Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon

Mark McGurl

Hardcover | 16.03 x 2.59 x 24.05 cm | 336 pp

Verso | 2021 | 9781839763854

What has happened to fiction in the age of platform capitalism? Since it was first launched in 1994, Amazon has changed the world of literature. The "Everything Store" has not just transformed how we buy books; it has affected what we buy, and even what we read. 

In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl explores this new world where writing is no longer categorised as high- or lowbrow, literature or popular fiction.
Charting a course spanning from Henry James to E. L. James, McGurl shows that contemporary writing has less to do with writing per se than with the manner of its distribution. This consumerist logic - 'if you like this, you might also like...' has reorganised the fiction universe so that literary prize-winners sit alongside fantasy, romance, fan fiction, and the infinite list of hybrid genres and self-published works.

This is an innovation to be cautiously celebrated. Amazon's platform is not just a retail juggernaut but an aesthetic experiment driven by an unseen algorithm rivalling in the depths of it’s effects any major cultural shift in history. Here all fiction is genre fiction, and the niches range from the categories of crime and science fiction to the more refined interests of Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica. Everything and Less is a hilarious and insightful map of both the commanding heights and sordid depths of fiction, past and present, that opens up an arresting conversation about why it is we read and write fiction in the first place.