Books and bookmakers

Just read this quite amazing piece on thebookseller.com. It seems up to £500k are spent every year on literary bets in the UK and Ireland. The bets concern the winners of literary prizes, but also the sales figures of such and such a title.

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power... expects a total stake of about £100,000 on all book-related bets, such as unit sales of Peter Andre's biography versus Katie Price's, or sales of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, with £50,000 of the total gambled on literary awards, and £25,000 of this on the Man Booker alone. Spokesperson Ken Robertson recalls that Paddy Power's largest literary loss so far was at the 2005 Man Booker, when the bookie offered unfavourable odds of 8/1 on eventual winner John Banville's The Sea—losing £17,000 in the process.

Wonder if the Bisto's in there...

(pic (c) Vincent Gerard)