There may be no such thing as a fake reader - but most books bought aren&#x27;t read. And the ratio of how many are read is different between &quot;genre&quot; and &quot;literary&quot; fiction.<p>Mitchell may always have written genre but he wasn&#x27;t marketed that way. Likewise e.g. Margaret Atwood writes science fiction but feels the need to pretend it isn&#x27;t. I&#x27;m partway through The Chimes, which was nominated for the Booker prize - and again it&#x27;s science fiction in literary drag (not even literary-influenced; it&#x27;s straight up classic SF). But I doubt it would have got the nomination if it had worn its genre affiliation openly. If authors who have the choice overwhelmingly prefer to position their works as &quot;literary&quot; rather than &quot;genre&quot; when they could fit into either category, doesn&#x27;t that say there&#x27;s something asymmetric about how we treat the two?<p>Honestly the Hugos were never about popularity. But they were a celebration of something deeply unliterary, and I&#x27;d like them to continue to represent that tradition, whether or not that means nominating books with higher or lower sales figures.