The Beginning of the End For Misery Lit?

Posted on December 1, 2008

It appears to be the beginning of the end for the Misery Lit genre. You know, that's the genre of memoirs by people who had miserable childhoods fraught with abuse, sadness and other horrors. With so many of these memoirs turning out to be total or at least partly fiction, readers are getting turned off. Not to mention the libelous aspects of the books.

Publishers of "misery lit" will have been relieved at yesterday's outcome. But the truth is that all is not well in a genre which has boomed beyond all expectations since Dave Pelzer wrote A Child Called It in 1995. Sales of misery memoirs - marketed under the more upbeat label of "inspirational" memoirs - have declined this year, with the top 30 titles down nearly 35% on last year, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Last year's bestseller, Don't Tell Mummy, sold more than 300,000 copies over the year, while this year's, Not Without My Sister, is just topping 152,000, according to the Bookseller. The slew of legal cases means publishers are changing people and place names to make the stories as unidentifiable as possible.

"These things are generally so libellous, because you're talking about abuse. We tend to change the names," said publisher John Blake. "It's a very fraught area because it's quite subjective." Blake pulled out of the market six months ago after judging it to be saturated. "I think the public quite likes them but even the most miserable person in the world has got too many now."

Carole Tonkinson, a publisher at misery memoir powerhouse HarperCollins, says they are "cutting back a bit". She said: "There was a lot of over-publishing and there have been a lot of problems legally with some of them."

The other reason for declining sales is the recession. No one seems to be in the mood for miserable stories right now. Instead, people want an escape -- something fun. And who can blame them?

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