As a librarian, I would not consider Jodi Picoult a “chick lit” author. “Women’s fiction,” “women’s lives and relationships,” whatever you want to call fiction that a) is primarily aimed towards women and b) does not focus on a romantic relationship, or at least not primarily (those would be Romance), yes. But “Chick lit” is a subset of this genre, and it’s a specific light, humorous subset, most frequently written in the first person. When people come in looking for chick lit, I would not hand them one of Picoult’s books, and when people say they’ve read her entire backlist and want something similar, I would not check the chick lit recommendation lists. It’s like calling all of science fiction Space Opera.

Well… I exaggerate somewhat. One Big rejected my work as “too experimental” for them. Of the other three Big I tried, two never replied (after a year and half wait), and the third wrote back and said “It’s passed first reading, now on to second”. THAT was over a year ago, too. I don’t expect to ever hear from them again, either. They don’t answer status queries.

My first novel was published by a small Canadian press now swerving full-time into the small press financial mainstay, romance/erotica, which is not my thing, so I took it back from them. And though that work won the only contest I sent it in to (2009 EPPIE), I still can’t get any Big Publisher (or agent) to read even it, never mind my latest unpublished work.

I try to comfort myself with the list of all the acclaimed authors of history who died unappreciated and broke (and most of them did).

Publishers aren’t looking, in general, for new voices, just spending the whole pot on a few safe bets. A few big names, making lots of lolly. Perhaps marketing and bean counters make all the decisions now.

Which is how the list of “high earners” in Forbes came into being.