Bennett leads sales surge for Women's Prize shortlist

The novels shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction have seen a sales bump in the weeks before Wednesday's prize ceremony, with Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half (Dialogue) a clear leader at the tills.

Since the shortlist was announced on 28th April 2021, Nielsen BookScan data shows they have shifted a total of 130,000 print copies in the UK for £1.1m.

American novelist Bennett has seen the highest sales since the six nominations were revealed, with 105,000 copies sold, boosted by the paperback edition release in the week it was shortlisted. Sales jumped 696% week on week after its nomination and the book is still currently selling around 4,000 copies a week.

Yaa Gyasi's second novel, Transcendent Kingdom (Penguin), has sold 6,200 since the shortlisting, putting it in second place. It is closely followed on 6,100 by Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (Bloomsbury), published 16 years after her debut, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Piranesi's sales were up 85% after the shortlisting was announced, while Gyasi saw hers spike 81%.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Barbadian author Cherie Jones for (Tinder Press), meanwhile, had a 428% surge in the week after its shortlisting, while sales of Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (Fig Tree) shot up 173%. Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This (Bloomsbury Circus) had a slightly more modest boost, selling 87% more books.

Overall, the sales of the six-strong shortlist increased by 320% in the week after the shortlist was announced.

The Women’s Prize longlist saw a similar surge after it was announced on 10th March. The 16 books have gone on to sell more than 412,000 copies in the UK, taking £135,000 each week on average for a total of £3.1m.

The impressive total sold by the nominated books is also due to the 24 weeks since the longlist was announced, a much longer window than usual for a book prize because the July ceremony had to be delayed owing to Covid-19 restrictions.

This year's £30,000 prize winner will now be announced at a ceremony in Londonon on 8th September. Alongside the prize money, the winning writer will also receive a limited edition bronze figurine known as a “Bessie”, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.