When networks like HBO began broadcasting dramas and sitcoms, it was a revelation to be able to watch a show free of commercial interruptions. Episodes no longer needed to be front-loaded with the minor dramatic cliffhangers that precede advertisements (although, as Emily Nussbaum has shown, that convention has curious staying power). Most important, writers could end episodes in the way they wanted—a final scene followed by an elegant epilogue of a credit sequence rather than a blaring station promo or advertisement for Flomax.

By eliminating these intrusions, television came nearer to approximating the total narrative immersion found in good novels. But this is a financially vulnerable time in book publishing, so just as television has grown more artistically refined, literature has tried to make itself more commercially visible. Authors are asked to promote not only their books but themselves, with book tours, book trailers, interviews, blogs, and an active social-media presence. And connected to these campaigns is the most irritating promotional addendum of all: the acknowledgments page.

A gratuitous supplement to the dedication page, acknowledgments can now be found at the conclusion of virtually every published novel, often running to as many as three pages and thanking scores of people. True, their existence is not entirely unprecedented. One earlier (and still used) form was called the Author’s Note. This typically appeared at the close of historical or autobiographical fiction, to account for any deviations from the factual record or to provide a shortlist of works consulted. These notes traditionally had an air of duress: “I find it obnoxious to have my methods questioned,” the writer seemed to be saying, “but my publisher wanted some clarification, so here it is.”

The point was that the novelist emerged from behind the curtain only reluctantly, in order to anticipate a query or assuage a qualm. What’s new about the current acknowledgments page is that it’s unsolicited—it appears like an online pop-up ad, benefiting no one but the author and his comrades. This is surely why these afterwords are often so garrulously narcissistic and strewn with clichés. The most radical experimentalist adheres to the most mindless acknowledgments-page formula; the most stinging social critic suddenly becomes Sally Field winning an Oscar.

Acknowledgments typically open with a statement to the effect that, although writing is lonely work, the author could never have completed his book without help and support. “This is my fourteenth novel and I am as dependent as ever on the wisdom of others,” begins one, and another, plucked at random from a Barnes & Noble new-arrival shelf: “The creation of this book has removed any notion I may have had of it being a solo endeavor.”

Then the thanking begins, and the first to be named are very often the author’s agent and editor. Now, I am as mindful as anyone of the pressures on the literary marketplace and the challenges of getting a novel bought and published; and the traditionally invisible work of editors is not only necessary but sometimes no less rigorous than the effort the author went to in composing the manuscript (today, a lot of book editing is done by the agent before the work is shopped to publishers, which is why the author-agent relationship can be so close-knit). It is right and proper to be grateful to the people who worked on your behalf, and if it were done less obtrusively, there would be something sweet about crediting them in the book.

But because the acknowledgments page functions primarily as an extension of the book’s publicity, there is little point in a small gesture. What is far more common is for a novelist to offer his thanks in such a way as to announce the tremendous effort he himself put into revising. One author humblebragged that his first draft was so marked up that he’d had “first-year French essays that came back clearer.” Quelle extraordinaire!

This undercurrent of faux-modest self-promotion runs like a viral strain throughout every acknowledgments page. After the professional shout-outs, then, comes the collegial name-dropping, when writers thank the published novelists who taught at their M.F.A. programs or lectured at their writers’ retreats. Friendly as this may seem, it often has the comical side effect of counteracting the efforts of the book’s publicity department, since the authors being thanked are usually the same people who have written the blurbs. Perhaps readers already know that book publishing is an insular, back-scratching industry, but does it have to be revealed quite so openly?

Next our scrupulously thorough author will thank the fellowships and grant organizations that subsidized his work—and here we have the pleasure of seeing a novel transform into a billboard. Even the acknowledgment page’s fig leaf of justification—that it would be churlish not to credit the people who helped midwife the work—now vanishes, because, pace the Supreme Court, corporations are not people. When a writer thanks Yaddo, he’s not being gracious to anybody; he’s just telling the world that he went to Yaddo.

Typically, it’s around this point that the author will turn his attention to the little people. The difficulty here seems to be similar to that faced by a couple choosing their wedding guests: once you start putting second-tier names on the list, it’s impossible to know when to stop. The author is usually reduced to a rolling eructation of proper names, like this case in point: “Kevin Spall, Angie Fugate, Josh Mosher, Heather Shultes, Kandy Tobias, Sue Lube, Jenny Taylor, Mike Shubel, Rich McDonald, Andrea Koerte, Rick Goss, Christina Ballard, Frankie Hall….”

That particular list continues for another forty-two names. It’s all meant to seem very generous, but readers are within their rights to be skeptical. For one thing, the gratitude is unwarranted. Despite protests to the contrary, novel-writing is necessarily solitary; however well-meaning they may be, friends, family, lovers, and colleagues will only ever hinder the process (the most they can do—and it’s no small thing—is forgive the author for ignoring them). But on the off chance that they really did help with the creation of the book, how meagerly they’ve been rewarded! Is it really so gratifying to be recognized in print when your name is included on a list that looks like the bcc line of a mass e-mail?

The acknowledgments page will conclude with the sort of crowd-pandering favored by stumping politicians—with expressions of awe and humility for the author’s supportive parents, brilliant children, and devoted spouse. Apparently having dedicated the book to these same people was insufficient as a gesture.

For all my shirt-rending, I’m well aware that the trend of the acknowledgments page is symptomatic of a larger trend, one that it would be useless to hope to stop. The heyday of the literary auteur is long past, replaced by the era of the writing program. Writers who saw themselves as magi, practitioners of a mysterious art, would never have dreamed of breaking the spell they’d cast by guilelessly stepping out of character to thank their house pets. (There was no small amount of baloney in that attitude, too, but that’s a diatribe for another time.) But there can be little mystique in a craft that is now taught in classrooms in every polytechnic university in the country. Novelists seem largely to have accepted the financially useful frame of mind that their books are products foremost, shaped by many hands and market-tested by many professionals.