Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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

authors. On the plus side, PRH and Hachette are both fully committed 

to literary fiction, incorporating numerous prestigious literary imprints 

from Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape. What’s more, their 

financial and market clout means they can take big risks, pay authors 

handsomely where they see fit and generate demand for their books 

through major marketing campaigns. On the downside it means there 

are fewer big publishers for authors and agents to choose between, 

and the powerful have even more power. No literary agent would go on 

the record saying that the growth and concentration of larger groups 

came with the risk of ultimately lowering advance levels (thanks to less 

competition), but informally we did hear fears that this could happen. It 

is believed there are often internal policies that help mitigate or indeed 

entirely remove such a risk by keeping divisions separate and competing 

with one another, but such policies are, to the best of our knowledge, 

self-policed and self-monitored, however successfully. 

It is interesting to note that despite the grim sales picture, profits at 

major publishers have not only not been stable but have, if anything, 

strengthened. For example, 2014 global profits at PRH were up 24.5%, 

and 2015 profits were up 11.8% (although both revenue and profit were 

down in 2016). Hachette saw profits of €208m in 2016, up from €198m 

the year before, while Simon & Schuster recorded a 13% increase in 

profits for 2015.

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 HarperCollins saw global profits jump 32% in Q2 

2017 alone.

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 Thanks to ebooks, increased efficiencies from mergers 

and acquisitions, and a relentless focus on cost control, publishing 

groups have not seen profitability track print sales: i.e. while print sales 

are down, profits, at some of the major groups, are not. This is good in 

theory for authors, inasmuch as it means publishers’ financial position 

isn’t as parlous as some market data suggests; there must therefore be 

slack in the system to (potentially at least) pay authors. The question is 

whether this applies to anything in literary fiction, and whether it feeds 

through to support for literary authors; both are doubtful. 

Outside the major groups something equally extraordinary has been 

occurring. Despite media attention to the death of print and the 

struggles of independent bookshops, we are seeing a flowering of new 

independent presses devoted to literary fiction. Leading the pack with 

a solid track record of revenues and healthily sized business (probably 

in the £3–20m bracket) is the recently expanded Independent Alliance, 

headed by Faber & Faber and comprising Atlantic Books, Icon Books, 

Canongate, Profile Books and Serpent’s Tail, Short Books, Granta, David 

Fickling Books, Daunt Books Publishing, Lonely Planet, Murdoch Books, 

New York Review Books, Pavilion Books, Pushkin Press and Scribe 

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http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/69383-2015-profits-rose-12-9-at-si-

mon-schuster.html 

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   https://www.thebookseller.com/news/harpercollins-profits-32-485496 

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