Modern tendencies in the development of fiction publishing in Belarus

The object of the author's research is a complex of modern publishing practices used in fiction today. The article characterizes the main changes in fiction publishing which took place the recent decades in Belarus. The heterogeneity of the modern literature processes (main stream, middle-literature, alternative and marginal literature, non-fiction), the variety of literature schools and tendencies (for example, avant-gardism, concretism, con-ceptualism, metarealism, critical sentimentalism, post-conceptualism) are well detailed. Features of popular literature and, particularly, detective and love stories are emphasized. The author proves the absence of pure genres in the Belarusian love story, notes the creativity of writers in the interpretation of traditional genres (tragicomedy-novel, confession-novel, lyric-dramatic story and post-modern story). The original genre definitions help some authors bring in additional shades of sense to a work, in other cases they demonstrate the ignorance or disregard of the genre system. The article proves that many authors prefer outward forms to the detriment of the content. During the editorial-publishing preparation of the book, most attention is paid to the design of the cover, printing quality, cheap, or expensive, paper, but not to the assessment of the manuscript, its literary adaptation and reference matter preparation. In the recent ten years, the publishing industry and literature process are notable for the development of the Internet, club poetry, appearance of literature meetings and competitions. The article describes the main features of publishing books in electronic publishing houses, and of blog literature (the most popular bloggers in Belarus are Adam Globus, Dmitrij Dmitriev, Marijka Martisevich). The article also gives examples of literature competitions, creative projects, like making of a quest-story about the spirit of Minsk that was organised by Andrew Jvalevskij. The main problems of fiction publishing (absence of literature agents, low royalties, publishing and promoting books by authors themselves) and positive tendencies in this area are listed. Among the positive moments the author marks the validity of the law of supply and demand, development of the book market with competition between publishing houses, integration of the Belarusian literature process into the world culture and, particularly, into the world literature.

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