Like James, I have also wondered. One hypothesis was maybe it marked standalone novels from a series, but I think that didn't hold up.
It's a market signal -- it tells people that the book is upmarket or elevated.
You know, I think it actually works like that on me. For some reason, I kind of like it, and you might have identified the reason.
I guess it would be interesting to get a nice big list of examples. I could see something like Byatt's Possession being marketed this way. I'm not so sure about Butler's The Fledgling, but I guess it could be at work there, too.
At one point Harcourt, Brace put "A Novel" on Stanisław Lem's early mainstream novelHospital of the Transfiguration, but not on his SF. So it may signal "not genre". Note that a lot of Lem's SF is pretty upmarket and elevated to begin with, as SF goes--but it still gets shelved in SF. Then again, so does Hospital of the Transfiguration even though it is not SF.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2008-12-18 12:00 pm
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You can see this by the defensiveness in the other comments to this post.
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It's a market signal -- it tells people that the book is upmarket or elevated.
You know, I think it actually works like that on me. For some reason, I kind of like it, and you might have identified the reason.
I guess it would be interesting to get a nice big list of examples. I could see something like Byatt's Possession being marketed this way. I'm not so sure about Butler's The Fledgling, but I guess it could be at work there, too.
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I checked on amazon.com for the cover images, and you're right about Possession, and I remembered correctly for The Fledgling.
I think my failure to remember for Possession shows that for me both subtitles serve the same purpose.
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(Anonymous) 2008-12-19 02:36 am (UTC)(link)TSM_in_Toronto
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See the difference?