Canelo / Arts Council England

Total print market value and fiction market value 2001 – 16

Literary fiction occupies a decreasing share of the TCM by value, 

and even a decreasing share of the fiction segment. Both should be 

a concern. While the proportion of general fiction to the total fiction 

market shows a higher degree of volatility, the trend for general fiction 

over the past decade is clear, and downwards. 

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Canelo / Arts Council England | 

16

   

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

% general fiction of total market 2001 – 16

% general fiction of total fiction market 2001 – 16

Those 68% of our survey respondents were right to feel the market for 

literary fiction is declining. One key question is why prices have failed to 

beat or even track inflation. As we will see, the advent of ebooks plays a 

role. But other factors have also contributed. One is the ongoing impact 

of the collapse of the Net Book Agreement (NBA) in the mid-1990s (it 

was finally terminated in 1997). Under the NBA, book prices in the UK 

were fixed by the publisher, and retailers were obligated to sell books at 

those prices. Subject to the pressures of market dynamics for the first 

time, it was inevitable that the prices of books would both fall and stay 

lower than they otherwise would have been, and the past 20 years to 

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