Word of mouth
Initially, Littell thought that his book would sell around three to five thousand copies. Éditions Gallimard, his publishing house, was more optimistic and decided to print 12,000 copies. Word of mouth and the enthusiastic reviews soon catapulted sales to such an extent that Gallimard had to stop publishing the latest "Harry Potter" novel in order to meet the demand for "The Kindly Ones", which ended up selling more than 700,000 copies in France by the end of 2007. Littell was finally given French citizenship.