Digital Era Fails to put Readers Off

january 3 issue- The Sydney Morning Herald Digital Edition. To subscribe for $4.50 a week, visit http://smh.com.au/digitaledition.

Bestsellers list Books for the young dominate 

Susan Wyndham -Literary editor 

Young people are still avid readers despite digital distractions, with children’s and teen books dominating the 2014 bestsellers list and giving the book industry a happy Christmas .

Most popular book of the year was The 52-Storey Treehouse, fourth in a fantasy adventure series by Australian author Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton, with sales of 232,900. Earlier books in the series came in at 14 and 15, giving the team dream sales of almost 500,000.

American Jeff Kinney ran a close second with 221,800 sales of The Long Haul, ninth in his series Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

The 2012 teen romance The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was the year’s true bestseller, boosted by a film adaptation, hitting No. 3 and No. 12 (a film tie-in edition) for a total of 306,800.

Also lifted by film versions were the adult thriller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, with two editions selling 276,700, and The Book Thief, Australian Markus Zusak’s 2005 debut novel set in Nazi Germany.

Australia’s Richard Flanagan had the literary hit of the year: The Narrow Road to the Deep North was second among Australian titles (after The 52-Storey Treehouse), second among fiction (after Gone Girl) and sixth on the overall list.

The novel about Australian prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway doubled its local sales to 127,300 after winning the Man Booker Prize in September.

Flanagan’s finely crafted novel squeezed in among four Minecraft construction handbooks . Another Australian, Matthew Reilly, continued his run of best-selling thrillers with The Great Zoo of China, the third Australian title at 106,100.

Jamie Oliver remained the foodies’ darling with four best-selling cookbooks, battling Australians Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar for Life (96,600) and chef Pete Evans’s two books. The top sport book was sports commentator Ray Warren’s co-written autobiography The Voice.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard’s memoir My Story (62,300) was the clear frontrunner among Australian political books, followed by The Book of Paul, a collection of Keating’s scathing wit (13,200), John Howard’s The Menzies Era (12,700) and Bob Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister (10,800).

Nielsen BookScan, which compiles the bestseller lists, reports national book sales increased 2.2 per cent to 55.4 million in 2014, their value growing 2 per cent to $937m. The figures do not include e-books or selfpublished books, which both grew in the past 12 months, but children still prefer the tactile and visual pleasure of printed books.

This is good news for an industry that recorded a drop in sales in 2013, assaulted by online bookseller Amazon, store closures and discounting.

The Australian bookstore chain Dymocks reports 30 per cent growth in sales of children’s books since 2010. Managing director Steve Cox said: ‘‘ We have seen sustained double-digit growth in children’s book sales month after month for over a year now.’’

Sophie Higgins, Dymocks’ national buying manager, credited ‘‘ the impact of strong local content being produced by Australian authors for children and tweens ... and books based on gaming franchises such as Minecraft.’’

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