Booker bounces books into orbit—Paperback shows impact of winning prize

Every year the Booker Prize announcement is hotly anticipated—and not just because of the cool £50,000 prize money that’s awarded to the winning author. The ‘Booker bounce’ is a known and noticeable phenomenon in bookshops across the UK as all the titles included in the longlist find new readers.

But is the bounce bouncing as high as it has done in previous years? And what happens when a cheaper paperback wins compared with a £16.99 hardback? 

When the 2024 longlist was announced on the 30th July, 11 of the 13 longlisted titles were available—with nine of those 11 only in hardback format. The longlist was selling an average of 1,447 books per week in the run-up to the announcement, led by the eventual winner—Orbital by Samantha Harvey—and James by Percival Everett.

Everett had perhaps the highest profile of the titles on the longlist having already sold 11,696 copies before the 2024 list was revealed—and was widely expected to appear after his much talked-about previous effort The Trees was shortlisted in 2022, though he was just one of six previous nominees to appear on this year’s list.

Because of this, both Orbital and James had the lowest week-on-week bounce from the longlist announcement, taking increases of 157% and 177% respectively, while the entire longlist bounced by 314% to 6,014 following the reveal. This is a lower percentage increase than in 2023 when the 13-strong hardback list increased by 634%—but the final actual number was slightly lower, at 5,577.

In the four weeks following the 2024 announcement, sales of the longlist settled at an average of 3,820—just slightly ahead of 2023—helped in part by Orbital, which was responsible for nearly a third of these numbers.

At the beginning of September, Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake was published and achieved sales of 1,554—the highest performance from any of the longlisted titles in that week—before halving in the following seven days. In its third week on sale it was announced that it had made it to the 2024 shortlist and sales increased 144%.

In total, sales of the shortlisted titles enjoyed growth of 229%, with Stone Yard Devotional increasing by 647% and Held by Anne Michaels shooting up 1,022% thanks to a well-timed paperback release from Bloomsbury.

The remaining titles from the longlist dropped 25% in the same week—a much steeper decline than in 2023 when the titles that did not progress to the longlist only dropped 3%.

Sales of last year’s shortlist averaged 2,060 per week following the announcement—63% lower than 2024’s shortlist, which is boosted partly due to Orbital now accounting for more than a third of total sales. Even without this year’s eventual winner, 2024’s shortlist is performing ahead of 2023’s thanks to consistent sales from the likes of Held, James and Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep.

In 2023 Prophet Song increased its sales by 1,477% once it was announced as the winner, delivering a sales figure of 7,851 in the immediate aftermath before peaking at nearly twice that in the week before Christmas with 14,499 copies.

It wasn’t just good news for the winner, though—the rest of the shortlist grew 122% after the ceremony, while even the longlisted titles increased sales by 22%, all of them experiencing a continued boost right up to Christmas.

The 2024 announcement has perhaps seen an even bigger bounce—for the winner at least. Orbital has risen 818%—over 15,000 units—taking it straight to the top of the UK Top 50, but the rest of the shortlist improved their sales by only 65.3%, delivering sales just short of 5,000 copies, around 13% down on the same week last year.