Famous after death: The effect of a writer's death on book sales

Abstract

In the market for books we investigate whether the death of an author has an impact on the demand for his/her books, that is, we ask whether consumers are affected by factors such as emotions and limited attention, as highlighted in behavioral economics. We use bestseller lists at a weekly level over 30 years (1975–2005) and, by exploiting the panel nature of our data (at author-week level), we implement an Event Study Design to evaluate the impact of a writer's death on the probability of his/her books entering the bestseller list in the period immediately following his/her death. Controlling for individual and time fixed effects and some individual characteristics, we find that a writer's death increases the probability of his/her being on the bestseller list by more than 100%. As a robustness check, we also use a Regression Discontinuity in Time and obtain very similar results. In an attempt to investigate what mechanisms drive consumers’ decisions, we find a greater impact when writers die at an early age, when they are famous writers or when the news is covered extensively. These findings represent suggestive evidence that emotions and media attention are the main drivers of the impact.