Eyes on the Prize
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling books publishing on November 9, 2009
Small, independent, or university presses get little glory. These publishers are generally not in the business in order to make heaps of money or attain celebrity status. Books are selected with much thought and care but probably with little hope they will ever make it onto a bestseller list.
Literary prizes, however, can sometimes boost a publisher’s reputation and affect sales. Take, for instance, the Nobel Prize for literature. The Nobel committee tends to bestow its awards upon relatively unknown authors, at least to readers in the United States. This, as you can imagine, generates a lot of interest and curiosity. When French writer J.M.G. Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2008, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in the United States familiar with his work. Also, at that time, some four U.S. presses had published Le Clézio’s works: David R. Godine, University of Nebraska Press, University of Chicago Press, and Curbstone Press. David R. Godine printed 6,000 copies of The Prospector in 1993 and still had 420 copies when the Nobel Prize was announced. Of course, those didn’t last long—they quickly sold out, and back orders started piling up.
University of Nebraska Press also reaped the benefits of having a Nobel Prize winner in its catalog. It had in its stock two titles by Le Clézio: The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts and Onitsha. Sales for the works weren’t exactly brisk, but once Le Clézio won the Nobel, demand increased, and the two titles contributed a healthy $100,000 in sales to the press. University of Nebraska Press lucked out again in 2009 when Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. The press published Müller’s Nadirs. News of Müller’s win generated some 3,000 backorders for the title. Hip hip hurray for the underdog!
Categories: Bookselling, books, publishing | No Comments »
Comments