Y. Lotman noted that literature in the 18th-c. Russia was considered a noble occupation and, except for translations, unpaid, which fundamentally distinguished literature from other arts. Gradually the laws of the market influenced the cultural situation. By the turn of the 20th c., Russian literature, in the words of B. Eichenbaum, was ‘growing into the press,’ and the fame of the author began to be expressed in circulation and royalties. The relevance of this work is due to the need to study the phenomenon of literary reputation in the context of this problem. The literary reputations of Nekrasov and Andreev, despite all their differences, combine mutually exclusive characteristics, temporal and timeless, reflecting both the economic aspects of life, European social concepts, and the religious and metaphysical traditions of the preceding centuries. A fundamental difference is the attitude of the authors to the existing literary market: Nekrasov tried to change it and fought against it, while Andreev tried to adapt to it. This study is devoted to the collision between the author and the bookseller, the understanding of the writer’s success, and the influence of magazines on the literature of the turn of the 20th c.