It is a widely acknowledged fact that an appearance on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction can seriously improve the sales figures of the chosen authors, and that actually winning the award can lead to a best-seller.
Most Popular Booker Winners
However, some winners have been more successful that others. In terms of sales figures since winning the prize, Hilary Mantel's widely acclaimed 2009 winner, Wolf Hall, has been officially named the most popular winner to date, despite not being a unanimous choice with the judges. Since the book was announced winner on 6th October 2009, Wolf Hall has sold 137,150 copies in hardback, no doubt with assistance from some generously discounted pricing at bookstores.
To compare this with previously popular winners, Mantel has sold 28,234 more copies than Yann Martel's 2002 winner Life of Pi over the same period, and 28,616 more than Aravind Adiga's 2008 winner The White Tiger. There is then a sizeable gap to the next most popular winner, DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, which sold 76,669 copies across the all-important 10 week period following its win.
Best-Selling Winners of the Booker
However, much as Mantel is entitled to enjoy these recent proclamations of her popularity – and it is indeed encouraging to see a long and challenging novel sell so well – there are a couple of limitations to the data used in this calculation. Firstly, the figures only go back as far as 1998, and therefore exclude a huge number of previous winners.
Secondly, whilst the sales immediately following the announcement of the winning novel are important, the success of any book is measured over the long term rather than a ten week period. As Martel's Life of Pi has currently sold in excess of 1.2 million copies, Hilary Mantel still has some way to go to eclipse its enormous success - sales currently total just over 173,000 copies.
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children
Other popular winners of the Man Booker Prize include Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, winner of the award in 1981 and then named the Best of the Booker in 2008 to mark the 40th anniversary of the prize, and Anne Enright's 2007 winner The Gathering, which has gone on to sell more than half a million copies.
With £50,000 in prize money in addition to these valuable extra sales, many writers will be hoping to appear on the shortlist for the 2010 award when it is announced this coming September.
All figures courtesy of The Bookseller.
Elizabeth Gregory - Liz graduated from Manchester University with a BA (Hons) in English Language & Literature, and also holds an MA in Literature from the ...
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