How Emma Donoghue Won The Adaptation Industry Game

“Room” is known to be Emma Donoghue’s most successful creation. The book was created by the right person at the right time. Donoghue’s ability to know how the adaptation industry works, knowledge of how to network, and her ability to present her ideas and communicate with others is the reason why she was able to reach her success.

To understand how “Room” was able to build an adaptation, one must first understand where the idea of the story came from. In April 2008 Elisabeth Fritzl was found by Austrian police officers in her father’s basement. Over the twenty-four years of her imprisonment, Fritzl was forced to bear seven of her father’s children. Shortly after Emma Donoghue learned the news, she entertained the idea of creating a similar story from a different perspective. In a 2009 interview with The Irish Times, Donoghue said, “If such a story of being born into captivity were told from the child’s point of view, I thought, it would not be a horror or sob story but a journey from one world to another.”

Donoghue would eventually put her book in an auction for publishers and sold it to “Picador” for $250,000 in the United Kingdom (the rights were also extended to Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand). “Little Brown and Company” bought “Room” for $1.2 million in the United States. HarperCollins also published the book in Canada. “Room” was first published in August 2010 and would sell over two million copies in forty-two languages.

Marketing Director of “Little Brown and Company,” Heather Fain said in an NPR interview, 'In a lot of ways, the greatest marketing tool we have in publishing and probably will never change is word of mouth.” This applies to “Room” because the publisher would begin to propagate the novel by sending around 6,000 advanced copies to different bloggers, librarians, and reviewers. The publisher would also take Emma Donoghue and her book to “BookExpo,” an annual event where publishers attempt to collaborate with booksellers. As Donoghue was presenting “Room” to the attendees, she was able to capture the attention of Sarah Nelson, book editor of Oprah’s “O” magazine who would read the novel and give it a positive review in her medium.

Donoghue’s “Room” promotion would increasingly grow when she announced on her book tour that her novel was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, a prestigious bookmaker award based in the United Kingdom with a $60,000 prize and global recognition for the book . Literary awards played a large role in the promotion because the novel would win several awards in different countries. In Canada, Donoghue won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Libris Award and several others. In the United Kingdom, the book would win the Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the W. H. Smith Paperback of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. In America, the book received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Indie Choice Award for Adult Fiction. “Room” also received several other titles from The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Week Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Amazon.ca and more.

Due to the success of the novel, Donoghue was able to pursue the option of creating a film adaption for it, but she took a rather unconventional path to get there. First, Donoghue said in a “Variety” interview, “I started writing the script even before the book was published. This way, when I was talking about filmmakers I could say, ‘I’m not asking you to hire me unseen, here’s a script. Let’s go on from there.’” This indicates that she was indeed the screenwriter for her film and that her intention for promoting the book was to eventually create an adaptation for it. Donoghue rejected several directors until she came across a ten-page letter from Lenny Abrahamson. She recognized his ability to comprehend her book and would sell the rights to Abrahamson’s company, “Element.” Donoghue also had an influence on how “A24” would distribute the film. Creating the trailer was a difficult task because she did not want to give anything away, especially the escape, but “A24” noted that it had to be upbeat because the purpose is not to give the audience fear. “A24” would also promote the movie by sending posters, banners, standees, and loop trailers to bookstores, creating a website and trailer for the movie, and by sending small posters and bookmarks to the American Booksellers Association members as part of their Red Box Mailing.

“Room” would once again win many awards internationally, but a lot of the success came from actress Brie Larson’s skill. In the United States, the adaptation won in the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, AFI Awards, the Aspen Filmfest and others. In the United Kingdom, the movie won awards from the BAFTA Awards, the Empire Awards, the Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards, and others. In Norway, the film won from the Amanda Awards. In Canada, the movie won in the Canadian Screen Awards and the Available Lights Film Festival.

The success of the adaptation allowed Donoghue to create a tie-in for the book. In 2016 “Room” would increase its sales and move from the No. 24 spot in USA Today’s Best Selling Books list to the No. 7 spot. The tie-in would also include an audible version which has over 9,000 reviews on Amazon with a 4.3-star rating.

Emma Donoghue’s “Room” was simply a novel created at the right time. After a horrible event discovered on the news, Donoghue was able to introduce a new idea to the situation and catch public attention. Donoghue did not enter the adaptation industry blindly; she had a creative idea with a vision for exactly what she wanted that idea to produce. This ultimately led her to international success and the peak of her career.