Thanks to Game of Thrones, we've got television on our brains. To occupy some of our time in between episodes, we've spent the past few weeks mulling over one burning question: how do television adaptations influence sales of the books they're based on? We fastened our IKEA cloaks and dug deep into the data to find out.
The television adaptations
Our study focused on nine television adaptations, listed from newest to oldest (based on the Canadian series premiere date): The Handmaid's Tale, American Gods, 13 Reasons Why, Big Little Lies, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Shannara Chronicles, Outlander, The Leftovers, and Hannibal. For each series, we concentrated on print sales for the titles that provided the source material for the television adaptation. For example, the first season of A Series of Unfortunate Events was adapted from the first four titles in the series, not all 13. The specific titles and print ISBNs we focused on can be found in the table below:
| Television Adaptation |
Series Premiere Date (in Canada) | Books Adapted From | Associated ISBNs |
| The Handmaid's Tale |
April 30, 2017 | The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood |
9780771008795 9780808598299 9780735253308 |
| American Gods | April 30, 2017 | American Gods by Neil Gaiman |
9780062080233 9780062059888 9780062689733 |
| 13 Reasons Why | March 31, 2017 | Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher |
9781595141880 9781595141712 9780451479327 |
| Big Little Lies | Feb. 19, 2017 | Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty |
9780425274866 9781410472038 9780399587207 |
| A Series of Unfortunate Events | Jan. 13, 2017 | The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket | 9780061146305 9780064407663 |
| The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket |
9780061146312 9780064407670 |
||
| The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket |
9780061146336 9780064407687 |
||
| The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket |
9780064407694 | ||
| The Shannara Chronicles | Jan. 5, 2016 | The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks |
9781101965603 9781101886052 9780345285546 |
| The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks |
9780808572404 9781101965610 9780345356369 |
||
| Outlander | Aug. 24, 2014 | Outlander by Diana Gabaldon |
9780385658683 9780385671088 9781400026579 9780385683036 9780770428792 |
| The Leftovers | June 29, 2014 | The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta |
9780307356390 9780307356383 |
| Hannibal | April 4, 2013 | Red Dragon by Thomas Harris |
9780425228227 9780440206156 |
| Hannibal by Thomas Harris |
9780440224679 9780440224679 |
||
Methodology
Our methodology was simple. Print unit sales were identified for all the ISBNs associated with each adaptation for a 24-week period that spanned the 12 weeks prior to (and including) the Canadian premiere date of the series and the 12 weeks immediately following the premiere. These sales were compared to print unit sales of the same titles for a 24-week period exactly one year prior.
For comparison's sake, we also displayed overall sales for each title's genre on a third axis (e.g., Fiction, Young Adult) to help us determine if peaks or dips in unit sales were characteristic of the overall market during the time period studied.
All sales have been tracked in BNC SalesData, the sales tracking service for print books in the Canadian trade market.
TV adaptations increase book sales
What was our conclusion? Good news! Every adaptation saw an increase in book sales that were not characteristic for the overall market at the time. Compared to sales for the same titles one year prior, all sales during the 24-week premiere period were higher — ranging from a 200% increase to a whopping 5,600% for Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, which sold the most units in the 24-week premiere period out of all the titles we studied, saw sales increase by more than 410%.
The graphs below (with sales numbers redacted) compare unit sales during the 24-week premiere period against sales one year prior for each television adaptation. The series premiere of the show, week 12, is identified by the purple circle.
Click on any graph to enlarge.
But what do these numbers really mean? Are people flocking to the stores to pick up their own copies of Thirteen Reasons Why after binge-watching the Netflix series? For this month's podcast, we spoke with Evan Munday, children's author and Community Manager at TYPE Books in Toronto, to hear some of his insights on the influence of television adaptations on book sales:
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Still thinking about television? Check out some of the articles we referred to in our podcast:
FX Networks Chief John Landgraf: 'There Is Simply Too Much Television'
'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Finale Draws Record 16.5 Million Viewers
Did 'Stranger Things' Force Two Hollywood Movies to Abandon Halloween Releases?
