Will a cli-fi novel become the breakthrough novel of the Fall 2017 publishing season? Our scout reports from NYC

Will a cli-fi novel become the breakthrough novel of the Fall 2017 publishing season?

Our scout reports from NYC

As the USA book world’s most literary season approaches, the Fall season, the book industry still awaits the year’s big literary publication. Will it be a cli-fi novel? Stay tuned.


While critics have celebrated Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West,” George Saunders’ ”Lincoln in the Bardo” and other works, no 2017 releases have approached the sales or the impact of such older titles as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and George Orwell’s “1984.” Publishers wonder if it’s a familiar syndrome, the so-called Trump effect, with the public too caught up in the headlines to focus on new and challenging fiction.


“People are indeed *distracted*, and there’s no sign of it letting up,” says Paul Bogaards, an executive vice president and executive director of publicity at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. “Many are weary from their social feeds — mentally exhausted — and some, perhaps, are simply choosing to binge watch their favorite television series and eat copious amounts of ice cream rather than read a contemporary, literary novel.”


“We’ve been disappointed in sales, and other publishers have been disappointed,” said Scribner publisher and senior vice president Nan Graham, who hopes to break the spell this fall with new fiction from prize-winners Jennifer Egan and Jesmyn Ward. “I think it’s harder for new books to break through because people are reading the books that other people are reading. They’re looking to talk to other people about something they have in common. And that drive seems more intense right now. Is that the so-called Trump effect? Sure.”


But cli-fi novels are out there and one or two might break through. Here comes the Fall season of 2017.