'Revelatory... Book lovers curious about how the proverbial sausage gets made will want to check this out.'–Publishers Weekly

'Big Fiction tackles a big subject with deep research, great ambition, and broad mindedness. Sinykin pulls together stories of famous authors and obscure yet central behind-the-scenes players to tell the complex and compelling history of modern publishing. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the too-often-overlooked forces that shape what is published, what is written, and what the future of books might hold.–Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

'This book offers a rich, detailed background explicating the everyday reader's experience of why books published by big commercial presses seem so much like... books big commercial presses would publish... Any student of publishing would benefit from reading this book. In its pages, publishing seems fascinating and action-packed, but myths that readers might harbor about the industry's glamor, its sincerity, or the purity of its relationship to art will probably get dispelled.'”–Hilary Plum, Los Angeles Review of Books

'Sinykin writes with verve and narrative flair as he documents the consolidation of the major publishing houses– and, along the way, overturns the myth of "the romantic author," that lone genius unfettered by social circumstances or material constraints.... The result is a fascinating and informative account of the convulsions roiling the American publishing industry for the past half-century and a devastating reckoning with the ways in which conglomeration has altered American fiction.–Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

'The fluency, anecdotes, and lightness with which Sinykin delivers what is clearly the product of rigorous research makes for a highly readable book.'–Alice Grundy, Sydney Review of Books

Dan Sinykin is an assistant professor of English at Emory University with a courtesy appointment in quantitative theory and methods. He is the author of American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse (2020). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Dissent, and other publications.