The Hunger Games, a top-of-the-charts series in the West, became popular in India only after a film on the book released recently. FE examines the impact film and television adaptations have on the sales of a book
When The Hunger Games hit screens in India recently, it also ensured that the trilogy crept its way through to the most well lit section of bookshelves in bookstores. Scholastic, the publisher, also reports that the trilogy is witnessing an unprecedented explosion in popularity.
And unlike the western markets, where the trilogy by Suzanne Collins was already scoring well in the bestsellers? list, it got its spot in the sun in India only after the film was released here. Preeti Sharma, marketing head of Scholastic India, says, ?Since the release of the movie here, we have recorded a 35% jump in sales. The trilogy?s been with us for three years now, but sales can be best described as sluggish so far. Though The Hunger Games was a bestseller in the West, it wasn?t popular here, but the movie has given the books a new lease of life.?
Adds Rajesh V, category manager, books of Landmark Book Store, which has branches across the country, ?Back in October 2011, when we started running events in our stores promoting The Hunger Games, we used to sell around 200-300 copies every month. Post-movie, we recorded a jump of almost 120%. There was such an upward demand that we ran out of stock. The other two books in the series are also following close on its heels.? Flipkart, India?s largest online book store, says it recorded a jump of 75-80% in week-on-week sales after the movie?s release.
Commonly known as the book-to-movie bounce, this is not the first instance where the release of a film based on a book has resulted in increased sales for the literary project. Although they already enjoyed stellar popularity, the Harry Potter movies set the pattern in the past few years, and the Twilight films proved that it could be replicated. ?When movie producers pick up a book that is popular and critically acclaimed, it reduces their financial risk. Simultaneously, the publicity surrounding a film release helps spread the word of the source material and opens the book to new audiences who might have otherwise not considered reading it,? says Amit Vig, head of retail operations, Om Book Shop.
Echoes Ankit Nagori, VP (categories), Flipkart.com, ?Movie releases definitely increase the general interest in related books and we see that reflected in the sales as well. There are some odd cases when this is not true, but those are rarities. For popular series like Harry Potter and Twilight, we witnessed a sales jump of 35-40% post-release. There wasn?t an immediate spike in this case because they were already going brisk numbers.? He adds that sometimes books sales pick up one to two weeks after the movie release when the interest level for the movie has risen to a critical mass. ?A good example of this would The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which witnessed an increase in book sales in the range of 35-40%,? he says. One must also not forget the humbler yet hugely popular segment of romantic novels while examining this trend. After all, it was the film adaptations of A Walk to Remember, PS I Love You and The Notebook, to name a few, that served as a steroid shot for the genre, around the world and in India.
However, Hachette India managing director Thomas Abraham begs to differ. Talking about the Twilight series, which is a Hachette publication, he says the movies led to not one copy extra being sold. ?The series was a blockbuster before the movies and when the movies released, we tied up with movie halls for special displays etc. It made no difference whatsoever. We have movie tie-in covers for the cheaper mass market editions, and those sell well, but have nothing to do with the films,? he says.
According to him, just two movie franchises resulted in book sales surging?which in his view was because these were revivals?Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series. ?Minor increases were seen in Bourne, Hunger Games, Susannah?s Seven Husbands and a couple of others. In the West, sales more than double with a successful movie tie-in. Here at best one is looking at a 20% uplift if one is lucky. And even that doesn?t generally work. John Carter didn?t see any book sales going up,? he points out.
But booksellers say not only movies, television adaptations have also helped in creating buzz around a literary work of late. The most recent would be A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. The fantasy novels have enjoyed a welcome sales spike on the back of the popular television adaptation, the much-hyped HBO series Game of Thrones, 16 years after the first book was published. The series has clearly been good business for Martin and his publishers. Says Rajesh of Landmark, ?Since A Song of Ice and Fire belongs to a niche genre, people usually shy away from such books. However, since Game of Thrones started airing on television, we have recorded brisk sale of the series. We are selling around 250-300 copies every month.?
With this trend playing out, producers and publishers are hammering out win-win deals. The coveted ?movie deal? is held up as the ultimate authorial achievement. A film based on a book is its biggest ad. No wonder then that many reprints of these books appear with the stills from the film adaptation on the cover. A look at the Oscar-nominated movies of 2012 reflects a pattern that shows that the Oscar lists have consistently affirmed cinema?s dependence on literature. Of the books adapted into films this time, Kaui Hart Hemmings?s The Descendants and Kathryn Stockett?s The Help managed to record good sales post the movies? release. Says Amit Vig, ?Such books are a one-time phenomenon. The sales picked up during the Oscar fever, when readers? interest is piqued by the nominations.? However, it is also important to note that it?s not classic novels that attract movie-makers now, as a lot of contemporary literature is making its way into tinsel town scripts.
With movies like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, based on the 1937 eponymous novel by JRR Tolkien, and Life of Pi based on Yann Martel?s fantasy adventure novel slated to release towards the end of this year, Hollywood seems to have no dearth of scripts to attract those who love cinema. However, the ineffable question that shall always linger is?whether you read the book because you loved the movie or saw the movie because you loved the book? Well, everyone tends to prefer one form of storytelling over the other. And as long as you get a bit of both, there?s no one complaining really, be it the producers or the publishers.