Five key differences between Book Club and literary fiction 

As an author, approaching genre can be tricky – particularly when you consider the line between what could be considered as ‘book club’ and what counts as ‘literary’ fiction. How do you know where your manuscript sits in the market?  

As a literary agent, I spend a good chunk of my career working on fiction, thinking about how novels are marketed and trying to gauge which publishers will go for the projects I’m handling. Equally, in my work with Jericho Writers as an editor, I find it’s something that authors are always curious about: when their manuscript is ready to go to agents, how should it be pitched, and why?  

Here, I hope to unpack some of the distinctions between literary and book club fiction and help you understand five key differences between them. However, the book club and literary genres are areas of fiction where there is some overlap – it’s not so definitive as, say, thriller vs romance as a contrast of genres. Inevitably, therefore, there will be some crossover.  

In fairly broad strokes, book club is often based around more ‘traditional’ plot structures and development, whereas literary might tend to be more experimental – and foreground elements of voice, dialogue, and characterisation over plot. This could be put as simply as prioritising plot vs prioritising stylistic elements.  

Structure and character arcs: clear or ambiguous? 

When approaching story structure and characterisation, most novels will follow a traditional three-act structure: set-up, confrontation, resolution. Whereas this is typically adhered to in the plot development, building of narrative tension and character arcs of book club novels, in literary fiction the boundaries are a little more blurred.  

Literary fiction tends to be more led by theme and character; so, if your novel is written with this three-act structure informed mainly by plot events then it would fall into the book club genre. Equally, if your novel is written in a way in which this three-act structure isn’t so clearly defined (and perhaps your writing foregrounds those other stylistic aspects), then you’re likely working in the literary genre.  

Writing style and voice 

In terms of writing style, literary fiction is often championed as ‘voice-driven’. So, in the same way that structure and characterisation might inform approaches to the shape of literary fiction, so too does this level of characterisation-led storytelling often shape how that story is told. That is, literary fiction could be accessed through a unique voice with certain quirks, streams of consciousness, or in a writing style with this that reflects the character’s psyche.  

In a literary fiction novel about an unreliable narrator, the voice might be unbroken in this stream of consciousness form, or a style point might be adopted. No punctuation for dialogue, for example.  

In the way that structure generally sticks more to the traditional three-act story format in book club fiction, an unreliable narrator might in that case be shown through the escalation and reveal of plot events that highlight dishonesty.   

Consider your novel’s concept 

Think about the ‘high concept’ of your novel. Can your novel easily be pitched in a one-or-two sentence summary that will universally be understood?  

Typically, if your novel has a high concept – if it’s an easily pitch-able ‘x does y and what happens will lead to z’ sort of a set-up – then you are writing more clearly in the book club arena.  

If the concept of the novel isn’t so easy to pitch in a one- or two-liner and is more informed by themes, then that sounds like a work of literary fiction.  

Your reading habits are a tell 

In as much as the old adage ‘write what you know’ holds water, so too does ‘pitch the genre that you know’. If your reading habits tend towards book club fiction, the tendency will be that you write book club fiction. The same is true for literary fiction.  

So, when you get to that stage of submitting your novel to agents and thinking about how to pitch the genre, a key thing to do would be to work backwards in thinking about how your work might reflect your reading habits, and how this might have informed the novel you’ve written. 

Remember, the line is blurred

Lastly, to caveat all this at the very end… you’ve probably come across a big literary hit being republished as a book club edition with questions for discussion at the end. The boundaries are clear in the distinctions I’ve outlined above, but the end product of this all is publishing as a business: these genre boundaries aren’t, as mentioned, akin to romance vs. horror.  

Although you should definitely understand what you’re writing and how you should pitch it, there is room for manoeuvre in a publishing market that is (we hope) constantly developing.