At the Publishing Symposium at this year’s Singapore Writers Festival, the final debate was held on 8 Nov, 2013. The motion was ‘Commercial Fiction matters more than Literary Fiction’. Moderated by Singaporean poet Alvin Pang, the panel consisted of Jo Lusby (Head of Penguin Books, North Asia), Ravi Mirchandani (Editor in Chief, Atlantic Books, UK), Rachel Kahan (Editor at William Morrow, New York), Deepthi Talwar (Editor, Westland Ltd., India) and Romesh Gunesekera (Sri Lanka-born UK-based novelist). Here are excerpts from the debate.