For Better or Worse, Netflix Has Remade Event Television in Its Image
Sales of Dystopian Novels Have Been Spiking on Amazon Since the Election
Someone is leaving out free copies of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale
Transcript
Kitty: Welcome to BookNet Canada's podcast. I'm Kitty Yao, and I'll be your host for this month's episode. You may have heard the phrase "the Golden Age of Television," or "the era of Peak TV" in the past few years. The former is identified by Wikipedia. Everybody's favourite unreliable internet source as the time period beginning from the new millennium to present day, whereas the latter was coined by John Landgraf, the chief executive of FX Networks, as he cautioned against the ability or inability to sustain production of such a high level of creative content for both viewers and creators alike. That was in 2015.
And here we are now in 2017. You don't need me to tell you that the vast interest and involvement with television is best represented by the behemoth that is Game of Thrones. Based on the fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, season seven, which will have just ended by the time this podcast is released has been breaking and setting rating records week after week. In fact, television has become such a force that even Hollywood movie studios are running scared.
Rumour has it that season two of Netflix's Stranger Things set to release October 27th, 2017 has led Paramount to reschedule the releases for Mother, starring Jennifer Lawrence and an untitled third Cloverfield movie, both of which were originally set to be released in October of 2017.
Without a doubt, television is on our minds and in our line of sight. And this inspired by the countless fantastic television shows, which keep us up all night long, we decided to explore the influence of television adaptations on their source materials, the books they're based on.
Of course, we can't begin without an explanation of our simple methodology. Focusing on season one of nine television shows including The Handmaid's Tale, American Gods, 13 Reasons Why, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Hannibal, Outlander, The Shannara Chronicles, The Leftovers, and Little Big Lies, we identified the books that they were adapted from.
Then weekly sales units of the print editions were identified and compared for a 24-week period, exactly 12 weeks prior to, and including the Canadian premiere date of the series, and then 12 weeks immediately following their premiere. We took this 24-week period and compared the numbers to the same timeline exactly one year prior.
For television shows adapted from series such as Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, we focused on the books the adaptations are specifically based on. In this case, the first four titles in the series, not all 13.
Need more information? Check out our graphs and additional details on our methodology in our accompanying blog post.
Onto our results, was there an influence? The short answer is a resounding yes. Not only did all of the adapted books we looked at see an increase in sales compared to the same timeframe one year prior. But all the titles also experienced a positive percent change following the premiere week. These sales were uncharacteristic to the overall market during the season, meaning that they were likely influenced by the release of the television adaptation.
Specifically, American Gods and The Shannara Chronicles both saw sales peaking the week of the premiere date, whereas all the other titles with the exception of A Series of Unfortunate Events, observed peak sales several weeks following the premiere date.
Now, why is this the case? Do people wander into bookstores looking to buy the book for an adaptation they've seen? Evan Munday, children's author and Community Manager at Type Book's has his thoughts.
Evan: I mean, they'll ask for books that are TV adaptations. It's not that people come in and say, "Oh, I saw this television series. Is there a book that it's based on?" so much. It's more that people are coming in and talking about...looking for books that they wouldn't let... I mean, if 10 people come in on a week looking for like The Handmaid's Tale, whereas like a year before, no people or maybe one person, obviously it's the TV adaptation that's bringing those people in, or maybe a few other things, but, like, usually it's them.
But at our store at Type, it's like very particular. So, like, the people that are coming in for adaptations, it tends to be pretty particular. Like I said, like, not a lot of people came in looking for 13 Reasons Why. Not a lot of people came in looking for A Series of Unfortunate Events. A ton of people came in looking for The Handmaid's Tale.
Outside of TV, like even movies, they're not necessarily the ones that were kind of the biggest movie. So we had a lot of people coming in looking for My Cousin Rachel, which is a Daphne du Maurier book and, like, not a huge movie by any stretch. We had a ton of people coming in looking for... I mean, we put it front and center, too, but the book I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin. A ton of people, at least among the audience that comes into Type saw the documentary and kind of came in interested about James Baldwin, that book, but also his other works as well. So, I mean, there are people that come in looking for certain adaptations for sure.
Kitty: Inversely, do retailers increase discoverability, by placing specific publicity efforts around adapted titles?
