Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

17

   

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

some extent represent the ongoing aftershock of that event. This was 

compounded, however, by significant changes to the retail landscape. 

Book retail has become more concentrated and competitive as players 

such as supermarkets entered the field, and the reach of Amazon 

grew. Lastly, there was a general collapse in the price of content. As 

the Internet supercharged supply, much media became either low-

cost or free. For the first time, people could read newspapers without 

paying for them. TV, film and music were available on demand, either 

through subscription or piracy. Books had more competition for people’s 

attention, and much of that competition was available for prices well 

below those of traditional hardbacks. Publishers, feeling boxed in by 

circumstances, ad calculated that their sales would slump and they 

would miss out on key retail slots if they aggressively raised prices – so 

they chose to leave them as they were. Arguably, had they raised prices 

the sales declines would have been even more pronounced.

What about the suggestion that there are in fact two markets: a small 

group doing well, and a much larger group in trouble? 

One way of analysing this question is to see how much of a long tail 

there is for literary fiction. That is to say, how many books are there in 

any given year that sell sufficient quantities to support a writer? 

The results of this analysis do not make for encouraging reading. 

Over the last five years the 10,000th best selling fiction title has sold 

between 94 and 99 copies a year, or around £600 of revenue through 

the tills. The 5,000th best selling title did a little better – it peaked at 420 

units but in 2016 sold just 320 – hardly figures to produce an income 

for its author to live on. It’s only once you get towards the top 1,000 

books that totals start to be viable: the 1,000th book sold between 

3,000 and 4,000 copies a year in each of the past five years. Given that 

there are multiple books from some authors in the list, however, you’re 

then looking at considerably fewer than 1,000 writers who can sustain 

themselves on UK print sales of literary fiction (unless said writer has an 

extensive and consistently performing backlist). 

This point is critical. It means that outside of the top 1,000 authors 

(at most), printed book sales alone simply cannot provide a decent 

level of income. While this has long been suspected, the data shows 

unambiguously that it is the case. 

What’s more, this is a generous assessment. After the retailer, 

distributor, publisher and agent have taken their cut, there won’t be a 

lot of money left from 3,000 sales of the 1,000th bestselling title. Let’s 

assume those sales are all hardbacks. The average selling price for a 

hardback in 2016 was £10.12. For the sake of simplicity, that represents 

£30,000 of total revenue of which the retailer is likely, on average, to 

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