The main thrust of the Arts Council England report “Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction” was predictable. In a nutshell, the report, delivered just before the holidays, noted falling print sales of literary fiction in the UK over the past decade; it also remarked on the small number of novels that sell in sufficient quantities to support an author.
All this, while not shocking, is somewhat more distressing because the UK is such a literary-friendly market. They have more awards programs for literary fiction than any other region, with new competitions opening all the time. But you’d have to be walking around with your eyes closed not to have noticed that the crush of entertainment media is particularly tough on literary. (For example, this brief essay by Zia Haider Rahman in the New York Review of Books speaks to TV in particular as supplanting the novel.)
A few points from the report bear surfacing briefly:
- While hard data on advances is impossible to get, “98 percent of our respondents believed that advances were falling.” One respondent reported a drop from £50,000 down to £5,000 (US$71,000 to $7,100).
- The report’s authors note that if advances are lower, then sell-through may happen earlier and royalties might kick in faster. But discount clauses (when a publisher gives a retailer a deep discount) can diminish royalties on those copies.
- A bright spot can be found in translation and foreign rights sales. From the report: “Several editors and agents told us confidentially that many of their literary authors were earning more from foreign rights than English-language sales. If you include rights sales and export sales, UK publishing exported £2.6 billion in 2016 [US$3.7 billion], comprising 54 percent of their total revenues—up from £806 million [US$1.14 billion] in 2009.”
- The happy talk fades fast, as the report concedes, when you look at worries that Brexit will pry loose the longstanding exclusivity clauses that British publishers enjoy in European (and even Commonwealth) markets. We looked at that possibility at some length in our last edition.
- The rise of good TV adaptations may help, although, as the report notes, this idea is based on “a loose conception” of literary, meaning that TV series and film adaptations arise from works often more accurately described as commercial fiction than literary.
Bottom line: The UK has done a great job of following author income figures. Figures from the Society of Authors indicate that, in 2005, 40 percent of authors survived solely on income from their writing. Just eight years later, in 2013, only 11.6 percent did. While few authors today seem to assume they’ll make their income strictly from book sales, the intense time commitments of literary work may make this reality even harder on literary fiction writers.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
