The aim of this project has been to investigate and describe how literary value is constructed in the contemporary Swedish literary field and book-market, which have undergone substantial changes in recent decades. Literary value has traditionally been derived from the text itself, its specific form or content. The premise of this project, by contrast, is that literary value is a result of an on-going negotiation process between individual agents, groups of readers or institutions who in different ways are party to the value-making process.
    The project, which spanned from 2013 to the summer of 2017, included six scholars from Lund University and Gothenburg University: Torbjörn Forslid (principal investigator), Jon Helgason, Lisbeth Larsson, Christian Lenemark, Anders Ohlsson and Ann Steiner. The research team has published a large number of studies dealing with different aspects of this complex value question (see publication list). In addition to these studies, we have published two jointly written monographs: “The Books of the Autumn. Literary Value Negotiations 2013” (published 2015) and “Literary Value Practices. Agents, Spaces, Places” (in print in the autumn of 2017).
    In the first monograph, we follow and analyse – with an ethnographic method – the value-negotiation process of twenty Swedish novels published in 2013. In “Literary Value Practices”, the main focus is on the importance of different agents as well as spaces or places in the construction of value. The monograph’s four case studies examine the Book Fair in Gothenburg as a significant value-creating space, the role of the contemporary bookstore between the fields of culture and commerce, the social dimension of reading and, finally, the function of literary awards, with the Umeå novel prize as a specific example.
    Literary value, of course, is a complex phenomenon. In order to make the concept manageable in our investigation, we chose – with reference to international studies in the field – to distinguish and differentiate the value concept into five categories: style and form, knowledge, emotional value, social value and economic value. The first three are classic value categories which have been used in various ways throughout literary history. But we also added the economic and social dimension. It is often assumed that economic value and aesthetic value are in opposition to each other. This is not the case. A newly appointed Nobel Prize laureate will immediately become a global bestselling author. Conversely, a high sales volume for a novel usually makes it interesting also for literary critics. The social dimension of literature is also important. We read books partly because other people have read them – and with a desire to join different reading communities.
    In a methodological sense, our project constituted a challenge since we departed from a traditional textual analysis, which has long dominated literary studies, and instead approached and adopted the ethnographic research tradition. Given the complexity of the investigation, we used – in particular in “The Books of the Autumn” – a collaborative work and writing process where all group members had the opportunity to participate in all aspects of the project.

Key results of the project
Our investigation clearly showed that a value negotiation process does indeed exist and, importantly, that different agents in the literary field tend to emphasize different value categories. This became evident in our pilot study (published in 2013) about Sami Said’s debut novel, “Very Rarely Fine”. During the marketing of this novel, the publishing company highlighted its existential dimension (knowledge) and its focus on cultural clashes. Institutional literary critics, instead, emphasized the style and form values of the text. This latter assessment was criticised by amateur critics (bloggers), who, instead, tended to base their evaluation on the emotional value category. The negotiation process also oscillated back and forth between a view of the novel as an expression of a particular, non-Swedish experience with biographical features, and a reading that underlined the universal tendency of the novel. The different agents not only positioned themselves in relation to the work and its author but also in relation to each other.
    The different negotiation processes we have studied show recurring patterns. We have identified four such fundamental negotiating logics: silence, confirming evaluation, first-time evaluation and revaluation. The majority of the novels that are published during a year are met by silence. They are not subject to any type of value discussion that resembles a meaningful negotiation process.
    The negotiation process which occurs around established authorships often has a confirming character, which means that it tends to reproduce judgements and evaluations concerning the author's previous books.
The negotiation process that takes place around debutants is completely different (first-time evaluation). Here, there are no earlier evaluations to consider. A first evaluation must be made and different judgements balanced against each other. In this process, the paratexts are of great importance: for example the book cover and the manner in which the publishing company positions/promotes the book and its author. When it comes to the fourth value negotiating logic – revaluation – the previous evaluations also play an important role. In this negotiating process, the critics, readers and other agents discover something new and different in the authorship. The most distinct example in our investigation of such revaluation concerned Lena Andersson’s novel “Wilful disregard”. The novel actualized values previously unrelated to, or not attributed to, her books. This revaluation resulted in Andersson being transformed from an established midlist writer to something of a literary celebrity.
    In our investigation we use the term value regimes for the different value discourses that control or at least set the limits for the evaluations made by the individual agents. In our material we found two clearly distinguishable value regimes: one leaning towards literary modernism with strong emphasis on stylistic and formal qualities – focused on the originality of the text; the other concerned with the pleasure of reading and fundamental existential questions (the knowledge category). This latter value regime also prioritizes the emotional values, the ability of the text to enchant the reader.
    A visible trend in our investigation is the convergence of these two value regimes, thereby forming a new kind of literary area or space between the poles that are otherwise often described in terms of "high" and "low" culture. This new space constitutes an attractive position for many of the agents in the literary field, both authors and publishing companies. The books that fit in this space – widely acclaimed quality literature as well as the more prestigious popular literature – can combine high literary status with an excellent commercial potential.
     The investigation has also shown the importance of the categories space and place in the value negotiation process. The same evaluative practice can, depending on space and place, have completely different significance and effect.
    The fact that literature has an important social function is an overall trend and key result in the project. This research question has generated a further research project in collaboration between Lund University and the pain rehabilitation clinic at Skåne University Hospital (SUS). During the winter of 2018, a group of patients suffering from chronic pain will be offered a literature-based intervention in the form of shared reading. The concept of shared reading has been developed by scholars at the University of Liverpool – with whom we have an on-going collaboration.
    Another research project that has been generated from the investigation concerns the contemporary bookstore and the commercial effects of the digitalization.
    The value of literature is a research problem with an international scope. Several of our studies have been published internationally. Although our investigation mainly deals with a Swedish research object, we can conclude that our theoretical and methodological development, as well as our different findings, have attracted great interest when presented to various colleagues at international conferences and seminars, including for example Aalborg, March 2013; Copenhagen, April 2014; Antwerp, September 2014; Amsterdam, June 2016; Nanjing University, China, April 2017; Edinburgh, April 2017.
    We have disseminated our project results domestically, through research seminars in places such as Lund, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Malmö etc. We have also met with the general public by participating in the Book Fair in Gothenburg, visiting local libraries in Skåne and through continuous participation in press and other media events. We were, for example, interviewed by Swedish national television (Aktuellt) about our findings in “The Books of the Autumn”. The results of the investigation are also well established in undergraduate education at the universities of Lund and Gothenburg.