Marketing the "Momoir"

[pegkerr]

Fascinating article on the change in publishing chances for a certain "type" of book:

Motherhood's own cutesy category--momoir--is similarly controversial in the industry, from what we could tell. Shaye Areheart groaned when we uttered the word. "It's an attempt to pigeonhole subjects and writers," she said. She thinks that momoir and terms like it come from the youth-obsessed television industry, where she sees pressure to make things "hip or cool that aren't necessarily hip or cool." She adds, "Some stories are just important and that should be enough."

Andi Buchanan thinks that there's a persistent, underlying prejudice against stories that take motherhood seriously. Even the word momoir is tainted, she thinks--a compound of "memoir," with its air of respectability and literary cachet, and "mommy," with its don't-take-her-seriously-she's-just-a-mom overtone. "The attitude [among publishers] seems to be, ‘What could be less compelling than the secret life of moms?' " she says.

Read the whole thing here.