Evan: Typically, Type does not do overly elaborate sort of marketing or publicity around books that have recently been adapted into television programs. I mean, we'll do kind of minor things. Usually, if a book or the adaptation is just about to come out, we'll put the book kind of... Maybe we'll put it out on display, where it's been kind of spine out before that point. So we might put them face out on the shelf or we might even put it out on a display table, just based on the fact that people are talking about this book again or people are interested in that book. And that's usually kind of as far as it goes for the most part. Later this summer, one thing that I've suggested to Type's owners is that for most of the summer, we've had kind of a Canada display with a lot of Canadian books. And closer to the end of the summer, what I've suggested us doing is a display of brand new and upcoming TV and film adaptation books.
So, a lot of the TV adaptations, things that have just come out. So like The Glass Castle, but also stuff that's coming up that people are talking about. So things like It. I mean, a lot of them are movies, Murder on the Orient Express, but also television shows like Alias Grace, Sharp Objects. So we're hoping to have a display of stuff because that is something that people come in and ask for.
Kitty: Several titles such as The Handmaid's Tale and American Gods saw sharp increases in sales, approximately one to two months prior to the series premieres. Is this due to the need to read it first?
Evan: There are like two people or two kinds of people that come in, and some of them are really insistent on reading it first. But I would say just as often or more often people get intrigued by the show and then wanna see the source material afterwards. Yeah, it really depends. I think I would say among juvenile readers, I think a lot of them come to the material through the TV show or, in some cases, movies first.
So a lot of times like A Series of Unfortunate Events, or 13 Reasons Why, they'll see the show and then come in the store to see like what the book it's based on. Or if they're looking for a book, a lot of times what happens is, they're kids who come into the store, and they don't know what to read next, right? Or oftentimes, they don't really read very much at all, and so their parents are like, "No, you gotta get a book." And so they'll see something like, "Oh, I recognize that from TV. I recognized...I watched some of that, and it was pretty good. So maybe the book will be similar."
I think a lot of adult readers tend to wanna read the book first. So you see a lot of people like, "So just started and I need to read the book before it gets too far along." And it's like, I don't know, why but people feel that way.
Kitty: I confess. I'm one of those adult readers who have fallen into the read at first pit. I finally read American Gods after hearing about the series premiere in Canada having put it off for years. Whether or not my experience with the television series was disappointing remains to be seen because I actually haven't watched it yet. Would that have changed if I hadn't read it first? Possibly. Evan has his thoughts.
Evan: Almost any book you read, you're always disappointed by the adaptation afterward. Whereas the other way around, there are books that I've enjoyed a lot because I saw the movie first, and I liked the movie a lot. And then I read the book, and I was like, "Oh, that was good, too. It was very different." But I feel like if I come to it the other way, I would have been disappointed by the book. So, I think it's kind of interesting that people find it really important to read the book first, whereas I think it ends up being a more disappointing experience once you watch the thing versus the other way around, where you can see, like, if the book is, like, obviously the source material. So I guess that's closer to the initial artist's vision. You see the adaptation and then you see the book, I think it's kind of a better experience for you as a person enjoying those things. But people wanna read the book first because I think most people wanna go in... People wanna be knowledgeable, right?
Like, it's the same reason people go to trivia nights and people read books, I think half the time in the first place, is that so they can feel knowledgeable about something. So going into a book and being able to be like, "Oh, they left out this character." Or "Oh, they skipped this part. I wonder why they did that." That, kind of, like, gives you something to talk about after it with your friends and that kind of thing.
Kitty: Interestingly, Red Dragon and Hannibal, the two books, which the television series starring Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy is based on, saw the lowest number of units sold in the 24-week period surrounding the series premiere, despite experiencing 137.5% change. We wonder if this is a result of the book being a thriller of the nine series we looked at, it was the only one that fell in that category. And as a result, there might be potentially more interest in pursuing the plot. And then there are the juvenile series. Reviewers similarly moved to purchasing books after they watched a series such as 13 Reasons Why, or A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Evan: I think that this is weird, and I don't really understand why but I feel like there's a real difference between some of the adaptations of like juvenile and YA literature versus adult ones. Like, I find a lot of people are going to see adult stuff, and then wanting to read the book afterward. And at least at our store, like we brought in a lot of 13 Reasons Why. I did not see like resold some, but it wasn't like a huge pickup as opposed to some of the other. And there could be a number of reasons for that. But I think a lot of it was like 13 Reasons Why gave up everything in the show.
