The subject header should give a bit of a clue to one of Forbes' 10 designated Literary Tastemakers, which was picked according to a nebulous criteria of media mentions, impact on literature and other intangibles. You can view the list with a handy slide show, or if you're lazy like me, all in one go.

I agree with the Literary Saloon that the list -- which includes literary types like Roth, DeLillo and Coetzee, popular fic folks like Elmore Leonard, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King and young'uns Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer -- seems heavily skewered towards popularity. But then, if the media can't stop talking about you, shouldn't that translate into real tastemaking? (Or maybe it would have been too much to include the Left Behind guys, even though they sell a hell of a lot of books.)