Globalisering in culturele hitlijsten

In recent years, a shift in the nationalities of authors seems noticeable in European and American bestseller lists of books. The current research investigated to which degree the presence of Scandinavian thrillers in bestseller lists increased between the years of 2005 and 2011 and to what extent this increase differs between language areas and countries. For this purpose, data from bestseller lists between 2005 and 2011 of eight different countries and language areas within Europe and the United States were analyzed using SPSS. As expected, the results indicated an emerging trend of Scandinavian thriller books in the European and American bestseller lists. In line with the expectations, the success differed per language area: the popularity turned out to be lower in English language areas compared to other examined language areas. The concepts of cultural proximity, language and culture play might contribute to an explanation of this success.