Book sales suffer marginal decline in 2009

04.01.10 Philip Stone in The Bookseller

Book sales fell by just half a percent in 2009, confirming many early-year predictions from within the trade that the cheap price of books would offer resistance to the recession. But sales in high street bookshops suffered more serious falls over the year.

A grand total of £1.752bn was spent on 235.7m books in 2009, down 1.2% year on year in value terms and down just 0.5% by volume. Average selling prices were down 0.7% year on year to £7.43, according to Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market (TCM) data.

However, BookScan's General Retail Market (GRM), which is a good indicator of high street bookshop performance, suffered a 6.9% year on year decline, to £968m. The sharp decline was in part due to Woolworths' collapse at the end of 2008 but the news will come as further confirmation that high street booksellers face a difficult future due to increasing supermarket and internet competition.

Total book sales through BookScan's TCM (which includes the likes of Amazon.co.uk and many other online retailers), fell for the second year in a row. The £1.752bn figure is down 2.6% on 2007 sales—a year in which J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury) hit bookshop shelves.

Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown, who dominate the bestsellers of the year chart (below), were worth a combined £44.6m to the market in 2009. Just shy of seven million books penned by the two US authors were purchased at UK bookshops in 2009—3% of all book sales.

Their success more than made up for decline suffered by "Richard and Judy"-recommended titles. Although sales of titles included within the duo's book club strands on digital TV channel, Watch, did not suffer the same catastrophic decline as the viewing figures, spending on R&J-approved titles was down 52% year on year, to £13.5m.

The R&J bestseller in 2009 was Kate Atkinson's When Will There be Good News? (Black Swan), which sold 457,761 copies across all editions, much lower than the 600,000-plus figures posted in 2009 by both Linwood Barclay's Summer Read, No Time for Goodbye (Orion) and Khaled Hosseini's Book Club recommendation, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury).

The Official UK Top 50 of 2009

Pos/Author surname, first name/Title/Total sales across all editions

1 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 1,298,477
2 The Lost Symbol Brown, Dan 1,278,014
3 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 1,267,496
4 Eclipse Meyer, Stephenie 1,161,815
5 Breaking Dawn Meyer, Stephenie 903,262
6 Guinness World Records 2010 - 610,886
7 This Charming Man Keyes, Marian 500,289
8 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Larsson, Stieg 462,988
9 When Will There be Good News? Atkinson, Kate 457,761
10 My Sister's Keeper Picoult, Jodi 427,460
11 The Associate Grisham, John 408,655
12 Dreams from My Father Obama, Barack 371,517
13 The Host Meyer, Stephenie 365,754
14 Angels and Demons Brown, Dan 361,654
15 The Girl Who Played with Fire Larsson, Stieg 359,935
16 The Return Hislop, Victoria 356,368
17 The Time Traveler's Wife Niffenegger, Audrey 353,528
18 The White Tiger Adiga, Aravind 351,845
19 The Other Hand Cleave, Chris 348,940
20 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Summerscale, Kate 335,721
21 Scarpetta Cornwell, Patricia 321,785
22 Heart and Soul Binchy, Maeve 318,518
23 The Secret Scripture Barry, Sebastian 318,298
24 Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Ant & Dec 316,242
25 Dear Fatty French, Dawn 310,394
26 Doors Open Rankin, Ian 292,702
27 Jade: Fighting to the End Goody, Jade 273,509
28 The Reader Schlink, Bernhard 267,709
29 A Most Wanted Man Le Carre, John 262,649
30 Saturday Night Peter Kay, Peter 258,750
31 Sail Patterson, James 256,564
32 Delia's Happy Christmas Smith, Delia 254,427
33 The Very Hungry Caterpillar Carle, Eric 250,688
34 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Boyne, John 250,283
35 Where's Stig? - 250,214
36 Hard Girls Cole, Martina 245,974
37 Driven to Distraction Clarkson, Jeremy 245,794
38 Fractured Slaughter, Karin 244,550
39 The Official Highway Code - 241,619
40 Once in a Lifetime Kelly, Cathy 241,327
41 Too Close to Home Barclay, Linwood 240,893
42 Unseen Academicals Pratchett, Terry 240,450
43 That's Another Story Walters, Julie 239,755
44 Jamie's America Oliver, Jamie 239,623
45 The Gift Ahern, Cecelia 229,968
46 Beano Annual 2010 - 227,949
47 Jamie's Red Nose Recipes Oliver, Jamie 226,810
48 Remember Me? Kinsella, Sophie 226,580
49 Cross Country Patterson, James 225,057
50 Rumour Has it Mansell, Jill 225,056