This may be a completely idiotic question, but I've seen 'upmarket fiction' mentioned a few times, especially in connection with literary fiction, and I have no idea what it means. I get a mental image of novels bound in expensive leather with gilt-edged pages and a diamond-encrusted bookmark, but that probably isn't it...

The literary fiction connection makes me wonder if 'upmarket' has something to do with 'difficult', 'clever', 'enjoyed-by-academics', 'Booker-Prize-fodder', (some say) 'pretentious' novels. But how would that be 'upmarket', in the dictionary sense?

Please enlighten a poor ignoramus.

I think 'upmarket' equates roughly to literary fiction, but possibly not the most spiky and awkward type: established big names, books that are interesting and intelligent without necessarily being all that intellectually or morally challenging, probably not things with gold-embossed lettering and heaving bosoms/thrashing androids on the cover. I suspect the characters and their dilemmas wouldn't all come from the lowest socio-economic groupings either. Book group books is another overlapping category, I'd have said. So some Booker-fodder would be upmarket, and some not.

Where it overlaps with the dictionary definition? In that highly suspect but commonly made equation of education with class - as in the class of the readers and the class of the characters?

Emma

Thanks, Emma! That makes perfect sense to me. From your description, I would guess that something like Girl With a Pearl Earring would probably qualify as 'upmarket'...?

Haven't read it, but yes, I'd imagine so. I suspect it's mostly to do with how the publisher's deciding to sell and package it - tasteful/classic/wittily allusive cover, preferably involving or suggesting an Old Master painting which implies that the publisher knows the the potential reader is an educated type who will recognise it... And ads in the Saturday broadsheet supplements, all hands on deck to get it reviewed on Front Row and onto some prize shortlists...

Emma