Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 
11

Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction
In the years 2001 to 2008 there were positive signs of growth across 
the board, growth which has never fully returned. In real terms, the 
market for print books has shrunk. 
Looking in the General Fiction category of Nielsen BookScan more 
specifically, we can see the past 15 years have been a turbulent ride. 
What is more, although we can see signs of improvement across all 
printed books, this is less evident in fiction, which continues to struggle. 
Hardback Fiction General sales went from £18.4m in 2001 to £33.7m by 
2007. Between 2002 and 2003 they rocketed up by over £10m. After 
the 2007 Financial Crisis, however, the fall was nearly as stark: £10m 
was wiped off the market between 2007 and 2011. Since 2011 the 
market has started to recover, but it remains well below where it was in 
2007. As we will see, ebooks can account for some of this change, but 
not all. 
The picture for paperback Fiction General sales is similar. Between 2002 
and 2008 was a bull run for the market, which boomed from £123.1m 
to a high of £199.9m. Paperbacks then saw an even more extreme dip 
than hardbacks, and nowhere more so than in Fiction General. While 
the overall paperback TCM held up reasonably well, Fiction General 
plummeted by nearly 50%. Nearly every year after 2008 posted year-
on-year declines, with 2012 proving especially brutal: after £162.6m in 
2011, the end-of-year total for 2012 was just £119.8m. While 2014 to 
2016 saw a gradual recovery of the wider book industry, Fiction General 
paperbacks continued to shrink. The chart below combines hardbacks 
and paperbacks. 
Fiction General Value

---