 Contemporary novels, including French translations of foreign novels, lead the list (13% of total books sold), followed by sentimental novels (4.1%), detective and spy fiction (3.7%), "classic" literature (3.5%), science fiction and horror (1.3%) and erotic fiction (0.2%).About 30% of all fiction sold in France today is translated from English (authors such as William Boyd, John le Carré, Ian McEwan, Paul Auster and Douglas Kennedy are well received).An important subset of book sales is comic books (typically Franco-Belgian comics like "The Adventures of Tintin" and "Astérix") which are published in a large hardback format; comic books represented 4% of total book sales in 1997.