Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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

Film and Television: Again, this is an area of increasing demand. As 

with translations it cannot be said this is something that is benefitting 

all or even many writers. But, again, the direction of travel is positive. 

As mentioned earlier, Hollywood – and film generally – is increasingly 

averse to greenlighting completely original projects. Books of course 

make the perfect test cases. While this was always true, it appears to 

be becoming more marked. In just a few months for example, we had 

Room, The Revenant, Carol, The Lady in the Van and The Danish Girl all 

at the cinemas at the same time. All are based on (a loose conception 

of) literary fiction. Television offers many further examples. So even 

if the numbers made are small in comparison to the total number 

of writers, for those that do it offers support not only in terms of 

potentially large amounts of money, but also an enormous sales boost. 

While it is still part of the general two-tier dynamic of writing, it is an 

example of where the upper tier may be growing rather than shrinking, 

although in 2018 there appear to be poorer pickings: while adaptations 

of genre from Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One to more E.L. James 

are fine, literary adaptations are, at the time of writing, thinner on the 

ground (they include an adaptation of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto). It 

should though be weighed against the decline in other rights sales – 

serial rights sales to newspapers and magazines have, according to 

those we talked to, been in decline for some years. 

At this point we start to venture beyond earning income from solely 

writing. This is where writers can find related support – but crucially it 

is not earned directly from writing. 

Audiobooks: There is considerable evidence and anecdotal support 

for a boom in audiobook sales. Publishers are hiring in the area and 

increasing the number of titles they publish.

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 This is built on the 

back of rising sales, many of them digital. The Publishers Association 

reports growth in audio sales of 28% in 2016 with a value of £16m. 

But a separate Nielsen BookScan investigation found sales in that 

year to be a much higher £91m.

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 Encouragingly a third of users were 

new to the format and these were younger than typical readers, 

concentrated in the 18–34 age bracket. Meanwhile new entrants to the 

market like Audiobooks.com and Kobo aim to rival the market leader, 

Audible, an Amazon company. However amidst the good news, there 

is a sting in the tail for writers of literary fiction. The same Nielsen 

BookScan report finds that sales are focused on Genre Fiction: Crime 

and Thriller, Light Reads and Science Fiction/fantasy are the major 

categories. So again, there is a large possible upside for literary fiction 

that may not be realised in actuality. 

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https://www.thebookseller.com/news/publishers-look-exploit-revived-audiobook-sector-543026

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   http://www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk/uploads/press/1UnderstandingUKAudiobookConsumer_2016_FV.pdf 

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