'War Horse' Film Turns Book Into Bestseller in Britain January 27, 2012, 11:51 am Michael Morpurgo's novel "War Horse" was published in 1982. Over the next 25 years, about 50,000 copies were sold. "It simply was not a book that anyone really knew about or cared about," the author once noted in an interview. But since the release of Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated film version in Britain two weeks ago, the book has sold more than 60,000 copies there, BBC News reported. The novel, about a farm boy and his beloved horse enmeshed in the horrors of World War I, was made into an award-winning play using puppets in 2007. Egmont Press, the publisher of the novel, said it had sold about 950,000 copies between the opening of the play and last fall. The play is still running in London and New York, and productions are planned for Toronto and Melbourne. This week, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture. Movie versions, of course, always boost book sales, but the burst of interest in this case has enabled the book to monopolize the No. 1 sales spot in Britain for the past couple of weeks.