Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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

Overall the picture is conflicted. Writers have access to more individual 

opportunities through smaller presses and more prizes. On the 

other hand, the formation of super-large publishers also represents 

a drop in competition; however, the new generation of super-large 

publishers have resources to match their scale. Despite the reality on 

the ground, writers feel their books are not supported effectively, and 

media coverage of literary fiction is, if anything, in decline. All of this 

produces what Cambridge University academic John Thompson calls, 

in an exhaustive study of modern publishing, ‘the logic of the field’. It 

favours big literary agents and big books. It is about a concentration 

of resource at the top of the pyramid. This is reflected in the structure 

of big publishers and big prizes (the more imprints a publisher has, 

for example, the more books it can nominate for the Booker). The 

same logic, though, results in an array of opportunities outside the 

mainstream: principally the flourishing of smaller independent publishers 

who don’t need to find the next ‘big book’ to thrive. 

Even absent the digital transformation, there is a lot going on.