Nobel literature laureates' book sales soar after their win, but how long does the boom last?

Anne Carson’s books were gone from the shelves of Kyobo Book Centre’s Gwanghwamun branch in central Seoul by the morning of Oct. 9, hours after the Canadian poet was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Employees organized a special display of her works using every copy in the store, and customers soon emptied it. A fresh shipment of Carson’s books arrived that afternoon, but customers snapped those up just as quickly.

This scene plays out every October, when the Nobel Foundation announces the winners of the prestigious awards. Sales of Nobel laureates’ books jumped anywhere from 51-fold to 909-fold that month over the past decade — but for most winners, their monthly sales fell to less than one-tenth of October’s level by the following spring, according to sales data on Nobel Prize in Literature laureates from 2015 to 2025, provided by the Kyobo Book Centre on Tuesday.

The data covers sales for nine laureates, excluding Olga Tokarczuk and Abdulrazak Gurnah. Tokarczuk earned the prize in 2018, but the foundation did not announce her as the winner until the following year. Gurnah’s books had not been published in Korea when he won in 2021.

Sales of laureate Louise Glück’s works rose 51-fold from the previous month in October 2020, the year that she won the prize; Jon Fosse’s surged 909-fold in 2023; and Han Kang’s grew 204-fold in 2024.

Carson’s books also saw a 204-fold jump in the two days after this year’s announcement compared to the two days before.

But the data suggests that the Nobel Prize’s impact on the publishing market is more limited than expected.

Even Han, the first Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, was not an exception: By February 2025, sales of her books had dropped to 7.9 percent of their October 2024 level. 

The only writer to break this trend has been Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 laureate. Sales of her books in Korea peaked not in October but in January of the following year and did not fall below one-tenth of their peak level until August.

However, this was largely because her books became more accessible in Korea only after her win. Before the foundation named her as the 2015 laureate, only one of her works — “Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster” (1997) — was available in Korea. “The Unwomanly Face of War” (1983) was published in the country in October 2015, followed by “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets” (2013) in January of the following year and “Last Witnesses” (1985) that November.

“Sales of laureates’ books surge immediately after the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, but apart from [Han], none [of the nine covered by our data] has ranked among the top annual bestsellers,” a Kyobo Book Centre representative said.

Han was the exception.

“As Korea’s first Nobel literature laureate, Han recorded an overwhelmingly higher amount of sales than other winners did,” the representative said. “Even before her Nobel win, ‘The Vegetarian’ [2007] topped Kyobo Book Centre’s annual overall best-seller list in 2016, helped by her winning the Booker Prize that year.” 

But the fading initial excitement does not mean laureates’ sales return to their pre-Nobel levels.

In October 2025, a year after Han was named the 2024 laureate, sales of her works were still five times higher than those for September 2024, the month before the announcement. The increase was relatively modest since Han had already been popular among Korean readers.

For Bob Dylan, the 2016 laureate, sales of his books a year after his win were 88 times higher than before the announcement. Fosse’s were 86 times higher. 

Interest in Nobel laureates appears to last longer at libraries than at bookstores, according to an analysis of public library lending data, which used the National Library of Korea’s open application programming interface to examine the borrowing histories at public libraries nationwide.

The analysis focused on the three most recent laureates covered by the data: Annie Ernaux, who won in 2022, Fosse and Han.

Unlike book sales, a laureate’s library borrowing rates did not necessarily peak in October. Only Ernaux’s borrowing rate reached its highest level in the month of the announcement. Both Fosse’s and Han’s peaked approximately two months after their win.

The delay reflects how libraries respond to demand.

“When the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, more library users begin [borrowing or] requesting books by the winning author,” a National Library of Korea official said. “That leads to libraries acquiring more copies of the writer’s works, which, in turn, leads to an increase in borrowing.” 

Library borrowing rates also declined far more gradually. Rather than falling sharply after its peak, they held relatively steady, helped by the limited number of available copies and resulting waiting lists.

People borrowed Han’s works from libraries 31,180 times nationwide in October 2024, then 50,753 times in December that year. The average number of times that someone borrowed Han’s books remained above 20,000 from September through December 2025.

Online interest, however, tells a different story.

According to a separate analysis of search trends using Google Trends and Naver DataLab, searches for Carson peaked on Oct. 8, the day that she was announced as this year’s laureate. When using that day’s search volume as a baseline of 100, interest fell to one-tenth of its peak just eight days later.

The findings indicate that while the Nobel Prize in Literature can boost book sales and library borrowing for months or even years, the curiosity of ordinary internet users fades far more quickly.

BY YOON SUNG-MIN [[email protected]]