What I found most interesting about this article announcing the current Man Booker Prize finalists is the following line:
The Booker almost always brings a big surge in sales for the winner — and a welcome boost for book stores.
Oh, and this:
“For bookshops, winners with a few books under their belt already tend to be better for sales: this gets people buying more books by that author and, we hope, encourages them to start exploring beyond the best-sellers at the front of the shop.”
Astounding, isn’t it? And positively wonderful. I mean, our cousins across the pond actually pay attention to the winners of literary prizes.
I guess the American equivalent would be the Pulitzer Prize, but sadly, I suspect that even winning the top award does little for book sales in this country. Does anyone know the current, 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction? It’s Olive Kitteridge
I think a lot of people are like me, assuming that the Pulitzer dispenses awards mostly for journalism rather than books, that newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News wins prizes but not, say, W. S. Merwin (a poet — they give Pulitzers to poets! How marvelous!). Perhaps that’s why we don’t pay as much attention as we should — the Pulitzer hands out almost two dozen prizes, while the Man Booker goes to just one lucky writer. It can be difficult enough to read one book a year for many people, let alone six or seven.
Perhaps this will be the year I actually try and read the latest Man Booker winner. Time was when even America loved and respected their fiction writers and actually cared about who won such things as the Pulitzer. (Case in point: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer in 1961 and which became an immediate bestseller upon publication, long before it became a staple in American high school literature syllabi.). I’m under no illusion that writers will ever enjoy such notoriety again, at least in this country, but it would be hypocritical of me to lament the state of writing and publishing if I also didn’t at least support — if only marginally — the efforts of the industry’s luminaries and award-winners.
Besides, it’s almost winter. Winter’s a beautiful time to read beautiful writing.
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{ 2 comments }
Hi,
the Booker prize is usually pretty decent middle-brow literary fiction. It doesn't usually go to books that are too intellectually demanding. I think you would really enjoy many of them – sometimes the winners are a bit dodgy, but usually a good read.
I think that explains why they are discussed and sell quite well – because they're not too highbrow.
Having said that, literary fiction doesn't sell that well in Britain either, and I think a few years ago it was pointed out that the autobiography of Jordan (a British stripper in case you don't know) outsold the entire Booker shortlist by about 10 to 1.
A lot of this is just that the media talk about the prize a lot, not that most British people are interested!
Dear Anonymous, bonjour and thanks for the comment!
I wouldn't really expect the Booker to have anything too intellectually demanding, but it's just surprising to me nonetheless that the Booker would actually influence sales. The Pulitzer has some effect on book sales, but not as much as it once did.
I sometimes wonder if part of the reason why people don't read literary fiction much anymore is because of the changing nature of the bookseller. Not just the actual brick-and-mortar bookseller, but the human bookseller. Since so much of what gets sold is dependent on what booksellers buy from distributors, and "hand-selling" is still a tried-and-true method of turning an otherwise obscure book into a big hit, when you have folks who make $7/hour and who may or may not actually read themselves manning the sales floor, doesn't that influence just what gets bought at the register? Sure, there's the "Staff Picks" section of Barnes & Noble, but if you don't know who these people are (unlike, say, independent bookstores, where many times the proprietors and clerks alike make an effort to get to know their customers), how can you trust their choices?
I'm not surprised that the bio of a stripper became a bestseller. That would happen in otherwise literary France, too!
Salut,
Marjorie
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