Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

11

   

Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction

In the years 2001 to 2008 there were positive signs of growth across 

the board, growth which has never fully returned. In real terms, the 

market for print books has shrunk. 

Looking in the General Fiction category of Nielsen BookScan more 

specifically, we can see the past 15 years have been a turbulent ride. 

What is more, although we can see signs of improvement across all 

printed books, this is less evident in fiction, which continues to struggle. 

Hardback Fiction General sales went from £18.4m in 2001 to £33.7m by 

2007. Between 2002 and 2003 they rocketed up by over £10m. After 

the 2007 Financial Crisis, however, the fall was nearly as stark: £10m 

was wiped off the market between 2007 and 2011. Since 2011 the 

market has started to recover, but it remains well below where it was in 

2007. As we will see, ebooks can account for some of this change, but 

not all. 

The picture for paperback Fiction General sales is similar. Between 2002 

and 2008 was a bull run for the market, which boomed from £123.1m 

to a high of £199.9m. Paperbacks then saw an even more extreme dip 

than hardbacks, and nowhere more so than in Fiction General. While 

the overall paperback TCM held up reasonably well, Fiction General 

plummeted by nearly 50%. Nearly every year after 2008 posted year-

on-year declines, with 2012 proving especially brutal: after £162.6m in 

2011, the end-of-year total for 2012 was just £119.8m. While 2014 to 

2016 saw a gradual recovery of the wider book industry, Fiction General 

paperbacks continued to shrink. The chart below combines hardbacks 

and paperbacks.