It is often said that the market for serious books is contracting. Alarmists even use the phrase "terminal decline". But, in some ways, the figures refute this, especially where the UK's Man Booker Prize is concerned. Sales of the 13 titles included on the 2009 longlist for the award, announced on July 28, have increased by 60 per cent. According to Nielsen Bookscan, the most reliable system for measuring sales, "extra" sales of the novels stand at around 50,000 copies.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest beneficiaries were three books by established writers which ultimately found their way on to the shortlist, unveiled last week by the chair of the judges, the broadcaster Jim Naughtie: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (the favourite to win); AS Byatt's The Children's Book; and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger. (Waters has such a devoted readership that she is well out in front sales-wise: The Little Stranger has sold around 40,000 hardback copies since it was published at the end of May.)
These are reasons to be cheerful, says the publisher Ion Trewin, the prize's current administrator. "You can say that some of those copies would have been sold anyway, but the Man Booker does identify titles for customers," he says. "Remember that the reason the prize was set up 41 years ago was to encourage sales of literary fiction, and my goodness it does that. The lovely thing for us running the prize is that the longlist this year really has generated some wonderful extra sales right across the list - and not only for the big hitters."
It is traditional for the chair of judges to hail a list the "best for years", as Naughtie did last week. But this time booksellers are in agreement, praising it for its foregrounding of immersive, involving historical fiction packed with the sort of escapist pleasures readers seek in an uncertain economic climate. Janine Cook, who is a fiction buyer for Waterstone's, told The Times: "This year's shortlist is an almost perfect mix, with literary greats such as Byatt sitting alongside new and unsung talent such as Simon Mawer and Adam Foulds."
As if buoyed by Cook's enthusiasm, many independent bookstores revealed to the trade magazine The Bookseller that they were planning, in the run-up to the festive season, to shun the celebrity memoirs and cookery books on which the industry has relied for so long and focus on quality fiction. "A new title from [the UK comedian] Peter Kay will have virtually zero impact for our customers, and neither will Jamie Oliver's latest book," said Peter Donaldson, the co-founder of Red Lion Books in Colchester, Essex.
These are noble ambitions. But the reality is that the recession has hit everyone hard. The so-called deep discounting of key titles that supermarkets and chain bookstores employ during the festive season to "drive footfall" has already started, with some retailers offering up to 62 per cent off the £26 (Dh159) cover price for Jamie Oliver's new book, Jamie's America. "I think there will very possibly be more discounting this year as everyone is aware that people have not got money," explained Caroline Mileham, the head of books at the online retailer Play.com.
As publishers struggle to save money, some titles commissioned in happier financial times are being cancelled outright, their authors told either that their books are not good enough to publish or that they have in some way breached the terms of their contracts. Even the bestselling Iain Banks revealed recently that he had been obliged to accept a considerably lower advance from his long-term publisher Little, Brown for his next few books. "I'm getting less money for my next book contract," he told The Guardian. "But I've heard of writers having their advances cut by 80 per cent and others getting nothing." This sounds severe, and it's certainly true that "midlist" authors who don't sell many books are being especially penalised. But some publishing insiders believe this cutting back represents a natural correction and merely reflects how overpaid some writers were in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the going was good.
From 2004 to 2008, a crucial factor in achieving sales for literary fiction in the UK was inclusion in Richard & Judy's Book Club, a regular segment of the daytime TV show hosted by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. Among the titles to benefit were David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Justin Cartwright's The Promise of Happiness. But when, in 2008, Madeley and Finnigan moved from Channel 4 to a new digital channel, Watch, their viewing figures collapsed and the power of their book club has waned dramatically in the past year.
I ask Naughtie whether, given this fact and the Man Booker's corresponding surge in importance, his panel had felt a responsibility this year? He says not; that their only real responsibility was "to try to represent the best of fiction". "By that I mean the kind that feels complete," he says. "We're not giving an award for innovation for innovation's sake. I think we did feel that this year we had selected books which people were going to sink into and enjoy."
Trewin acknowledges the changed climate, but feels that "something like the Man Booker is the best possible thing in this context because it draws attention to good books and reminds people why they read in the first place". The Man Booker is now a huge annual event which feels as if it has always been with us. In fact, it was launched relatively recently in 1969. The inaugural winner was PH Newby's Something to Answer For - not a book much read these days. The idea for it is thought to have come from its original administrator Martyn Goff (from whom Trewin took over in 2004). However, Tom Maschler, the celebrated publisher at Jonathan Cape in the 1970s and 1980s, claimed in a recent memoir that it was his doing and stemmed from his belief that the British literary scene needed an award to rival France's prestigious Goncourt Prize. Still, it was Goff who devised the prize's notoriously arcane rules: any one publisher can submit only two titles a year (though books from formerly shortlisted authors are not counted as one of the two and can be submitted in addition). This has traditionally benefited smaller independent publishers such as Birmingham's Tindal Street Press, which has an excellent track record of getting books onto the shortlist, for example Claire Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour in 2003.
The Booker took a while to become the phenomenon it is today. Its reach grew in the 1980s as it benefited both from the celebrification of novelists - a previously reticent breed - and the collapse of the "safe library sale", the system whereby local councils in the UK were obliged to keep libraries properly stocked. The balance shifted towards buying books rather than borrowing them. How, though, were people supposed to work out what to buy? There were reviews in newspapers, of course, and the odd arts programme on TV. But wouldn't it be simpler if books bore a stamp of quality, like pieces of meat?
At various points, the prize has seemed to coincide with public taste, for example Yann Martel's Life of Pi became a global hit on the back of its 2002 win. All too often, however, it gets it wrong, selecting either a novel that hardly anyone wants to read (eg Keri Hulme's The Bone People in 1984) or the wrong book by the right author: Amsterdam, which won in 1998, is far from Ian McEwan's best book.
Then again, there will always be those who disagree with the judgement. This year there was upset because new novels by William Trevor and Colm Tóibín did not make the shortlist. Naughtie is unrepentant, explaining simply that "both the Toibin and the Trevor sailed onto the longlist, but we came to a point with the shortlist where we had to chisel away to get down to the core". The judges will need to chisel some more before the 2009 winner is announced in a ceremony at London's Guildhall on October 6.
