connections
 
A long time ago people came up through journalism to fiction buy that's not the pipeline anymore.[/quote]

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