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This year's Man Booker longlist is the strongest-selling since 2001, with Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap (Tuskar Rock) by the far the most popular of the 13, according to Nielsen BookScan data.
Sales of the longlistees totalled 10,597 copies last week, up 47% on the sales of the 2009 longlistees in the comparative week last year, and up 246% on the 2008 crop. Sales of the longlistees are at their strongest point since 2001 when both Ian McEwan's Atonement (Cape) and Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass (Scholastic) made a 24-strong longlist (compared to a "Man Booker Dozen" of 13 titles this year).
Tsiolkas' Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning novel remains by far the most popular of this year's selections—sales totalled 5,001 copies during the seven days to 7th August 2010.
Although the book's sales were down 11% on the previous week it sold three and a half times as many copies as the next most popular Booker book, Emma Donoghue's Josef Fritzl-inspired Room (Picador, 1,422 copies sold last week).
David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Sceptre), the current joint-favourite with The Slap to win according to William Hill, was the only other longlistee to sell more than 1,000.
The least popular book last week in sales terms was Lisa Moore's February (Chatto), which sold just 105 copies—up 414% on the 36 copies it sold at UK booksellers the previous week.
Last year's winner, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate), has sold 485,000 copies to date, taking £4.3m through UK bookshop tills. The hardback edition sold 225,000 copies, up 10,400% (or £2.7m in sales terms) on Mantel's previous novel, Beyond Black.