The Goncourt was awarded, Monday, November 4, to the Franco-Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud for his novel Hourispublished by Gallimard, dedicated to the “black decade” in Algeria, while Gaël Faye, the other big favorite for the Goncourt, won the Renaudot prize for his second novel, Jacaranda (Grasset), on the reconstruction of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.
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The catalytic effect on sales of the famous red banners of literary prizes no longer needs to be proven. According to the European research institute GfK, between 2019 and 2023, the Goncourt Prize sold an average of 577,000 copies in France in the year this prize was awarded. The total of the ten best-selling Goncourts over the last fifteen years represents 5.7 million books purchased. In 2023, for example, it was Jean-Baptiste Andrea who hands down obtained the best sales result with Watch over her (The Iconoclast) among all the award-winning books of the year, with more than 627,000 copies sold.
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For Goncourt, the scale of sales has seen exceptional years. Today forgotten, Maheux's Hawkby Jean Carrière (Goncourt 1972), had almost reached 2 million copies in sales, thus rounding off the fortune of the author – but also that of his publisher, Jean-Jacques Pauvert. In 1984, The Loverby Marguerite Duras, published by Editions de Minuit, had reached the milestone of 1.6 million sales. In 2020, Hervé Le Tellier, published by Gallimard, also exceeded one million copies with The Anomaly. However, the Goncourt is not a guarantee of success either: the collection of aphorisms Wandering Shadows (Grasset), by Pascal Quignard, winner of the 2002 Goncourt, saw its sales peak at 100,000 copies.
One of the most influential, but not the best equipped
Still according to GfK, sales of the Renaudot reached 211,000 copies on average between 2019 and 2023; those of Femina, more than 157,000 copies; those of the Grand Prix du Novel awarded by the French Academy, 145,000 copies, and those of the Medici, 37,000 copies. Depending on the contract signed with his publisher, the author recovers between 8% and 12%, rarely more, of the price of each work sold. Sometimes the ripple effect starts when the author is a multi-award winner. This is how sad tiger (POL), by Neige Sinno, winner of the Femina, won six other prizes in 2023 and won 21 international Goncourt choices, so much so that sales of this bitter novel have now reached more than 278,000 copies.
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