The Popular Novel: An Idealist Rant

Recently this article ran in the New York Times. It's made me think about the role of more popular, commercial books in publishing in general. In this case the writers of what are now very successful books had to start out self-publishing and selling books out of the backs of cars because they couldn't get publishers to pay attention. I don't know exactly how other mass-markety type genres got their start--did romance novels begin as an underground thing, were sci-fi books passed from devotee to devotee?--but it seems likely that these and other books that are now making huge profits for publishers were initially scorned as crude or unsalable. I find it frustrating that this could still happen, that such a vibrant market could be missed. Other industries use market research to guide the most minute details of their operation--no doubt they overuse it to an extent. And I'm sure there are failings in even the best-designed research plans and the conclusions drawn from them. But I would like to see such research applied more to publishing, with the hope that publishers could reach a larger buying pool by first figuring out what people want. Editors can't be relied on to be aware of every market, of every potential trend. Figuring out how to figure readers out more effectively is so important, not just to the financial health of publishers, but also to readers and potential readers who can be drawn more closely to the Wonderful World of Books.
I won't argue that all books are equal, or that one can get the same benefits from reading a beach book as a classic novel. I admit, the plot summary given of one book in this article: "a Versace-clad seductress... shoots her boyfriend in the head during sex, stuffs money from his safe into her Vuitton bags and, as she fondles the cash, experiences a sexual frisson," makes me shudder a little. But no one starts out reading Tolstoy, and no one can read all Tolstoy all the time, so to speak. And almost any book, any reading time, is better than none. In the interest of getting people reading, whether they stick with one genre or whether they branch out and up and experience the full benefits that challenging, "literary" novels can bring, it's essential to figure out what they want. Bringing more people into the fold is not selling out. It is a way, not just to stop the losses and sell a few more books, but to permanently bolster the health of the industry by creating more people who read regularly (even if they get their books from the library, as they do in this article).