Faber and Transworld dominate e-book sales, says Foyles

29.06.10 | Victoria Gallagher in The Bookseller

E-books from Transworld and Faber are dominating the charts at Foyles, and doing so largely because of the bibliographic data provided by the publishers, the retailer claims.

At yesterday's (28th June) Inpress Digital Conference, held at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London, Julia Kingsford, head of marketing at Foyles, revealed the top ten selling e-books at Foyles since November 2009.

The chart was topped by The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Doubleday/Transworld), and also included titles from stablemate authors Dan Brown (Bantam), John O'Farrell (Black Swan) and Terry Pratchett (Corgi). Faber also scored well, although only one - Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies - had made it into the top 10.

Kingsford explained these two publishers, through metadata, had provided more bibliographic information with e-books making it easier to sell them.

"The publishers did a really really good job of making the e-books, making it easier for the retailer to sell and making it easier for the customer to buy," she said.

The main exceptions to this were two Booker Prize winning novels: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate), which picked up the award last year, and Yann Martel's Life of Pi (Canongate), which received the accolade in 2002.

Kingsford urged publishers to build on the number of titles available digitally, saying there was still an "awful lot of room" in the market. "The more smaller publishers that can make their titles available the happier we'll be," she said.

Foyles e-book sales still only account for 1-2% of the retailers overall value sales. Despite this Kingsford said she was "incredibly excited" about the e-market and said the future of bookselling would be about allowing people to read books however they want to access them.

However, she added: "We are very much of the feeling we haven't reached a tipping point yet... we haven't had that iPod moment yet."
More including Foyle's top ten .