You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Books on the “death” of Europe, The Communist Manifesto and those which are anti-establishment are among the titles which have seen an uptick in sales over the last two months since the General Election was called.
While the short eight-week turnaround between Prime Minister Theresa May calling the election and poll stations opening was too narrow for publishers to release any dedicated titles, in a climate of uncertainty about Brexit and the next government, some political-themed books have still seen a boost.
Yanis Varoufakis’ Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment (Bodley Head) has sold 12,640 copies for £209,592 through Nielsen BookScan since its release on 4th May, 90% up on his last title which also probes the EU, And the Weak Suffer What They Must? (Nation Books).
Meanwhile Owen Jones’ The Establishment (Penguin), which has already been out for two years, has sold 1,574 copies in the five weeks since the election was called on 18th April, an 11% increase in volume on the five weeks before.
Continuing the trend of the popularity of leftist literature, The Communist Manifesto has sold 1,931 copies in that time, a 20% bump in volume on the five weeks before.
Outside of UK and European politics, the US Constitution has rocketed 110% in volume, shifting 1,640 copies, during a period in which Donald Trump sacked his FBI Director and openly boasted about sharing state secrets with Russian diplomats.
In a possibly related move, Allan J Litchman’s The Case for Impeachment (William Collins) has hit 20th place in the Politics & Government category based on just five weeks’ sales.
Other titles to have sold well include Polly Toynbee and David Walker’s Dismembered: How the Conservative Attack on the State Harms Us All (Guardian Faber) has sold 1,970 copies since 18th May and hit sixth place.
The book-buying public has not been buying biographies of the prime minister in droves. But Nielsen BookScan's Biography/Autobiography: Historical, Political and Military categories do feature three Trump-related titles in the top 20 for the last five weeks, plus Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father (Canongate), two of Alan Johnson’s autobiographies and even Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor. In contrast, Rosa Prince’s Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister (Biteback) has sold 480 copies, while Virginia Blackburn’s Theresa May: The Downing Street Revolution (John Blake) has shifted just 171.
Finally, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan had a hit with Why Vote Leave (Head of Zeus) before the referendum last year, selling 11,123 copies. However, follow-up What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit (Head of Zeus) has not fared as well, shifting just 3,884 units since November.
Clement Knox, Waterstones’ politics buyer, said book sales have been driven partly by "defeats that the liberal worldview sustained in 2016" after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, which have demanded an explanation of "who is voting against globalisation and the liberal order".
“Probably the most incandescent attempt at an answer came from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (Harper). Vance is a committed bi-coastal liberal but his masterful excavation of his Appalachian family history is probably the best book to come out of America since the Trump campaign took off in the summer of 2016,” he said.
“The great range in style, subject, and agenda exemplifies the breadth of the reaction to recent events. These aren’t just books about 'Big Politics' but also books about identity, community, and how politics affects all of us at the personal level.”
Meanwhile publishers have seized the opportunity to use the election as a promotional tool.
Pluto Press is holding a 50% off sale across all of its titles until polling day on Thursday (8th June). Emily Orford, marketing manager at Pluto, told The Bookseller that the press intends to "tap into a burgeoning sense of radical political enthusiasm that has been thrown up by the ‘Corbynism or barbarism’ rhetoric and activism surrounding the lead up to the general election" through its sale.
She added: "Our books provide a bedrock to the issues at the heart of the General Election, and this sale was a perfect opportunity to get our books in the hands of as many politically minded people as possible, to cut through fake news and media spin that’s been thrown up over the last few weeks."
The press has also highlighted a selection of its front and backlist titles including The Violence of Austerity edited by Vickie Cooper and David Whyte, The Rent Trap: How we Fell into It and How we Get Out of It by Rosie Walker and Samir Jeraj, Against Austerity: How we Can Fix the Crisis they Made by Richard Seymour, How Corrupt is Britain? edited by David Whyte and Cut Out: Living Without Welfare by Jeremy Seabrook.
Meanwhile, Canongate has been giving away free e-books of Empathy by Raoul Martinez, which it will do until election day. The book contains a section of Martinez’s "extraordinary, provocative" manifesto Creating Freedom and the publisher decided to give it away for free as "it seemed particularly important and timely, and we wanted as many people as possible to read it".
In a statement on its blog, the publisher said: "Not much of politics at the moment seems driven by empathy, and we wanted to share Raoul’s compelling and thoughtful work. Raoul was keen too, and an advantage of being an independent publisher is you can do things like that, so we did.
"With the general election hoving into view in the UK, like, say, a plague ship on a particularly unappealing sea, we’ve decided that what we’d really like is for people to be reading the whole of Creating Freedom, because there’s a huge amount in it that’s important and relevant right now. It will change how you think about elections, and the justice system, and the media, and again we’re really keen to get as many people as possible to read it (and again, Raoul was on board too)."
Last week, Verso Books was offering a 60% discount on one of its titles Inequality and the 1% by Danny Dorling.
Rowan Wilson, sales and marketing director at Verso Books, told The Bookseller: "We wanted to give people the opportunity to read about what the election should be about, rather than Brexit, strong and stable, or whatever spun nonsense gets spouted, this election should be about having a government who wants to continue a program of austerity and cuts, or a government who wants to provide opportunities for the poor."
Figures in the trade have also been compiling election reading lists. Author John O'Farrell has compiled a list of the "best election reads" for Waterstones, consisting of seven books including Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics by Ed Balls (Hutchinson) and Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide by Lynsey Hanley (Penguin). Booktrust has compiled a list for secondary school students entitled 'Politics, freedom of choice, and the big issues' which recommends titles such as Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman (Random House), Maus by Art Spiegelman (Penguin), and Politics - cutting through the crap by Bali Rai (Walker Books).
According to The Bookseller’s online survey of the trade last week, 64.1% intend to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s party at the polls on Thursday (8th June), while 15.7% will put a cross in the box of the Liberal Democrats, with the Conservative Party coming a close third on 13.1%.