As the the US book trade seeks to make the most of the pre-Christmas period, there is a growing feeling among publishing executives, booksellers and readers alike that the blockbuster novel has become the victim of its own bloated success. 'Crichton is down. Clancy is down. Turow is not making its numbers. All the big ticket-fiction has been suffering,' one New York publishing executive said last week. And it is women authors writing about human relationships whose books are moving up ther bestseller list.

The mood around the country is similarly downbeat. 'My customers are looking for quality, rather than a book written to order by some big name,' said Elaine Petrocelli, manager of Book Passage, one of California's most successful independent stores. 'The public is losing interest. Change is in the air.'

Sales figures for the 'brand name' authors recently published by Publishers Weekly magazine would seem to support this contention. Stephen King, who has published two books this year, has seen sales drop by almost 50 per cent in comparison with 2001. Tom Clancy's 2002 opus Red Rabbit sold 68,000 in its first week, against the 100,000 first-week sales of his previous novel, The Bear and The Dragon. Sue Grafton and Mary Higgins Clark, two stalwarts of the romantic doorstop, have dropped by 25 per cent.

Of course, most authors would kill to sell so many copies but for big-name writers and the publishers who pay them big advances it's a worrying trend. Take Michael Crichton, whose long-awaited new novel, Prey, has just been released amid much hype and moderate reviews. Sales are said to be 'good but not spectacular', which does not augur well for HarperCollins, which paid him a reported advance of $30 million and now faces the task of making a profit from its star. 'Not in this lifetime,' laughed one New York agent last week.

Few in the publishing business are laughing along. Most are trying to work out what went wrong. One explanation is that traditional bookstores are suffering because the big supermarket chains have moved into bookselling. Another is that all the big releases were bunched together to avoid the anniversary of 11 September, and with only so many book buyers to go round it was inevitable sales would drop. Price could also be a factor, with hardback novels in the US costing $25 or more - steep in these recessionary times.

'Who knows what's happening? Maybe it's because books are having to compete more with movies and cable television than ever before,' said one publishing executive. Another explanation - one which carries the air of Crichton-esque doomsday scenario for the publishing industry - is that 2002 will go down as the year shifting public taste started to make the blockbuster obsolete. Speak to booksellers and they will tell you that many readers are making decisions on which books to buy based on recommendation - by friends, book clubs, their favourite TV chat show host - rather than what the publishers are advertising.

Asked to explain the less than stunning sales of the new Crichton novel, one New York publishing executive said: 'Who needs to read a thriller when all you've got to do is pick up the Washington Post and turn to page one to be scared out of your mind?' Another said: 'Who wants to buy a book about nano-freakin-technology?'

Not the 70 per cent of the American book buying public who are women, it seems. They would rather buy thoughtful, well-written novels about human relationships, such as Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which has sold 1.5 million copies in the US alone this year despite not featuring a single North Korean spy or computer-generated killer bug; and Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls - a quietly brilliant tale of life in a New England town.