succès d'estime

Walter Minton, he felt convinced, had resigned himself to Putnam's other Nabokov books earning no more than a succès d'estime, and so had projected limited sales, offered modest advances, and advertised little.

1993, Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, →ISBN, page 518

The surreal Being John Malkovich, for instance, was pretty far down the highest-grossing list, but it was a succès d'estime (it showed up on most critics' lists of the year's best movies), as was the stylish and often grisly (far more violent than the average animated movie) Japanise animated production, Princess Monoke.

2012, Gardner Dozois, The Mammoth Book of Best New SF, →ISBN

In the literary world he was rapidly gaining renown: there had been the succès d'estime of his first three books, and then the publication of Austerlitz earlier that year. In the classroom—where David Lambert and I were two of sixteen students—Sebald was unassuming, almost shy, and asked that we call him Max.

2013 March 22, Emily Temple, “'He Had No Set Assignments': Students' Recollections of Authors as Professors”, in The Atlantic