Like, you saw it was 13 episodes and, like, I don't know what they could have left out. Whereas other stuff, it's kind of like, "Oh, I'm sure they left and changed things." Handmaid's Tale, it's now over 20 years old. So obviously, some things are changed to sort of match the times. But I think, like, there's not in some cases, even with A Series of Unfortunate Events, I feel like people see it and don't feel the need to go to the book always. Because a lot of what is in the book has been portrayed pretty faithfully on the screen.
I mean, I think the exception is Harry Potter, where it seems like even still, there are kids who were not born when Harry Potter first came out who are going to it because they saw the movie, and now wanna read the whole story because I mean, they do leave a lot out in those books because they're not TV series. Some of them get long, but they're like generally two-and-a-half-hour movies. And those books are pretty thick. So there is stuff that gets glossed over. And I mentioned the letter it has to do with like the prestige of the show. Like, I think that Handmaid's Tale was really pushed as, you know, like, important TV like along the lines of like a Madman or Breaking Bad, whereas 13 Reasons Why I would say, I mean, I think they push that it was important they didn't wanna make it seemed like it was a crass exploration of suicide. But at the same time, it was marketed to a very different audience. And, like, I don't think most teens really care if it's based on a book or not.
Kitty: Although Type did not see a huge increase in sales for 13 Reasons Why, our data for the majority of the Canadian market shows otherwise. 13 Reasons Why actually experienced one of the highest percentage changes out of all the titles, with sales increasing steeply immediately following the premiere, which essentially was the same thing as the entire release of the show. Of course, buzz surrounding the show blossomed immediately following this release, especially surrounding this depiction of mental illness and suicide. The steep increase can also be attested to a lack of knowledge surrounding the title until it was released.
Evan: As well there are a lot of adaptations that don't telegraph that they were a book first. And I think that's a... Like Handmaid's Tale definitely, because also it's arguable that The Handmaid's Tale was just as well-known as a book before the TV series. And 13 Reasons Why, I mean, it was when it first came out a bit of a phenomenon but it also came out I think 10 years ago, and I think its notoriety or sort of acclaim or interest has kind of waited until the TV show came out. But yeah, it wasn't obvious. I mean, unless you were super interested in the show, you wouldn't have known that it was based on a book. And I think there are other ones like that. I mean, some of them are not... Like, there's an upcoming adaptation of Alias Grace. And that also to anyone in Canada knows that's a Margaret Atwood novel for the most part. But there are other sorts of TV adaptations of books that are kind of like, "Oh, I had no idea that it was based on that."
Kitty: Of course, we can't talk about television without talking about Netflix. Does the simultaneous release of a television series have an influence on a viewer's decision to purchase a title compared to a TV series that's released episodically?
Evan: Personally, I'm a bigger fan of the like, slower release. And I think like even on Netflix, they've started doing some shows that way. Like, I think of, usually, it's co-productions, where they're actually shown on TV as well. So think of something like Riverdale, where it was on Netflix but at the same time, you had to wait every week to watch it unless you waited to land and you could, like, binge them all. But I think it also gives the show some momentum to build. It makes it more of a phenomenon and gives it more time to kind of grow in the public, sorry, consciousness so that people start talking about other people like writing think pieces about it, people are even doing like if it has enough momentum like breaking down episode by episode and, like, what this means to the series.
So, I mean, it could be a completely... I know correlation is not causation, but I feel like shows that have been released episodically have had more sort of interest in the show, rather than stuff that kind of got dumped all at once. So I think of stuff like The Handmaid's Tale, I mean obviously, there are other reasons why book buyers might buy that. But Handmaid's Tale got released, I mean I think there's a couple of two at first, but they were coming out in episodes. But even other, like, older adaptations, like the Leftovers, Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones has been huge for book sales, and I think it's partially because it wasn't all dumped at once. Whereas shows that got sort of all released on the same date. So things like 13 Reasons Why things like... Even like, Orange is the New Black, I feel like people haven't gone to those books and bought them because people who watch them, kind of, watch them all at once. And it's not that same kind of ongoing engagement, that it is week after week, where it is for some of these other shows.
