&gt; 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>Well, as the article says, &quot;literary fiction is one of the larger chunks of the popular adult fiction pie.&quot; &quot;Literary&quot; fiction can reach a larger audience. Anecdotally, it&#x27;s pretty common for me to hear an SF novel recommendation given with the proviso, &quot;it&#x27;s not like other science fiction.&quot; There&#x27;s a larger audience for &quot;fiction in general&quot; than for speculative fiction, so it makes sense that authors would reach for that larger piece of the pie.