Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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

includes hundreds of startups, all investing their future in the literary 

space.

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 The failure rate is high. Digital also brings with it a panoply of 

opportunities and threats. For example it now makes the possibility of 

viable direct-to-consumer relationships, on behalf of both publishers 

and individual writers. Not only is this a nice outlet for authors, but it 

could create a higher margin business and hence more support for 

both writers and publishers. Conversely, digital also brings the threat of 

piracy – although there is little evidence this has taken off in the UK, it 

has caused serious damage in markets such as Spain and Russia. 

The question is what it means for literary support – and as ever the 

answer is mixed. Digital ameliorated the collapse in sales, picking 

up the slack, even as it continued to switch sales away from print. It 

contributed to the ongoing crisis in book pricing even as it grew the 

market for reading. It opened up opportunities for new publishers, 

startups and relationships – but potentially not in areas that will benefit 

literary fiction. 

There is also a more positive coda. Over the last four or so years there 

is evidence that the price of a hardback has, for the first time in a long 

while, started to creep up. The average selling price for a hardback 

fell between 2001 and 2009. Since then it held stable, and has now 

started growing. In 2016 it was £10.12, against £9.78 in 2009. While 

this is still a drop from the £11.91 of 2001 it shows that book prices 

don’t move uni-directionally. It suggests that people value the object 

of the hardback in an ephemeral digital age and are willing to invest in 

it: good news for literary fiction, which still has the hardback as lead 

format. James Daunt, the boss of Waterstones, the centrepiece of 

literary retail in the UK, has reported that the company moved back to 

profitability in 2015 after years of losses. In the first half of 2015 sales 

were up 3%, compared to a 6% fall the year before

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 and the results 

for 2016 were then even better: profits of £11.9m on underlying sales 

growth of 4.3%.

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Again, this underscores how, despite and perhaps because of the rise 

in digital, people, and readers of literary fiction in particular, still value 

physical objects and bricks and mortar retail. Given that literary fiction 

relies disproportionately on both, this is a good thing, although still only 

small consolation given the wider moves in the market. 

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vcPBUincOjwgIQBjq_qhMPb9QYitgeyl6gQUM1hWQUw/edit 

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   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/12137948/Waterstones-turns-a-page-as-sale-rise.html 

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   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/01/waterstones-returns-profit-thanks-return-traditional-bookselling/ 

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