Success of ‘Normal People’ leads to surge in book sales
SALLY ROONEY’S best-selling ‘Normal People’ and her debut novel, ‘Conversations with Friends’, have generated an estimated €8.37m in book revenue here and in the UK, according to figures provided by Nielsen BookScan.
As a result of the massive popularity of the TV adaptation of the novel, the Castlebar native’s ‘Normal People’ has jumped to the number one spot in the best-sellers list in the UK and Ireland – two years after the book was first published.
Figures provided by Nielsen BookScan show Rooney’s two novels have enjoyed sales generating £6.18m (€6.97m) in the UK and €1.4m here.
The figures reveal that Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ alone has generated sales revenues of £4.38m (€4.92m) in the UK and €1m here in Ireland.
The 29-year-old is also feted in the US where Sarah Jessica Parker was an early fan, endorsing ‘Conversations with Friends’ in an Instagram post, saying: “This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I’m not alone.”
The ‘Sex & The City’ star definitely is not alone because separate figures provided by the US-based NPD BookScan show that ‘Conversations with Friends’ has sold 121,000 copies in the US.
NPD BookScan also confirmed that ‘Normal People’ had sold 184,000 copies to date in the US, bringing the overall total of Rooney’s book sales in the US to 305,000.
NPD BookScan does not provide revenues generated by the books in the US, but the combined revenues from sales of Rooney’s books in the US, the UK and here would comfortably top €12m.
Of course, the TCD graduate receives only a fraction of the millions generated by her book sales becauses the lion’s share is split between retailer and publisher.
Typically authors would receive around 10pc of the net price paid by retailers to publishers as a royalty so on a paperback version of a book priced at €9, an author would expect to receive around 45c per copy. Ms Rooney will also have profited from the adaptation rights of her two novels to the small screen.
The Element Pictures team that produced ‘Normal People’ is already working on producing ‘Conversations with Friends’.
Rooney also has some way to go before matching the earning power of probably the country’s most popular author in terms of books sales, Marian Keyes.
Separate figures provided by Nielsen BookScan show that Keyes’s books have generated £44m (€49.4m) in sales in the UK and €6.7m here across her career.
On the impact of Rooney’s TV series, a spokesperson for RTÉ said yesterday: “We are only halfway through the hit series and ‘Normal People’ is already setting records on RTÉ and worldwide.
“The response and reaction has been hugely positive so far and the figures speak for themselves with almost 1.5 million streams on RTÉ Player.
“We’re proud to show the beautiful story about Connell and Marianne on RTÉ, particularly at a time that people at home need some entertainment and escapism.”
The third instalment of ‘Normal People’ (episodes five and six) this week had an average overnight figure of 343,000 live viewers on television.
The spokeswoman said there had been no formal complaints made to RTÉ in relation to the mature content of ‘Normal People’.
However, she added: “We received 49 pieces of feedback from the public (via email and phone) to date expressing unhappiness and disappointment with the content of the show.”