Booker bounce as longlisted titles see huge surge in sales

The novels longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize have seen a huge surge in sales since last week's announcement, with some titles seeing their numbers rise by more than 900%.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Faber) leads the "Booker Dozen" in overall sales terms, as book buyers snapped up the 2021 longlisted titles after they were revealed on 27th July.

Klara and the Sun is by far the standout bestseller of the 2021 longlist. At 60,298 copies sold since Nielsen began reporting sales figures again post-Lockdown 3.0, the title is already the Nobel Prize-winning author’s biggest seller in hardback since records began in 1998. With combined sales of the 13 Booker-longlisted titles reaching 88,049 copies, Klara and the Sun accounts for 68% of that volume.

Ishiguro’s title also posted the biggest post-longlist announcement volume last week, with its 2,071 units sold boosting it 10 places up the Original Fiction chart—and representing 50% week-on-week growth.

However, Rachel Cusk’s Second Place (Faber) saw a 510% boost in volume week on week, with last week’s 1,013 copies sold the single biggest week for the hardback since its launch in May. Second Place returned to the Original Fiction chart in 17th place last week. As the second-bestselling longlisted title, Second Place makes Faber the gold and silver medal winner in the sales chart.

Elsewhere, there was a particularly impressive rise in sales for Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North (Granta), released just three weeks ago, which bounced 984% in volume against the week before. Debut author Nathan Harris’ The Sweetness of Water (Tinder Press), meanwhile, rose 902% in volume week on week.

Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This (Bloomsbury), also shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize, increased 201% week on week. Its hardback, out since early February, has now sold 5,000 units since sales figures returned.

Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual (Faber) bounced 458% in volume in the week of the longlist announcement. Spufford’s Costa First Novel Award winner Golden Hill has sold a whisker under 100,000 copies through the TCM in paperback. Light Perpetual, published in early February, has sold 3,698 copies in hardback since mid-March.

Damon Galgut’s The Promise (Chatto and Windus) jumped 268% in volume week on week, with the hardback shifting an impressive 3,573 copies in total since its publication in mid-June.

Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Doubleday) bounced 625% week on week, with 2,259 copies now sold in hardback.

Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room (Harvill Secker) jumped 728% in volume last week. Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015, went on to sell more than 10,000 units in hardback and just under 50,000 in paperback.

Mary Lawson’s A Town Called Solace (Chatto & Windus), on 2,080 copies sold in total since sales figures returned in March, leapt 716% week on week. Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men (Viking) also saw impressive growth, soaring 732% in volume week on week, bringing its hardback volume to 1,225 copies in total.

Several of the Booker longlist, including Klara and the Sun, were published during the lockdown period earlier this year, and Karen Jennings’ An Island (Holland House) was released in November 2020, during Lockdown 2.0. Richard Powers’ Bewilderment (Hutchinson) is the only title yet to be published; it is due in September 2021.

The last two Booker winners have performed particularly strongly in sales terms, with both Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (Penguin) and the hardback edition of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (Picador) featuring in the 2020 overall ranked top 50. Though both titles have seen their TCM sales greatly affected by lockdown, which saw Nielsen BookScan unable to report weekly sales data, each has still recorded standout numbers outside lockdowns. Girl, Woman, Other, the second-bestselling paperback fiction title of 2020, has sold 318,000 copies in paperback to date and Shuggie Bain, published in paperback in April, has sold over 155,000 units already, adding to the 100,000 copies it had already sold in hardback (excluding lockdown weeks).