Great literary fiction, enjoyed and sustainable for generations, is not, for the most part, contemporary fiction, a fiction better described as academic fiction.  This is not a trivial, or false, distinction.  Academic fiction has insidiously replaced literary fiction with the result that readers who loved significant, well-created fiction stopped reading, and publishers, eternally concerned with blockbuster commercial success rather than literary quality, no longer considered literary fiction for publication.

Academic fiction shape-shifted from classic literary endeavors when film and TV began to dominate as popular media for the delivery of stories.  Prose writers shifted to memoir and creative nonfiction and abandoned the skills needed to create significant literary fiction.

Academic fiction has surprisingly consistent characteristics: 1) The fiction of authorial self, that is a persistent authorial presence in the prose and limited authorial view, rather than broad view, of the world for characterization and plot richness,  2) Unsophisticated, confusing narration with shifting voices in point of view and unstable morality and credibility,  3) Overemphasis on strident, irreverent  voice rather than a credible voice consistent with a clear, momentum-based prose,  4) Failure to dramatize story,  5)  Overwriting–with the absence of good story, authors strive to impress readers with obscure, excessively poetic prose, and pseudo-intellectual ideation that works against story. 6) Loss of character-based and character-driven plots traditionally created through in scene action; instead, the persistence of fatalistic plots in narrative description altered from real life.

Academic fiction is now primarily produced through workshops and writing courses in universities, MFA programs, writing organizations who use academic teachers and writers, and by many writers believing the skill of reading and writing at any level is sufficient to write great literary stories.  Of course, not all academic fiction is written by academicians and very good literary fiction writers exist and teach in academic settings, but they are rare to find and difficult to identify.  It is also true that there are readers, and careful readers too, who enjoy, even prefer, academic fiction.  Since their needs are amply filled, it's time to devote attention to the promotion of great literary fiction as an art form that will be remembered and passed to future generations. 

New writers' quests for learning literary fiction are thwarted by the emerging tendency of academics to teach creative writing as a mixture of fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction.  In many workshops, students are accepted to change their memoirs into fiction or polish stories about their past, a trend antithetical to creating literary fiction.  Some prominent editors and teachers have even declared "no difference between fiction and non-fiction" and "write from your own experiences, what you know of your world."  Prominent academicians have also stated that "literary fiction is not for the enjoyment for the reader," "It's dangerous to think of meaning for your fiction," and "I've never thought of literary fiction as entertainment."  Ideas not applicable to the literary fictional story.

The worst effect of not distinguishing literary fiction from academic fiction is that literary fiction requires years of practice and application plus mounds of intellect.  Literary fiction is character-based fiction that drives a plot with significant theme and meaning about what it means to be human.  Academic fiction does not achieve this to any significant extent, resulting in constricted world-view for creation, and often weak characters with minimal dimension. 

For academic fiction, a writer can produce without much practice, and a writer can ignore the honing of talent required for literary fictional story.  For the survival of literary fiction, let the educational systems, and the publishers of fiction, recognize literary fiction and academic fiction as separate genres, if necessary, and give literary fiction the opportunity of rebirth in the contemporary sea of prose production.