Like every autumn, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded an author or an author for all his work. And this year, it’s bookie favorite French novelist Annie Ernaux who wins the famous prize. Known for books like the frozen woman, The yearsor more recently The young manShe is the seventeenth woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. But is this distinction necessarily synonymous with commercial success for the winner? What effect does it have on her book sales?
For Patrick Modiano, the latest French winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize, the effect was remarkable. Sales of his latest novel So you don’t get lost in the neighborhood (Gallimard editions), published 15 days before the award ceremony, had exploded. Questioned in January 2015 in the columns of West of FranceGallimard sales director Philippe Le Gendre had commented on this “Nobel effect”. Just over three months after the award ceremony, 360,000 copies of the book had already been sold. “Normally, a Modiano novelty sells little more than 80,000 copies”, had indicated for comparison.
An immediate effect…
And this effect had been almost immediate. A week after its publication, just before the Nobel Prize was awarded, his latest work was already a success, occupying ninth place in the Ipsos Livres Hebdo lists, as reported by The Figaro. But it went straight to second place in weekly sales, in the days following the author’s coronation. Six years before Patrick Modiano, the Franco-Mauritian writer JMG Le Clézio also received the coveted award from the Swedish Academy of Sciences. At the same time, his novel hunger ritual appeared in Folio. On October 19, 17 days after its publication, 52,000 copies had already been sold, according to Edistat figures of the time cited by The express.
Commercial repercussions that are not limited to French authors. Thus, more recently, sales ofAlways with me (Folio, 2015) by Kazuo Ishiguro, awarded in 2017, literally exploded in France that same year. Of 1,975 copies sold in France in 2016, the work of the British author of Japanese origin sold 32,822 copies the following year, according to Edistat. An effect that continued in 2020 with 18,740 books sold that year.
… on all the works of the winners
But this “Nobel effect” is not limited to the latest work published by the laureates, since it is all their works that are usually the subject of renewed interest by the public.
Fifteen days after the delivery of the famous award, many JMG Le Clézio titles were not available, forcing the publisher to launch new editions, reported The express. As for Patrick Modiano, in 2014, his publisher Gallimard told theAFP having launched a reprint of 250,000 copies of all the author’s previous novels, in large format and paperback, on the day of the awards ceremony.
Austrian author Peter Handke, winner in 2019, also saw sales of his old book. The anguish of the goalkeeper at the time of the penalty published in 1982, in Folio, multiplied by ten between 2018 and 2019, from 522 to 8862 copies. Polish novelist and essayist Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 title but awarded in 2019 for a sex scandal that rocked the academy, also saw her work. On the bones of the dead find success in bookstores. Released in 2014 in France by Phébus Libretto, its sales went from 454 in 2018 to 23,786 the following year, according to Edistat data.
Edistat carries out a weekly monitoring of book sales based on cash statements from a panel of stores in mainland France (excluding Corsica) representative of the weight of the different distribution channels in the sale of new books to individuals (excluding Clubs). ).
Source: BFM TV
