What Readers Like

Jessica Faust of Bookends, LLC has an interesting post on her blog today about what agents look for in books they think will sell. And it all correlates to what readers will buy. A few years ago chick lit (strong, snarky heroine) was all the rage and readers (not me, though) were scarfing these books up as fast as they could be published. A couple of years into this feeding frenzy, authors went, "Whoa! This is a really popular genre--I think *I'll* write a chick lit book." And the market gets glutted and readers get sick of seeing the same kind of book for sale month after month. Now editors are telling agents, "Don't send us chick lit. No one's buying it."

So what's an agent to do? What's an author to do? Any thoughts?