20.01.14 | Philip Stone and Tom Tivnan - The Bookseller
If there is a consistent thread in this, our seventh edition of rounding up the top-selling authors of the year, it is that backlist matters. Yes, many names on the chart are 2013-specific, the result of zeitgeisty bestsellers (Mimi Spencer, Gillian Flynn), Christmas gifting (Sir David Jason, Harry Redknapp) or a record-breaking hit (Sir Alex Ferguson). Yet the majority have built a following over time, with the bulk of their revenue coming from older titles.
Exhibit number one is our number one: Julia Donaldson (pictured aboveleft). The Gruffalo author’s £12.8m through Nielsen BookScan means she has surpassed the £10m mark for the fourth consecutive year, just the second author to do so after J K Rowling accomplished that feat from 2000–2003. Dan Brown (2004-06) and Jamie Oliver (2010-12) have had three £10m-plus years in a row, while James Patterson (right) has twice had consecutive eight-digit years (2006–07 and 2010–11). A hefty 85% (£10.9m) of Donaldson’s sales were backlist (published before January 2013), but that figure also includes reissues. Her original 2013 publications—The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat (Puffin), Sugarlump and the Unicorn, Wake Up Lydia Lou and Goat Goes to Playgroup (all Macmillan)—sold £483,000, or 3.8% of her total.
The Bookseller will run its 2013 e-book bestsellers chart in the 7th February issue (the first date all data could be collated), overall “e” and “p” combined data for authors is, at the moment, unattainable. Thus the Top 50 list is print-only (still 75% of the market, mind) and thus has a greater share of digital-resistant genres, such as children’s.
That children’s is strong is not unusual in our year-end author charts, even in pre-digital years. It is growing: almost a third of revenue generated by the Top 50 was from the children’s sector (£63.9m, or 32.8%), the greatest percentage in author chart history. The next best was a Stephenie Meyer-led 2009, when children’s accounted for 31.4% of Top 50 authors’ revenue.
Much of the fiction market has migrated to digital, yet the category remains resilient at the top of the table. Just over 38% of the Top 50 authors’ sales were adult fiction, compared to 23.9% of the print market as a Inferno (£6.2m) were 47% off what his previous effort, The Lost Symbol, earned in 2009. Lee Child (left-AP) had an excellent 2013, up 28% year on year, helped by the Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher film and a series rejacketing by Transworld, which lifted his backlist a staunch 90%.Much much more at The Bookseller
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