: Why is the real historical value in novels rated so low in publishing? Writing historical novels takes time and motivation to research and study if you want to write something valuable and serious.

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Historical Novels (like all novels) are read for many reasons, only one of which is their (historical) accuracy.

Some of the things that hook people into reading books/novels (including historical ones) are:

Accuracy (historical or otherwise)
Effective promotional/marketing campaign
Known/favourite author
Engaging plot
Exciting action/content
Likeable characters
Interesting/relevant themes
Tie-ins to contemporary world events
Good cover with interesting bumph
Gripping first paragraph
And the list goes on ...

People naturally choose carefully the novel they spend their hard-earned cash on. If they want a combination of 4, 7 and 10 then they look for novels that give evidence of fulfilling those criteria. If this excludes 1 (historical accuracy) then that's their choice.

If a person were to be in the position of writing a novel (historical or otherwise) that only ticks box 1 and find that this novel is not selling like hot-cakes then perhaps one way forward would be to apply some focus to other areas, such as other items on the above list.

Good luck going forward, F. Lotito (and all authors who may (or may not) be in a similar position).

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It's most likely because the people who really care about historical value are reading non fiction primary, or secondary sources.

By their nature novels are works of fiction making them less valuable as a source of historical fact than a similarly researched non fiction work. While it'd be possible to fill a novel with footnotes citing sources that isn't necessary for the narrative and could become distracting depending on the number of sources cited.

Most authors writing historical fiction aren't writing research papers for a reason. They are writing works of fiction for an audience reading for recreation. They're going to be devoting their efforts to creating a compelling story with interesting characters. Unless a reader is extremely familiar with the time period in question a compelling story will cover for any historical failings much better than an accurate representation of history will cover for an abysmal story.

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