Why are publishers complaining Has fiction had its day

A. To look at the publishing industry in Britain today, you'd think things couldn't be healthier, with more books published year on year (currently about 120,000 new titles a year in the UK), high-profile big-money advances, bigger, more powerful international conglomerates running the show and literary awards even getting their own TV programmes.

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Yet publishers, from Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins empire and Penguin right down to the little literary independents, such as Peter Owen and Marion Boyars, are all complaining that things have never been so tough, particularly in the fiction market.

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Q. So what is their problem
A. Their problem is that, as more books are published, there is more competition. Too many books spoil the market, so to speak. And that market has changed radically over the last fifteen years.

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Q. How has it changed
A. The first real changes came with the cut-backs in library funding. There was a time when libraries throughout the country took hundreds of copies of almost any book, and this would underwrite much of the cost of producing a title, even an obscure one. Then bookselling began to change. Twenty years ago Britain was a land of independent bookshops, with a couple of regional chains and WH Smiths.

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Then came Dillons, who grew into a nationwide chain and, as it became more powerful, started to introduce business practices that favoured the bookseller, rather than the publisher, such as the right to return books and higher discounts. If publishers didn't agree then they could refuse to take that publisher's books in any of their shops. This trend continued as Waterstone's grew to rival and eventually take over Dillons, and is now standard practice throughout the bookselling world.

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With chains dominating the market now - Ottakars and the US giant Borders (who swallowed the London chain of Books Etc) having also become major forces in the last five years - publishers are at the mercy of corporations whose primary purpose is to make money. This means more discounted bestsellers and tried-and-tested classics, rather than more left-field material or new material that doesn't just tell us what we already know.

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Q. What about fiction
A. There is no question that as many people are reading fiction as they ever did, it's a question of what they are reading. So what publishers really mean when they say that fiction is dead is that 'serious' or 'literary' fiction is in a bad way. To launch a new writer, unless it is in a recognisable genre such as crime (the recent success of Jake Arnott is testament to that), is very hard and very expensive. Many of the classic writers of the twentieth century, especially those published in translation from foreign languages, would not get a look in now. This is not to say that popular fiction hasn't always been a major force, just that it isn't balanced by the more literary end to the degree that it once was.

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Literary fiction is still published, but even big publishers can find it hard to shift more than a few hundred copies, and this situation is simply not financially sustainable.

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Q. If people don't want it, then . . .
A. That's an old argument. Literature that challenges the reader, rather than just entertains - even better, that which challenges and entertains - is an essential part of our cultural make-up. While not everybody may read it, those who do can find their lives enriched, even changed, by such work. Publishers have a duty to provide such literature, and, if necessary, they should be supported in their endeavour. It has become, since libraries are no longer likely to buy much of this kind of fiction, even more exclusive territory, and that can't be culturally healthy.

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Q. What's the future
A. The only way to expand the range of what's on offer is to make it more practical commercially. New technology may provide some answers. Online publishing is now a reality, though very small beer so far, and print-on-demand publishing is also getting under way. So, there may be ways that less mainstream fiction can continue and even grow. However, you just can't beat a film adaptation to really send your sales figures through the roof.

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By Simon Smith