Illustrator chart: Ross biggest draw in 2015

Tony Ross was the biggest selling children’s illustrator in the UK in 2015, with value sales of his books totalling more than £9m, according to data from Nielsen BookScan.

Although illustrators are not always listed on Nielsen, The Bookseller has compiled a chart of the most successful based on the top 500 Children’s titles with identifiable illustrators from Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) data. Of those top 500 titles, 178 had identifiable illustrators within the Picture Books, Children’s Fiction and Pre-School & Early Learning categories.

Ross had 14 books in the top 500 last year, selling 1,772,050 units for a total of £9.3m. His most successful book was Grandpa’s Great Escape, written by David Walliams (HarperCollins Children’s). He came in ahead of Axel Scheffler, arguably the most renowned picture book illustrator working in the UK at the moment, who had nearly twice as many books in the TCM as Ross (27), but slightly lower unit sales (1,680,669) and value sales (£6.5m). Scheffler’s biggest-selling book last year was 2009 Scholastic title Stick Man, written by Julia Donaldson.

Working with Walliams and Donaldson was also profitable for Quentin Blake (sixth in our chart with overall sales of £2.4m), whose bestselling title in 2015 was Mr Stink, penned by Walliams in 2009. Lydia Monks, whose biggest hit in 2015 was The Singing Mermaid, a co-creation with Donaldson (Macmillan Children’s Books), came in eighth, with sales of £1.9m.

However, neither Blake nor Monks were quite as successful as Jeff Kinney and Liz Pichon, who were the third and fourth-bestselling illustrators in the UK last year respectively. Kinney’s unit sales were lower than Scheffler (1,198,947) but value sales were higher (£6.7m) thanks to the Wimpy Kid series’ (Puffin) higher retail price. Pichon, whose bestselling book was Yes! No (Maybe...), the ninth book in the Tom Gates series (Scholastic), racked up sales of 686,615 units from nine editions in the top 500, meaning she was worth £3.8m to the book industry in 2015.

Picture-book stalwart Judith Kerr had a stellar year, coming in fifth position, thanks in part to Mog’s Christmas Calamity, a charity title created by HarperCollins Children’s Books exclusively for Sainsbury’s. Mog’s Christmas Calamity was only one of two picture books to top the Official UK Top 50 in 2015, after Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter’s £1 World Book Day (WBD) title The Dinosaur That Pooped a Lot! (Red Fox), illustrated by Garry Parsons, claimed the number one spot in the week of WBD.

The success of The Dinosaur That Pooped a Lot! helped Parsons to place ninth in our list. His five books in the top 500 were worth £929,292 in 2015, from unit sales of 333,167.

Chris Riddell, the current Children’s Laureate, charts in 15th position. His sales were worth £442,882 to the industry last year, and his bestselling book was Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen (Macmillan Children’s).

One name that will be less familiar to readers is Irina Maununen, who illustrated the self-published sleeper hit by Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin, The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall to Sleep. Her work on both the self-published and Puffin version of the book made her the 19th most successful illustrator in 2015, with value sales of £638,881 and unit sales of 99,455. Maununen was more successful than Oliver Jeffers (20th), who was worth £433,999 to the book industry in 2015, from unit sales of 91,369.

Overall, there were more successful male illustrators in the top 20 (13) than women (7), and nearly three-quarters (14) were UK residents. Kinney and Carle are both based in the US; Maununen is located in Sweden; and Jeffers, Northern Irish by birth, lives in New York.

Jim Kay, the artist behind the illustrated edition of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, would have featured in the chart had it been ranked by value sales. His copy sales place him just outside the list, in 21st, but he was the ninth most successful illustrator in value terms.