Canelo / Arts Council England

1. Data analysis
What is often missing from discussions of literary fiction is hard data. 
Working with Nielsen BookScan, who are thanked for their generous 
contribution to this research, we have analysed 16 years of sales data. 
As mentioned above, there is no specific category for literary fiction, but 
this was overcome by looking at ‘General Fiction’, the closest category 
in the Nielsen data, and then drilling down to specific writers, events 
(such as prizes) and other categories (such as translations). We look 
at General Fiction against, for example, Genre Fiction, another Nielsen 
category, and for both hardbacks and paperbacks. The overall category 
of Fiction encompasses both General Fiction and Genre Fiction and 
so looking at General Fiction is the nearest approximation for looking 

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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.