You can't compete against "New York" or "London" on locality terms. They just have so many more people in a small area; they're an implicit link farm. To build

You can't compete against "New York" or "London" on locality terms. They just have so many more people in a small area; they're an implicit link farm. To build something up that can challenge the literary mainstream, you've got to align on something else. I do think something like this is already happening, but along genre lines. Twenty years ago, self-publishing was a last resort option for people who were mostly writing perma-slush. Ten years ago, it was an admissible strategy for certain genres but still considered an undesirable way to go for most authors. Five years ago, it had become a respectable alternative (in part, due to consolidation-induced dysfunction in trade publishing). Now, we're starting to see self-publishing take over literary fiction [1] as well. This isn't necessary good news--to self-publishing properly is expensive, beyond what most people can afford; and traditional houses are now able to farm out their risk unto authors--so much as it is a mix of good and bad, but the scene is changing and I think the New York literati are already under 20% of peak relevance (midcentury). They confer a bit of prestige, but they don't actually get you read, and they certainly don't get you read deeply, which is what you want if you want your books to still be read 20 years from now. ---- [1] I'll skip over the long, long debate over "What is literary fiction?" That would add 3 kilowords to this post, just to define terms.