As far as I'm aware, 'upmarket' started out as a term to describe certain
women's fiction, and then expanded to encompass everything from Patricia
Cornwall to Ian McEwan. To complicate matters, it's also widely used as a
synonym for what was briefly labelled "commercial literary" fiction. Seems
that literary fiction is considered such a hard sell these days that even
prefixing it with 'commercial' doesn't help, hence the appropriation of
'upmarket' as the epithet of choice. My guess is that a 'literary thriller'
would more likely be pitched as an 'upmarket thriller' at the moment.
Depends who's doing the pitching, of course, and who they're pitching to.
Al
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Allan Guthrie" <allan@...> wrote:
>>
>
>> When we're done with 'thriller', btw, can we move on to 'upmarket'?
>>
>
> I haven't heard that term before, although I don't like the sound of
> it. Al, sure, educate us.
>
> --Dave
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