Poetry sales spike in the Netherlands
During the second edition of the national Poetry Week, Book Week’s twin, that lasted from 31 January to 5 February, around 50% more poetry collections were sold in the Netherlands than the average. This was reported by CPNB on the basis of data from market researcher GfK.
Flanders, where Poetry Week took place at the same time, witnessed double the usual sales of poetry collections: 103%. Especially the collections nominated for the Herman de Coninck prize, those by Paul Boagaert, Miriam van Hee and Max Temmerman, sold well. Big sellers in the Dutch bookshops were the anthologies of Ahmed Aboutaleb and Arie Boomsma, as well as Domweg gelukkig in de Dapperstraat by C.J. Aarts and M.C. van Etten.
Poetry Week, which was in the theme of Verwondering (wonder) this year, is a Dutch-Felmish collaboration of Poëzieclub, Poetry International Foundation, VSB Poetry Prize, Poëziecentrum, Flanders Stichting Lezen, the Dutch Reading Foundation, Wintertuin, the Dutch Foundation for Litterature, Turing Poetry Competition, Nederlandse Taalunie, Boek.be and the CPNB. This year the Dutch Poetry Slam championships took place during the Poetry Week for the first time.
This article originally appeared in Dutch on NRC Boeken.
Sales image by venimo on Shutterstock
