Why There Are So Few Humour Books
When I queried my first manuscript, a political satire, one of the first things I noticed is that many literary agents don’t consider humour or satire to be a separate genre. I often found humour as a nonfiction genre. I should have clued then that I was going down the road of misery and frustration.
There are some great funny novels but there are also very few to choose from. There are many theories on why this is so but and concrete reason is in dispute. I have my theories.
There is no agreement on what is funny
I consider the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Confederacy of Dummies by John Kennedy Toole to be one of the funniest books every written. Many people enjoyed the book but 9% of ratings on Amazon were fewer than three stars. One person recommended that you “avoid this book at all cost.” Someone called it the “world’s longest suicide note” referring to the fact that the author killed himself before the book was published.
You need to only read some of the comments to my jokes on Twitter to understand how different people perceive humour. Every so often I add a disclaimer to my joke tweets (which in itself is humour) but the negative comments persist.
There are different forms of humour
Now part of the reason that there is no agreement on what is funny is that humour has a wide range of categories. There is satire which is often in the form of social commentary. Examples include George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Saturday Night Live. There is physical comedy which includes the Three Stooges, Marx Brothers and films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Dark comedy is they style of humour often employed by the Coen Brothers or the works of Kurt Vonnegut. Parodies spoof existing works. The film Airplane! spoofs a slew of disaster films. These and other humour categories often appeal to different audiences. I can’t help but notice is how one person will find something hysterically funny, the next person will just shrug their shoulders while a third person will cringe.
Cultural differences in humour perception
Although humour is a universal phenomenon, it is also culturally tinted. Researchers have concluded that Easterners and Westerners differ in humour perception. For centuries going back to ancient Greece, eastern cultures have embraced humour. In sharp contrast, eastern cultures’ attitudes toward humour are not that positive. The Chinese self-actualization denigrates humor while stressing restriction and seriousness. The Chinese do not think that humour is a desirable personality trait. Cultural difference in humour perception directly influences humour usage. In Western culture, humour has become an indispensable coping strategy. However, humor is not an important coping device in China or Japan. I find Canadian humour to be distinctively different that was exists in other Western cultures.
What does this all mean?
Although humour exists universally, it exists in many different forms and how it is perceived can differ considerably. As a result, humour novels are a niche market and attracts a smaller group of writers as compared to romance or fantasy. Does that mean I would turn my back on writing funny books? No, but I accept that I have to work hard at finding an audience for my books.
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I agree that humor can be a very subjective thing. However, I have long argued that all art is subjective, so this doesn't really explain why humor seems to be in such short supply.
To answer this question, I start with a famous anecdote in science fiction circles. A man walks into one of the big five SF publishers in New York and tells the acquiring editor that he has written a book of humorous science fiction. The editor rejects it without looking at a page. When the writer asks why, the publisher replies: "We already have The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We don't need any more humorous science fiction."
I don't know if this story is literally true, but it does contain a metaphorical truth: major publishers are averse to publishing humor. The arguments you made about cultural specificity and the various different types of humor may be factors which contribute to this reluctance.
If this is true, agents won't touch humor because they believe it won't sell to publishers. Bookstores limit the amount of humor they stock because major publishers have a limited number of humorous titles (and smaller presses can't afford to place their books in stores). Reviews in newspapers, extremely difficult to come by at the best of times, are unlikely to focus on the few books major publishers do produce. All of this reinforces the idea that publishers have that humor doesn't sell.
To be fair, some humor does get through to be published by major publishers. The good news is that a lot more of it can be found in small presses. My novels, for instance, are published by Elsewhen Press. Hugh Spencer's books are published by Brain Lag Press. Cait Gordon's books are published by Renaissance Press.
If you're jonesing for something funny, seek beyond the major publishers and ye shall find!