This chapter analyses the position of crime fiction in the global publishing industry. Drawing on bestseller data from nine countries across all continents, it confirms that crime fiction is prominent in the commercial top segment everywhere, but to varying degrees. The genre is most dominant in countries with strong domestic crime fiction traditions, such as the UK and the USA, and least visible in non-Western markets (e.g. Brazil and India). Data from the UK and the USA show very few bestselling crime novels in translation, unlike other book markets where bestselling translations are more common – primarily translations from English, but to a notable extent also from the Scandinavian languages. Discussion focusses on the power dynamics of global publishing, the increasingly important sector of rights sales and adaptations, author branding and serialization, and the rapid structural changes that are currently taking place in the book trade, including the increased interest in digital formats like streamed audiobooks.

This chapter outlines the rise and (partial) fall of the mainstream English-language literary novel since WWII. The heights of success of the literary novel required that readers have leisure, focus, and access to public institutions that support literary study and activity. After WWII, literary work was supported by the surge in university enrollments built upon the postwar period’s remarkable economic dynamism, which afforded state-supported higher education and high rates of secure employment. In more recent years, however, austerity governments increasingly defund humanities education and literary arts programming. Students and aspiring writers, indebted and anxious about pathways to employment, are induced to avoid literary study and work, to be risk-averse and market-facing; and people simply do not feel compelled to spend what little they have for entertainment on expensive books. The avowedly literary branch of the mainstream industry has been contracting for these reasons, while other forms of reading and writing cultures (for instance, self-publishing and texts designed for smartphones) have emerged into a more dominant position.