Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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

at literary fiction. Wherever possible all the findings of this report are 

grounded in solid data. Unless otherwise stated, it should be assumed 

that all figures in this report are from Nielsen BookScan, the world’s 

largest book data analysis service, and hence reflect the UK book trade. 

We only look at data until the end of 2016, as annual figures for book 

sales are heavily skewed by fourth quarter results, which are not yet 

available for 2017.

2. Interviews

We sent out over 75 interview requests and conducted 34 interviews 

with key players and stakeholders including writers, publishers, literary 

agents, writing non-profits, data providers, buyers and merchandisers, 

technology entrepreneurs and journalists. We wanted a spread of 

interviewees from small independent publishers to major corporates; 

writers with long experience and those pre-publication of their debut; 

those working in new and untraditional retail as well as those working 

in well-established chains. Each was selected and approached on the 

basis of their knowledgeable and active position with regard to literary 

fiction. They have insight into the situation on the ground. These 

interviews were carried out either by email, over the phone or in person. 

We wanted to see to what extent these opinions tallied with data – and 

what they could tell us beyond the data. One surprising result of the 

surveys was the number of people who were either reluctant to speak 

on the issue at all, or the number who wished to remain anonymous. 

Why this should be so isn’t clear, but it seems to reflect stricter HR 

policies at large organisations of all kinds about speaking on the record, 

and the fear that interviewees may be perceived to have said the 

‘wrong’ thing and so jeopardise their career. 

3. Survey

From the beginning of the research, we released a survey in the 

form of a web questionnaire to which anyone was invited to respond. 

Remaining open for over a month the survey elicited 249 responses 

– more than many equivalent surveys in the literary area, but still less 

than we would have liked. We promoted the survey through an article 

posted on The Bookseller website, posting regularly on our corporate 

and personal social networks, asking friends and colleagues around the 

book world to post as well as making the survey easily searchable and 

prominent on Canelo’s website. The survey was also sent to writers 

who successfully applied to the Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts 

funding stream for ‘Time to Write’ grants.

The survey was not designed to elicit factual data. Rather it was 

designed as a sentiment analysis of interested opinion to contrast 

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