The commercial effects of the adaptation of novels into films in the United Kingdom, 19101940

Although there has been much general discussion in the academic literature about the influence of cross-media adaptations on the success or otherwise of the additional media outputs that result, there has been less actual empirical investigation of this hypothesized link using quantitative data to test the arguments being made. This article consequently examines the commercial effects of the release of film adaptations on the sales and printing of the original books in question, by first analysing data on the outputs of two well-known popular novelists of the inter-war period (A. E.W. Mason and Baroness Orczy). It then examines this topic from a company history perspective, documenting the fate of a specific British film production company (Stoll Picture Productions Limited) that specialized in this type of literary adaptation. Finally, some more general observations about the cultural economics of cross-media productions are deduced.