Booksellers unwrap Christmas hits and misses

11.12.09 Graeme Neill in The Bookseller

Stephenie Meyer and Guinness World Records have been declared the big winners of this Christmas but Jamie Oliver and Peter Kay are the biggest turkeys.

Earlier this autumn, the publishing list was hailed as one of the strongest in recent years, but the optimism has yet to translate into sales, with only pockets of enthusiasm for traditional fare such as celebrity non-fiction.

Caroline Mileham, head of books at Play.com, said: "I don't think the books were there and customers haven't been ready to shop during the autumn. Customers seem to be holding on for deals."

Jamie Oliver's Jamie's America has been regarded as one of the biggest disappointments this festive season, with sales failing to match last year's success of Ministry of Food.
Steph Bateson, books buying manager at Asda, said: "I don't know if they got the television show 100% right. It was a really good documentary but it wasn't really a cookery show."

Retailers said celebrity memoirs were also disappointing, with Peter Kay singled out. His 2006 memoir, The Sound of Laughter, was the biggest book of the season but his follow-up, Saturday Night Peter, has struggled to repeat those level of sales.

One retailer said: "It was laughable in terms of size [the £20 hardback has 272 pages]. It massively underperformed." Another said: "There was very little publicity and it was extremely thin."

Other celebrity titles that disappointed the trade were by Jack Dee, Nick Hornby, Justin Lee Collins, Terry Wogan and Dara O'Briain. The memoir of Cheryl Gascoigne, ex-wife of footballer Paul, caused derison among retailers.
One said: "What were they thinking? There has been some barrel scraping with some of this year's books but that one was a classic. Who was going to buy it?"

Bertrams' buying manager Caroline Farrow said: "There has been so much [celebrity] publishing that it could be the start of a long term decline. There have been so many of these types of books over a short period of time. And with many of them, the books haven't even told the full life story."

Asda's Bateson added: "A lot of what has happened with sales is to do with the recession. People have maybe got some celebrity fatigue [but] the books have become more and more diluted. Unless there's a big new celebrity then I'm not sure what next Christmas will bring.

Fiction and 'Top Gear' Christmas hits:

The Top Gear tie-ins and perennial Christmas favourite Guinness World Records were the trade's favourite titles this autumn, along with a resurgent fiction list.

Retailers were surprised by the enduring popularity of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Amy Worth, head of book buying at Amazon.co.uk, said: "Twilight has been in the top five the whole autumn, something it was doing this time last year." Play.com's Caroline Mileham added: "There's probably a long way to go. Little, Brown has been very canny with releasing special editions."

Worth identified Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest as fiction hits, titles that were also mentioned by other retailers.

While Oliver did not fare as well as in previous years, retailers hailed Delia's Happy Christmas as a top cookery title. Rachel Russell, business unit director for books at W H Smith, said: "It was an absolute cracker and the best bit of publishing this Christmas."

Retailers agreed that 2009 lacked a quirky surprise hit, like 2006's Where's Bin Laden? But the trade was taken aback by the success of Frankie Boyle's My Shit Life So Far, which bucked the trend of underperforming comic memoirs.

Asda's Bateson said: "People love him or hate him, but he was published into a niche where his fans were sure to buy the book." Other popular celebrity books were Sean Smith's Cheryl Cole biography and "X-Factor" stars JLS title. Another contender for the quirky hit of the season was Where's Stig? but retailers said its success was due to the continuing popularity of any titles related to BBC's 'Top Gear' programme.