The most well-known rumor about the Nobel Prize in Literature won by South Korean Han Kang this year is that the award carries a “curse” that affects most of the winners. Some suffered a tragic fate, or at least their work suffered from the pressures of the award. However, there is another important actor in the literary industry that can be considered affected by this unique curse: publishers.

Cursed writers. Let’s start by clearing up the mystery: No, there is no “curse” tormenting Nobel winners, but it is true that many of them have unusual endings. Harry Martinson, who was awarded the prize in 1974, was a member of the Swedish Academy, the organization was accused of cheating and he eventually committed suicide. Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pablo Neruda, Luigi Pirandello, and André Gide died less than seven years after receiving this award. The Nobel Prize places the writer in a position of public scrutiny, which does not please writers who are jealous of their privacy, such as Elfriede Jelinek or Herta Müller, and there is also a belief that it causes the writer to rely on his own fame rather than rely on it. once you have it, write down anything on the topic (although writers like Gabriel García Márquez have amply demonstrated that this assumption, too, is a myth).

Other curse. But there is also a shadow hanging over publishers who publish Nobel Prize winners, and it has nothing to do with unsolved mysteries. In fact, they often obey a very ordinary and very common curse: the laws of the market, with big publishers filling their catalogs with checkbooks and small publishers competing with their scales for a name that will be mentioned in just a few days. It was previously almost unknown to the public. There are a few very important examples.

Jon Fosse and De Conatus. De Conatus was a small, young streamer who, at just seven years old, picked 2023 winner Jon Fosse. Despite the lack of commercial hooks, they published the ‘Trilogy’ and the four-volume ‘Septología’. However, on the day the Nobel Prize was announced, publishing giant Penguin Random House announced that it would publish all of his narrative works. Although De Conatus has owned the rights to the works in its catalog for 10 years since its establishment in 2017, this move by Random House prevented it from growing in this direction.

Non-commercial writers. Reacting to Penguin Random House’s announcement, Silvia Bardelás, one of De Conatus’ editors, told El País: “It was very difficult for us to make this happen. [a Fosse] “To the public” and “Fosse is not a writer for Penguin, but the people who move the publishing market decided it that way. He will always remain an independent publishing writer.” So there’s a bit of editorial gluttony involved in this acquisition, rather than a search for a writer who fits each company’s editorial philosophy. The losers, as always, are the little ones.

Louise Glück and Visor. Similar excitement arose in 2020 in the case of Louise Glück, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020. The Valencian publishing house Pre-Textos had published seven of his eleven books over the course of fourteen years. However, the author’s representative agency unilaterally contacted Visor, another small publisher specializing in poetry, and offered the rights. Here we enter the tactics of another important player in the publishing business: in this case, the agent Andrew Wylie, known as the Jackal for his negotiation tactics and leading famous writers such as Martin Amis, Jorge Luis Borges or Salman Rushdie.

First, take that money from me. According to what representatives of both publishers told ‘El Mundo’, Wylie decided to terminate the contract with Pre-Textos due to the dispute regarding the illustration and the delay in payments. They offered their rights to Visor and it was accepted, but the controversy stems from the assumption that small publishers behave according to relative ethics: Visor called Pre-Textos to tell him about Wylie’s move, but he eventually accepted the trade. This incident has been on the agenda of the Spanish publishing industry for several weeks, but the market impact of a poet like Glück is not significant enough to create a wave that goes beyond the occasional anger between two small publishers.

Han Kang and Rat. But there are also more cases of small publishers seeing the status quo shaken when they publish (or publish) a Nobel Prize-winning work. This year’s winner, Han Kang, also has a convoluted publishing history: translator Sunme Yoon read ‘The Vegetarian’ and was so impressed that she decided to translate it into Spanish. He persuaded the Argentinian publisher Bajo la Luna to publish the book in English and with the Booker Prize in 2012, four years before the author became internationally known. The domino effect of the translation did not prevent the author’s sudden publication date in our language and continued with the purchase of the rights by the small publishing house Rata.

Random House Again. However, Rata could not do better even after publishing the author’s other books such as ‘Actos humano’ and ‘Blanco’. Enciclopedia Catalana Group closed Rata when editor Iolanda Batallé was appointed director of the Institut Ramon Llull, which owned Rata, in 2018. No one renewed the author’s rights, and Batallé fought to get a large group such as Penguin Random House to acquire them. It will now be this publisher that will continue to publish the Nobel winner, closing the circle of big publishers that hold the most important prize winners in the industry.

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