Do book prizes matter? One saved Richard Flanagan from the mines

Amid the galas, the wagers, and the lists both short and long, some sceptics ask if book prizes really matter. Do all the fuss and bother actually reach new readers? Can it move the needle in book sales?

With Richard Flanagan, it has in spades.

Flanagan is the Australian author of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which won the Man Booker Prize this month. It sold more than 10,000 print copies in England the week following the prize, the Guardian reports.

Flanagan was so broke after finishing the book that he was contemplating going to work in Australia’s mines, he told the Booker Prize’s black-tie audience.

It wasn’t just writing the book. “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” about WWII prisoners of war being forced to build the Thai-Burma “death railway,” wasn’t exactly flying off shelves. Until the Booker win, which brought Flanagan the legendary “Booker Bounce.”

The success made a phenomenal difference in Flanagan’s sales: British publishing journal the Bookseller notes, “The £137,430 Flanagan earned last week with his Booker winner eclipsed his combined BookScan sales for the previous 10 years.”

Add that to the Man Booker’s cash prize, about $80,000, and Flanagan has been saved from the mines. “I’m not a wealthy man,” he said at the awards ceremony. “In essence, this means I can continue to write.”

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