I feel that stuff that sort of released all at once. I mean, obviously, you can watch it in any format you want. Like, even if it's all released at once, you could watch it once a week if you had the willpower. But I think most people just sort of watch it until they get tired and then continue watching it until the end. And I think there's like a lower level of engagement. I find that shows that all kind of at least that once I don't kind of measure out. It kind of just washes over me almost like background noise in some cases or I'll, like, start doing something else while it's on. And it's really just to get to the endpoint of that season or whatever has been released. And I think in that way, there's like a lower level of engagement with the material. And so, less interesting going to find out the source material, find the books that it's based on that can be totally like nonsense psychology.
But I have found that, like, a lot of the... At least sort of anecdotally, a lot of the shows that have been released on HBO or even through Netflix, like, one after the other or other just regular television, there is that kind of ongoing sales, whereas the one that's sort of released on a date, maybe for like a week or two after, there's a lot of interest, but then that kind of dies off and maybe they'll return again for the second season. But there is that kind of... I think there's just like a longer plateau or a longer sort of like sales channel for the ones that are released week after week.
Kitty: Journalist Brandon Katz has also remarked on this idea of shelf life for a television series depending on its method of release. In an article titled, "For Better or Worse," Netflix has remade event in television in its image. Katz notes that the whole meal at once approach of Netflix allows a series to burn brighter for a short while, but it may not give a show a longer shelf life in the pop-culture consciousness. You can find the full link to the article in our blog post.
As Evan mentioned earlier, The Handmaid's Tale is a unique case. Not only has it been a title discussed and studied in school systems for many, many years, but it also has had the added half of the celebrity status of its author, Margaret Atwood, that was before 2017. And then 2017 happened and publicity for the novel hit whole new levels influenced by what the New York Times coined "The Trump Bump." As sales of Dystopian novels spiked around the time that Donald Trump became the President of the United States.
Evan: Handmaid's Tale is an interesting case, because I mean, A, the adaptation itself has gotten a lot of acclaim. So, like, it's a very good... I haven't seen it, but it's apparently a very good adaptation of the source material. But it's also a book that has kind of, like, its literary credentials. So it's not commercial fiction. It's been acclaimed as this kind of, like, precious Dystopian vision for so long. It's a book that most people who grew up in Canada either had to read or were supposed to read at some point. So, I think a lot of people are like, "Oh, I was supposed to read that in 11th grade, maybe now I should actually get around to doing it." So there are two people like that.
But also, I feel like it's also a book that also taps into the "Zeitgeist," right? So in addition to him a still at the store, we're also selling a lot of books similar to him, so that don't have current adaptations. So stuff like Brave New World, stuff like It Couldn't Happen Here, stuff like 1984. So those are also selling pretty regularly. So the fact that you're kind of tapping into this kind of modern real dystopia in the U.S., at least as some people see it, and you also have a television adaptation that's happening at the same time, it's kind of this perfect storm of everyone is interested in The Handmaid's Tale again.
Kitty: The perfect storm was right, a bookstore in San Francisco, Booksmith, actually had a mysterious benefactor purchase copies of the books such as 1984, and The Handmaid's Tale for the store to leave out for the taking. Store manager, Amy Steffensen, called it a quiet form of political engagement. Another unavoidable topic is the much-discussed and possibly dreaded TV tie in addition of books, with the exception of 13 Reasons Why, which saw 35% of sales from the TV tie, in addition, all of the series we observed, which had Titans published, saw sales of the "Titans" have more than 50% of the total sales during the 24-week period.
Of course, people may not be buying the editions because they like them, not only may the TV tie in editions be priced at a lower price point, as they're usually paperbacks but they may also be placed and made available in different retail locations compared to the other editions of the books. Therefore, there's a chance they reach a broader or simply just different audience. And then there's a discussion of stock. Do bookstores stock-specific covers of a title?
