Keyes tops the 'hot 100' as paperbacks feel the R&J pinch

13.01.10 Philip Stone and Philip Jones in The Bookseller

The 100 bestselling paperbacks published in 2009 accounted for 7.6% of all book sales last year, and took just over £84m through UK book retailer tills, according to Nielsen BookScan data. But this was down on last year's figures when the "hot 100" brought in sales of £97.5m.

Fiction was the dominant genre accounting for 77 titles and generating revenue of £69.9m, down from £78,8m last year. Non-fiction generated sales of £11.3m (£15.5m in 2008), while children's paperbacks brought in £2.9m (£3.2m in 2008).

Marian Keyes was the number one with a 490,770 sale for This Charming Man (Penguin) in 2009. In 2008, Lindwood Barclay topped the list with No Time for Goodbye, which sold a massive 643,225 copies that year.

Total paperback sales last year (not just those published in 2009) were down just 0.1% on 2008, but despite the stalwart sales for works by some of the biggest brands in fiction, and some fantastic sales for relative newbies, there was a 2.3% decline in paperback fiction sales, which was undoubtedly due to the decline in influence of Richard & Judy. If you were to strip out R&J’s influence from the 2008 and 2009 pb figures, then paperback sales last year would be up around half a percent. Eight of R&J’s 2009 recommendations make the hot 100, down from 11 in 2008’s comparative list, while sales of R&J’s recommended titles fell by 50% year on year.

As reported yesterday, Transworld saw the most entries in the hot 100 paperbacks of 2009. A total of 16 different titles published by Transworld in paperback during 2009 - written by 13 different authors - took more than £13.3m through UK book retailer tills last year.