It’s 1984 All Over Again: Orwell’s Book Sales Spike
Daily disclosures about America’s surveillance apparatus have sparked renewed interest in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Wall Street Journal reported that by early yesterday, sales of the dystopian classic had jumped noticeably, with one edition rising more than 7,000% in its Amazon rankings, moving from #13,074 on Monday to the top 200.
The paperback edition Plume published on the centennial of Orwell’s birth in 2003 was ranked #80 on Amazon this morning, and the 60th anniversary edition #149. Elizabeth Keenan, a spokeswoman for the publisher, told the Journal that the sales jump is “symptomatic of all the surveillance coverage,” adding that while sales typically increase this time of year because of high school summer reading lists, this spike was unusual and “Plume wasn’t ruling out a relaunch of the book to capitalize on the interest.”