I have absolutely no data to back up this conjecture, but I’m pretty sure that the primary readership of literary (non)fiction is:
Other writers of literary (non)fiction, who are studying the professional landscape as much as they’re doing solids for their writing friends in hopes that they’ll get the same help when they publish their own books of literary (non)fiction someday
MFA students who are studying the professional landscape and who hope to publish their own books of literary (non)fiction someday
Undergraduate students who hope to get their MFAs and then publish their own books of literary (non)fiction someday
Lit scholars, who have a necessarily complicated relationship to contemporary literature, lovers, vampires, & enemies of the text at all times
Friends & Fam of the author, who are dying to see what their nephew wrote, curious to know if their old friend from college knew how to turn a phrase, excited to see if their former classmate actually “made it” (short answer: no), and/or obligated to read their partner’s book because they know that not reading it would be a complete dismissal, if not betrayal, of everything they’d spent the past ten years working on. I mean, marriages have ended for much less.
Editors, agents, & members of the intelligentsia who are looking for the next Roxane Gay to pluck from the small press slush pile where so many talented writers have drown and never come back from
Now, that might seem like a lot of people and potentially it could be. But most of the time, we’re talking about a fraction of a fraction of readers in a closed-circuit system. Beyond that, there’s a huge demographic that’s sorely missing here from this readership:
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