Film adaptations boost sales

12.03.10 | Bookseller News Team

Film adaptations are continuing to boost sales of the biggest titles, although prize ceremonies such as the Oscars and Baftas have little impact and tie-in covers divide booksellers.

Proving that the biggest titles attract the biggest sales, Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (Picador), the adaptation of which missed out on any prizes, attracted sales of 1.8 million since its release in August '02 through Nielsen BookScan, which includes a 131,400 sale from the December '09 published film tie-in.

Lynn Barber's An Education (Penguin), the film version of which won one Bafta, has sold 12,476 copies of the tie-in edition since October, while the original version has sold 12,059 since June 2009. The film of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man also won one Bafta, while 2,162 copies of the Vintage Classics edition, and 4,950 of the tie-in edition, have been sold since January.

The biggest tie-ins, aside from The Lovely Bones, were children's titles linked to "The Princess and the Frog", "The Fantastic Mr Fox" and "Transformers 2", bringing in total sales of £942,000 combined.

However, there was some division over the use of tie-in jackets; Tim West of the Big Green Bookshop in north London said: "In general we don't buy the film tie-ins, mostly because they're the types of books Waterstone's and Smith's sell in bulk in their three-for-two offers. Our customers are much more discerning—when we have the choice between film and original cover they say they like the original." While Liz Howard of Curiosity Bookshop in Runcorn added: "Some readers will buy the ordinary cover as they don't want to be seen around the pool reading one with the film jacket."

Book adaptations continue to flourish in 2010, with forthcoming films including "The Ghost" from Robert Harris' novel (Arrow) in April; "Hippie Hippie Shake" from Richard Neville's memoir (Duckworth) in May; "Eat Pray Love" from Elizabeth Gilbert's book (Bloomsbury) in September; "The Girl Who Played with Fire" from Steig Larsson's hit (Quercus) and "Dear John" from Nicholas Sparks' novel (Sphere) in November.

Also pencilled in are versions of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (Faber); Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman (Black Swan), plus "Tamara Drewe" from Posy Simmonds' graphic novel (Jonathan Cape) in 2011.