The Australian author Richard Flanagan speaks in a video message to attendees at the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024 in London. Image: Baillie Gifford Prize
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Last Year’s Winner Sells 44,500+ Lifetime Copies
In a ceremony tonight (November 19) at BMA House in London, the Australian author Richard Flanagan has set the bar for others at a rare height: His win of the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction marks the first time a writer has received both this nonfiction award as well as the Booker Prize for Fiction‘s top honor.
Flanagan is the Penguin Random House author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 2014. And tonight, he has become the Baillie Gifford Prize winner in nonfiction for his Question 7, selected by jurors from a strong shortlist.
As Toby Mundy, the Baillie Gifford prize director, puts it, “In winning the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024 with Question 7, Richard Flanagan has achieved an unprecedented double. No author has ever won both this prize and the Booker Prize for fiction.
“It’s a staggering achievement, which confirms Richard Flanagan as one of the world’s most significant literary writers.”
The Market Impact of a Baillie Gifford Win
There’s another bit of a landmark going on tonight in the Baillie Gifford’s event.
Toby Mundy
True to Mundy’s commitment in our interview from 2023, the Baillie Gifford program tonight is presenting members of the various news media with information on the market impact of a Baillie Gifford win—something that Gaby Wood‘s Booker Prize Foundation has led the way with. This is an admirable step that any book award program can take to prove those normally unsubstantiated claims that all book awards help sell books.
Along with the British Academy Book Prize and the American Literary Translators Association‘s National Translation Awards, the Baillie Gifford has joined the Booker’s lead in offering statistics that reflect on this program’s strength on the high street.
A statement provided to reporters tonight reads:
“Data from Nielsen BookData reveals the dramatic positive sales impact of winning the Baillie Gifford Prize.
“Philippe Sands, who won the award with East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in 2017, has lifetime sales of more than 120,000 copies, while Haillie Rubenhold, who won the prize with The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper in 2020, experienced a sales increase of over 920 percent in the UK in the four weeks following the announcement, despite COVID-19 lockdowns closing many bookshops.
“In 2021, Patrick Radden Keefe also saw a significant increase of close to 800 percent for Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, while last year’s winner, Katherine Rundell sold more than 800-percent more copies of Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne in the four weeks following the announcement, and now has lifetime sales to date of more than 44,500 copies.”
These are impressive figures indicating real market-moving heft behind the Baillie Gifford’s prominence in the marketplace. And the move by Mundy and his program to begin providing this kind of data means the Baillie Gifford isn’t afraid to put its press announcements where its golden stickers are and stop asking the publishing industry and consumers to take the impact of its work on faith.
It will be good to see more programs follow suit, and here at Publishing Perspectives, we’d like to hear from book and publishing award programs ready to take this step.
Jury Praise for Flanagan’s ‘Question 7’
Members of the Baillie Gifford jury at the November 19 Baillie Gifford Prize ceremony are, from left, ) Tom Owolade, Chitra Ramaswamy, Alison Flood, Isabel Hilton, Heather Booke, and Peter Hoskin. Image: Baillie Gifford Prize
As our international readership knows, the 2024 Baillie Gifford jury comprises:
- Isabel Hilton (chair), journalist, broadcaster, and founder of China Dialogue
- Heather Brooke, author and investigative journalist
- Alison Flood, comment and culture editor for New Scientist
- Peter Hoskin, culture editor of Prospect
- Tomiwa Owolade, writer, and critic
- Chitra Ramaswamy, author, restaurant critic, and journalist
Hilton, as chair, calls Flanagan’s book, “an astonishingly accomplished meditation on memory, history, trauma, love and death—and an intricately woven exploration of the chains of consequence that frame a life.
Peter Singlehurst
“In a year rich in remarkable books, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 spoke to the judges for its outstanding literary qualities and its profound humanity. This compelling memoir ranges from intimate human relations to an unflinching examination of the horrors of the 20th century, reflecting on unanswerable questions that we must keep asking.”
In addition, the Edinburgh-based independent investment management company Baillie Gifford partner Peter Singlehurst, says, “Congratulations to Richard for his transformative exploration of memory, history, and the moral complexities of life. And to all the authors who made the shortlist, thank you for your exceptional and impactful works.”
Each of those shortlistees this year receives £5,000 (US$6,341), and Flanagan, of course, receives £50,000 (US$63, 414).
The Baillie Gifford Prize 2024 Shortlist
Known from 1999 to 2015 as the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, the Baillie Gifford is open to books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography, and the arts. Not unlike the Cundill History Prize; the British Academy Book Prize; the issue-driven Aspen Words Literary Prize in the States, just out with its 2025 longlist; and several other programs in nonfiction, an emphasis here is on readable interpretations of current affairs, often with historical perspective.
For our internationalist readership, a note that the publishers listed here are the UK publishers of the Baillie Gifford’s longlisted titles. In cases of books originally published in other markets before being released in the United Kingdom, you may have encountered a title as another publisher’s release and in an earlier year.
| Author, Translator (Nationality) | Title | Publisher and/or Imprint |
| Rachel Clarke (British) | The Story of a Heart | Hachette UK / Little, Brown / Abacus |
| Richard Flanagan (Australian) | Question 7 | Penguin Random House / Vintage / Chatto & Windus |
| Annie Jacobsen (American) | Nuclear War: A Scenario | Penguin Random House / Transworld / Torva |
| Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese-American) |
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial | Hachette UK / Little, Brown / Corsair |
| Sue Prideaux (British) | Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin | Faber & Faber |
| David Van Reybrouck (Belgian) Translated by David Colmer and David McKay |
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World | Penguin Random House / Vintage / The Bodley Head |
The initial pool of entries this year held 349 books.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the international publishing business’ myriad book and industry awards is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, more on the Baillie Gifford Prize is here, and more on nonfiction is here.