Subdivisions of booksupply made by individual buyers of literature

Abstract

In this article an analysis is undertaken of the subdivisions, made by individual buyers of literature, of the whole range of available books into literary, semi-literary or non-literary works. We expect that individual buyers of literature correspond to a considerable degree as regards their opinion of whether or not a given work belongs to the category literature. This analysis is an essential part of our current market research, since we wanted to compare the responses given to questions in which the term ‘literary works’ occurred. After consideration of a number of alternatives we asked the respondents in the survey to rate 15 authors as ‘literary’, ‘semi-literary’, or ‘non-literary’ authors. The most important conclusion is that individual buyers of literature agree to a considerable extent in their opinion as to whether a given oeuvre can be ranked as literature or not. On balance, few authors are upgraded or downgraded in relation to the classification ‘literary’, ‘semi-literary’, or ‘non-literary’, which is determined on the grounds of the modal frequencies. In addition, the cumulative percentages in table 3 show that few respondents graded up or down.