You win some . . . and you win some

Winning the Mercury or the Booker is bound to boost your sales – but just being nominated can have a dramatic effect on your career, writes SHANE HEGARTY

TUESDAY WAS A big day in the worlds of both books and music, with the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize announced in the morning and the Mercury music prize handed out that night.

Both had Irish interest. Emma Donoghue's Roommade it on to the Man Booker shortlist, as expected, while Paul Murray's Skippy Diesdidn't make the cut – a decision that caused Eileen Battersby, our Literary Correspondent, to declare the shortlist dead on arrival. And Villagers – aka Conor J O'Brien – didn't grab the Mercury, with the prize instead going to The xx.

But there are such things as lucky losers. In an environment where each prize brings remarkable – some argue disproportionate – focus on who’s in and who’s out, each of the Irish involved has benefited regardless of the outcome.

Villagers' album Becoming a Jackalmay not have been in the UK top 75 last week, but the shortlisting had a significant impact on sales nevertheless, with a 400 per cent jump in the week of nomination. Becoming a Jackal was No 33 in the Irish album chart, having previously topped it.

But the prize came at a good time in the album’s cycle. With the band’s year already planned, Villagers headed to the UK for a live tour just as the shortlist was announced. It meant the album already had a momentum that the subsequent focus only added to. The challenge will be to keep that up. Even Mercury winners have found that the initial boost wears off – so much so that the award has become to be seen as something of a curse.

The Man Booker has no such curse. Within the book industry it is acknowledged that for a month the media is largely uninterested in anything other than the Booker race. It’s tough for those on the outside but of enormous benefit to those lucky enough to survive what Julian Barnes once described as posh bingo.

Skippy Dies, which had already benefited from strong reviews, saw its Irish sales increase eightfold in the week of longlisting, jumping from 50 copies a week to 400 – literary fiction is a tough market – while in the UK its sales are estimated to have doubled because of the longlist. It sold 500 copies that week.

In the meantime Donoghue's Man Booker journey continues, with Roomamong the favourites to pick up the prize next month. The novel has already topped the Irish fiction charts, and sales immediately increased with Tuesday's shortlist announcement. Already, about 10,000 copies have been sold here.

The international benefits have been most obvious. There are now 100,000 copies of Roomin print, with UK sales trebling this week – when it sat in the Amazon.co.uk top 15 and in the windows of the UK's major bookshops. There may have been lucky losers this week, but such figures emphasise the real prize at stake.