Eoin Purcell's Blog

It's that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

Tag: Anne Enright

December 18, 2007

Anne Enright, the Booker and booksales revisited

Eoin Purcell

I wrote a little while ago about how well Anne Enright is selling here
And how bad here reception was in the UK (She gets dissed again here). I though, it being the season of good cheer, that I’d update again and the result is stunning. Enright has sold some 34,000 books and generated over €500,000 in sales.

Enright’s Sales YTD

But what does that mean?
Well it means this: if The Gathering sells like it has been selling for the last week of Christmas (and why shouldn’t it?), it will be number five on the bestseller list for the year. These rankings are tentative but have a look.

1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K Rowling
2) The Official Driver Theory Test
3) The Secret – Rhonda Byrne
4) The Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld*
5) The Gathering – Enright, Anne

There is a slight chance that Enright’s book will surpass Rubenfeld but I suspect it won’t (watch me be proven incorrect). All in all a stunning performance and one that I think means people found it a good read. After all, The Booker can only do so much for sales and after that it comes down to recommendations, word of mouth and book clubs.

Trying to be Christmassy (it was so much easier in Chicago with 8 inches of snow)
Eoin

* I find this one fascinating> I want to do a little digging but this hasn’t attracted as much attention as its sales would suggest. Though to be fair, neither have The Secret or The Official Driver Theory Test.

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October 24, 2007

Anne Enright, the Booker and booksales

Eoin Purcell

UPDATE: ANOTHER 5,198 COPIES IN THE WEEK TO 27th OCTOBER!!!

Well Done Anne
Here is an interesting one. Despite the negative vibes that have been put out about the Booker not driving sales and how the Booker chooses bad books, Anne Enright sold 5,481 copies in Ireland in the week to October 20th according to Bookscan* (including 4 days after she won the prize!).

You can see from the figures below two very interesting things. Firstly the bounce was huge (744% or thereabouts if my maths work out) but also, even before she won the prize, her numbers were very good. In fact she sold some 7,000 copies in the weeks to October 13th. Even if she sells not a single book more, she will be one of Ireland’s top selling authors.

Oh there is a kick off into really good territory around about the time of the Long List announcement, but even by then she had cleared the bones of 2000, a not inconsiderable feat.

Anne Enright, the Booker and booksales

So not only is The Booker good for sales in Ireland (driving them from 2000-12000 is impressive) but the notion that the book itself was obscure and unknown is a little forced I think!

Isn’t that interesting?
Eoin

* There are some bigger numbers thrown about in the Irish Independent this week too that are worth looking at, especially this line which makes me smile:

The book is certain to top bestseller lists this week as Eason’s reported sales of 12,000 copies from its store, with the vast majority sold since the prize was announced.

This is in contrast to sales of just 7,340 copies here [my emphasis, how little does this journalist know about Irish book sales if he can write that line] before the Irish author’s win.

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