After a warm welcome, the consecration on November 4 with the Goncourt Prize, was a hit in bookstores for Laurent Mauvignier. While his majestic “Empty House” has already established itself as one of the successes of the literary season, 15 days in, it is now the novel everyone is rooting for. In just two weeks, more than 100,000 copies have been sold, bringing the total to just over 200,000. And it’s not over yet.
“It was already selling well for a book of over 700 pages but with Goncourt, it’s a bit crazy. There’s really something going on around Laurent Mauvignier and with Christmas, it’s going to be very strong,” said Laurent, a bookseller in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. According to professionals, the novel should surpass last year’s award-winning novel, “Houris” by Kamel Daoud, which sold 450,000 copies.
With an initial print run of 40,000 copies, Editions de Minuit, home of Laurent Mauvignier, has produced eight reprints of “La Maison vide.” The novel sold 69,000 copies the week of Goncourt and another 43,000 copies the following week, from 10 to 16 November. Only Gallic heroes Goscinny and Uderzo’s new album, “Asterix in Lusitania,” signed by Fabcaro and Didier Conrad, did better with 94,000 albums last week. Released in late October, with a print run of 2 million copies, it has just passed the milestone of selling one million comics.
158,000 copies for Emmanuel Carrère
As for the other fall prize winners, Emmanuel Carrère, Goncourt finalist with “Kolkhoze” posted sales of more than 158,000 copies while Nathacha Appanah, also in the top four of the most prestigious literary prizes, but also the Femina prize with “La nuit au coeur”, recorded sales exceeding 46,000 copies.
In a very different list, we will see the excellent performance of Maxime Chattam whose 32nd novel, the brilliant “8.2 Seconds,” sold more than 22,000 copies in two weeks. Still in thrillers, former BRI boss Christophe Molmy had a hit with “Bûlez tout” which sold more than 10,000 copies in a week.
We no longer feature Freida McFadden and her cleaning lady who shakes all publishing codes with this week another 5 thrillers in the top 10 bestsellers in France in all formats: “The cleaning lady sees everything”, “The cleaning lady” whose sales exceed 2.3 million, “Girlfriend” and “The secret of the cleaning lady”! In total, he has sold more than 7 million volumes in France.
