Man Booker prize

Perhaps not yet - but there is a proven sales effect for finalists after being featured (especially for the winner). The Booker is kinda known for choosing little known winners, perhaps out of a desire to be seen as anti-mainstream. If that's not your thing, it's probably best to ignore it.

The Booker Prize has never been about being a popularity contest it's about content and form. I am part of the 5,000ish people who have read Daisy Johnson's Everything Under and it is a fantastic book with an amazing and inventive use of language talking about home, belonging, the language we make for ourselves and a new spin on an old myth. I really hope she wins.

5K copies for lit fic that didn't hit the general bestseller list strikes me as...not bad, actually?

Of course, the only hard metric I have for any of this is a genre example - John Scalzi's REDSHIRTS, which was a huge hit. He said (somewhere ) that the hardcover sold 20K in its first year. So 5K for a non-genre non-bestseller seems OK to me.

Yeah, plus some of these are only available in hardback in the UK - you can make the Sunday Times fiction top 10 with <1000 hardback sales some weeks. The UK just doesn't have the same size of market, and even though the Booker does now cover more than just Commonwealth authors, it's still rooted in the UK (particularly London) literary scene.

I read a lot of literary fiction so I always end up reading a new Booker prize long or short listed. It's just this year I have fallen in love with Daisy Johnson's writing (currently reading her short story collection). As Lizmonster said those numbers are normal for literary fiction, most people read for entertainment (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that) so more plot-driven story whereas literary is more focused on characters and the language, which tend to have a less broad appeal.

Thankfully the Man Booker prize and others are able to shine the light on those literary fiction and authors.

Mass appeal frequently has a negative correlation with quality.

Or perhaps I should say a bell curve, where the people at the very bottom of the payscale are either the best, or the worst, with mid-range books taking the biggest slice of cake. Fingers crossed I end up in the mid range some day.

Sorry if that's how I made it sound that wasn't my intention. However books tends to fall into two categories — being plot-driven or character-driven (that doesn't that a character-driven story has no plot or vice-versa). What I meant is that books that rely heavily in character-driven or character studies and an inventive or evocative use of language don't tend to be books of mass appeal. Also bear in mind that enthralling plot is something subjective and what would be consider enthralling by one reader could appear dull to another.

I haven't read all the books that exist but so far the tendency I have picked up from what I do read is that character driven story tend to be the books where the language and how it is used is as important as the story itself, but I would love to read plot-driven stories that fall into that category. I'm always open to recommendations.

Elle. said:

The Booker Prize has never been about being a popularity contest it's about content and form. I am part of the 5,000ish people who have read Daisy Johnson's Everything Under and it is a fantastic book with an amazing and inventive use of language talking about home, belonging, the language we make for ourselves and a new spin on an old myth. I really hope she wins.

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Ordering it now - it sounds delicious.

I think a prize that picks out undiscovered or underappreciated gems sounds refreshing tbh.

fenyo said:

I stand corrected- apparently Elle read it

It just seem so disappointing, that what is supposed to be the top of British literature, don't have a wider appeal.

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The non-Brits on the shortlist have sold even fewer copies of their works. The selection is made by the Man Booker panel, not BookScan.

Have a look at the previous winning titles and see what you think about those books.

Anne Burns has won for her novel Milkman. It’s been on my reading list for a while but will be bumping it up to the top (after reading Iain Reid’s Foe)

This might be of interest: crime writer Val McDermid talks about what it's like to be on the judging panel for the Booker.