Evan: Usually, we don't... I mean, we have a number of books that are based on TV adaptations, and we try to get if it's available at all the ones that are not the movie or movie, or TV time covers. I mean, there's a number of reasons for that. In some cases, we aren't able to, so I think we try to get in the book, "The Beguiled" that the movie is based on, but they really only had the movie adaptation, which is unfortunate because I think, A, reading people generally don't like them. I honestly don't understand why people make them. I feel like people don't like them because they want to look like they've started reading it before they saw the movie. Like, they're rereading this book or, like, I know this book is a movie, but I had this book well before this movie or TV got started.
So, I feel like people don't wanna be seen reading one that has, like, movie stars on the cover, or TV stars on the cover. And also, I think those covers are often, like, a bit lazier. Like, I think obviously they're designers who worked hard on them but I think there's less thought put into them. It's more just like, we're definitely gonna have to use this image or one of these three images, and then we'll figure out, like, something interesting to do with the type. But it's not like, where it's a book. And it's like, you have to read the book and figure out better ways to represent it. Instead of just, like, "Well, we've got these stars, we wanna put them on the cover."
So I think that, like, they're not as necessarily well designed. And I think for that reason they don't sell as well or that people come in looking for not the times editions. I feel like I don't know if there's a way to, like, sell them. Because I mean, the reason they do that is that people recognize them, right? And people are like, "Oh, I saw that movie. Oh, that's a book?" But if there a way you could, like, tear away the cover once you bought it and reveal, like, the old cover underneath, I feel like that would be a huge innovation.
Kitty: It truly be a great interactive innovation. Just out of curiosity, we wondered if Evan had ever encountered a customer who specifically requested a TV tie in addition?
Evan: No.
Kitty: Well, I guess, we and people, in general, are not fans. And finally, having talked about all these television shows and the great books they're based on, I couldn't resist asking Evan, if he had to choose, would he rather his favourite book be made into a TV show or a movie? No, as an option was provided much, much later.
Evan: It really depends. Like, I think with that some exception, the best movies that are made from books are made from, like, short stories or novellas. Like, there's so much... Novels are better suited to television and, like, now we're getting to a point where a lot of novels are being adapted to television series, which is great. But I think a lot of times they're trying to cram too much into a short time period for a movie. And so a lot of important stuff gets left out. So I think a lot of the best movies are made from, like, short stories, or novellas, or very short novels. Whereas like people are trying to always try to make you know, like "Anna Karenina" into like a movie and, like, the book, have you seen how big that book is? Like, why do you think that makes sense in a two-hour time slot.
So, if it was like one of my favourite TV shows or one of my favourite books, and they said they were making it into a TV show, but it was a novel, I think could be kind of more relieved. Also, I feel like, I mean, I don't think... It's an opinion that other people have mentioned before, but I think a lot of times the best TV series and the best movies come from either bad or sort of, like, non-sort of just like inoffensive books. So I think, like, the better the book, the harder it is to make a good adaptation of it because people come to it with so many adaptations.
Whereas if it's a book that, like, a lot of people ignored, or most people think like, "Oh, that wasn't very good, you have the chance to, like, really kind of highlight certain aspects, really kind of..." I think there's so much more you can do with the adaptation of a bad book. And I think some of the better sort of movies and TV shows have been made from, like, kind of questionable source material. So, like, I would prefer if a lot of the books I really love never get to movies or TV shows.
Kitty: No, is an option.
Evan: Yeah, and they just sort of, like, adapt like really bad books or books I don't like at all. And maybe I'll really love the movie or TV version of it. But I mean, at the same time I don't think a bad adaptation is really made me dislike the book if I really love the book.
Kitty: So there you have it. With television still going strong, we'll have to look forward to enjoying the fantastic adaptations of questionable books, and the less than perfect adaptations of the books we love. Regardless of the quality of the source material or the adapted material, our data shows that sales are likely to be positively influenced, which is still a win.
Thanks to Evan for joining me for this month's episode. For more information and to check out some great graphs, find our blog posts on the BookNet Canada blog at bookletcanada.ca/blog. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And as always, thanks to you for listening.
