Children’s helps Sainsbury’s book sales rise 7.5%

Sainsbury’s has revealed its book sales grew 7.5% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2016, with its growth in total retail sales a more modest 0.8%.

Head of music and books Pete Selby said he was confident that Sainsbury’s would enjoy a “positive” 2017 in terms of book sales: “Our Christmas trade capped off another stellar year of growth for books within Sainsbury’s and gives us encouragement that we are set for another really positive year.”

Selby said its bestsellers in the run-up to Christmas were David Walliams’ The Midnight Gang (HC Childrens) and Jeff Kinney’s Double Down (Puffin), claiming that one in five purchases of the kids’ pair was completed at Sainsbury’s. He added that it had “considerable success with the more traditional and humorous end of the gifting market”, with adult fiction sales predominantly in paperback.

Selby said some high-profile hardbacks “fell a little short of expectations” this year; last month he warned the market for celebrity memoirs was “particularly challenging”, claiming the industry was not adjusting to waning demand. “In many cases, the advances paid . . . will never possibly be justified in terms of over-the-counter sales/space,” he said.

“And yet despite clear evidence that customers are choosing to disengage from this market, a lot of good money is clearly still being thrown after bad. Alongside trying to chase early Christmas gifting sales in September, the industry is in danger of artificially deflating the market. Based on the shopping habits [of ] our customers, we will take a different approach on how we cut our cloth in 2017.”

Yet the retailer, which has 1,374 outlets in the UK, gained ground elsewhere. It shifted more than a quarter of a million Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups (Michael Joseph) titles in the fourth quarter; its sales of The GCHQ Puzzle Book (Michael Joseph) were only bettered by two retailers nationally; and its sales of Guinness World Records 2017 were up 26% on its predecessor, Selby said. He added: “We sold our 200,000th copy in 2017 of [Paula Hawkins’] The Girl on the Train over Christmas, and saw incredible sales in the ‘Christmas Paperback’ sub-genre. Dilly Court’s The Christmas Card (HarperCollins) led the march, with over 20,000 copies sold.”

The 7.5% growth figure is from statistics that preclude the sales of Mog’s Christmas Calamity by Judith Kerr (HC Children’s) in 2015— 448,447 copies have been sold to date for £1,345,248, according to Nielsen BookScan. The Sainsbury’s exclusive tied into its Christmas ad campaign, with all profits donated to Save the Children. Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe has not ruled out bringing Mog back for future Christmas campaigns, with the initial advert garnering some 37 million views online.

“If you look at the YouTube views, and the [fact that] people actually took time out to look at a piece of advertising, then I suspect Mog was not only our most successful campaign ever, but also the most successful for a British supermarket as well,” Coupe told Marketing Week. “You can draw your own conclusions [on whether Mog will return], but I can say we were very pleased. So let’s wait and see.”