Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings write: “Literary fiction is dead. Or, so we’ve been told. It’s convenient to assume that readers are to blame for killing literary fiction. But what has actually occurred is death by committee. Mirroring many other American industries, publishing has followed the path of consolidation, starting when Random House bought Knopf in 1960. The result is a monopsony, a market dominated by only a few buyers. Publishing houses used to have blood feuds, much to the benefit of literature writ large. But monopolies are always sedate, always predictable.”