Review of 2015: Donaldson is top author, extends record run

There has been a lot of talk lately about author earnings, with the Society of Authors’ (SOA) recent open letter to publishers calling for contract reform the latest blast in an ongoing battle. The SOA’s aim is to make writing more sustainable, and a particuarly salty issue is a widening rich-versus-poor gap. A handful of authors now make the bulk of the money, the argument goes, so publishers tend to focus on those big beasts to the detriment of the midlist.

Whether this is true is debatable (publishers, certainly, would have a differing view). What is not debatable for 2015 is that the authors at the top of the heap are coining it when it comes to Nielsen BookScan sales compared to the rest of the market.

Julia Donaldson and the other 49 authors on the list of top 50 earners of 2015 collectively earned £199m of the £1.51bn sold through the TCM in 2015. There were about 600,000 "author lines" recording sales through BookScan in 2015. This does include thousands upon thousands of jointly authored titles, repition of authors (if the metadata includes different spellings), anonymous writers and books technically authored by a publishing company. A conservative estimate is that there were perhaps around 55,000 "actual" authors hitting the TCM last year. Which means that the top 50 authors of 2015 year (or a mere 0.1%) were responsible for 13% of all earnings. That £199m is a 21% leap on what the top 50 TCM authors sold in 2014, far outdistancing the market’s overall 6.6% rise.

The top 500 authors of the year—ranging from leading light Donaldson to C L Taylor—shifted £495.4m, or just under a third of the market’s overall value. The number of authors who raked in more than £1m increased marginally (121 to 124), but those “BookScan millionaires” earned £288.5m, a12.5% bump on 2014’s—again, a healthy rise above the overall market growth.

Yes, the rich are getting richer. But here is something to mull on. The top 5,000 authors of 2015—Donaldson through to Norman Warren—rang up £866.5m through the tills, 57% of print sales. Warren, the archdeacon emeritus of Rochester and a writer on Christian issues, earned £3,200 through BookScan last year. This means that a sizeable part of the market—£651m, or to put it more evocatively, roughly equivalent to what Penguin Random House, Hachette and HarperCollins combined to earn through the TCM last year—was generated by authors earning low five-figure returns. It is not just the mega-selling authors who generate cash for publishers.

Back to the pinnacle of the author pile and Donaldson, who notched up a sixth straight year of £10m-plus sales through BookScan, adding to her impressive record (J K Rowling is next best, with four consecutive years). With Donaldson, success comes from the depth and breadth of her catalogue, not runaway hits. Her 2015 bestseller was Stick Man (Alison Green), 71st last year by volume, selling 124,000 units for £541,000. Yet she and her illustrators had 89 separate titles hit the full-year 2015 TCM 5,000; only Fiona Watt (61) and James Patterson & Co (44) came close to achieving that feat. Of Donaldson’s 89 titles, 62 sold more than 10,000 units, easily outstripping Watt (33) and Patterson (26) in that regard.

David Walliams makes it two years in a row in second place, cracking the £10m mark for the first time. After his breakout 2012, when his sales shot up 127% to £7.1m, Walliams has remained remarkably consistent, with year-on-year rises of 18%–20% from 2013–15.

Rowling returns to the business end of the charts with her best year since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury, 2007) was released. Alter-ego Robert Galbraith earned almost £1.9m, but the bulk of her sales came from the Jonny Duddle rejacketing of the Harry Potter series in late 2014, and Bloomsbury releasing Jim Kay-illustrated deluxe Potter editions in November. Kay’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with an r.r.p. of £30, was Rowling’s bestseller by value, shifting £1.5m.

Three new entries are in our top 10, led by Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, the writing team behind Michael Joseph’s Ladybird parody range. The two are largely TV scriptwriters (credits include “That Mitchell and Webb Look” and ”The Omid Djalili Show”) but have previously collaborated on a few humour titles, including Bollocks to Alton Towers (Penguin).

Paula Hawkins’ novel was the bestselling début of the year. Well, sort-of: she has published four books under the pseudonym Amy Silver, which collectively sold 371 units in 2014. The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) was one of the fiction standouts of the year, spending a record 27 weeks as Original Fiction number one—and counting.

Arguably the fiction “breakout” was authored by Harper Lee, who recorded her best ever year of sales through the TCM at the tender age of 89. Sales of Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (William Heinemann) topped £4m last year and it was the third-bestselling novel, trailing only E L James’ Grey (Arrow) and Hawkins’ Girl.

Lee is not the oldest member of our Top 50, however. That accolade goes to 92-years-young Judith Kerr, who also posted her best year of sales since records began, thanks to the Sainsbury’s charity title Mog’s Christmas Calamity (HarperCollins Children’s Books).

All in all it was a very good year for print sales, and for those at the top of the author list. Just 10 of the Top 50 had year-on-year TCM value declines (and one of the top 10), by far the lowest that figure has been since The Bookseller started compiling end-of-year author charts in 2009. In 2014, six of the top 10 authors were down on their 2013 efforts, as were 17 of the overall Top 50.

Top 10 authors in 2015:

1. Julia Donaldson, earning £13,854,045

2. David Walliams, £10,967,099

3. J K Rowling, £8,315,667

4. J Hazeley/J Morris, £7,352,534

5. Jamie Oliver, £7,250,232

6. James Patterson, £7,166,337

7. Jeff Kinney, £6,842,231

8. Paula Hawkins, £6,115,022

9. E L James, £5,990,604

10. Harper Lee, £5,798,661

For the full Top 50 chart, see this week's issue of The Bookseller.

 

Prize fighters

Our admittedly subjective look at the sales of the winners of some of Britain’s biggest book prizes underscores the value of a literary gong. Helen Macdonald had an amazing 2014, winning the Samuel Johnson Prize and shifting just under £811,000. Yet with the H is for Hawk (Vintage) paperback out in 2015 and a Costa Book Award (“for” 2014, but awarded in 2015), her sales rose by 56% year-on-year.

Marlon James certainly benefitted from a Booker bounce. In 2014, the hardback of A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld) shifted 894 copies, and his total sales were £26,000; his 2015 year-on-year was an impressive 3,597%. Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (Hamish Hamilton) was shortlisted for the 2014 Booker and won that year’s Goldsmiths Prize. Yet the paperback was released as the book was nominated for the 2015 Baileys Prize and the book sold well after its triumph, eventually earning £657,000.

Louise O’Neill’s taking home the inaugural The Bookseller YA Book Prize for Only Ever Yours (Quercus) helped her post an 81% TCM sales rise, while a Kate Greenaway Award and Carnegie Medal for William Grill and Tanya Landman (respectively), boosted the authors’ sales by 56% (Grill) and 1,230% (Landman).

 

Colouring climbers

It may have escaped your notice, but adult colouring books were kind of a thing in 2015. BookScan’s Handicrafts, Arts and Crafts category, where sales for most colouring books are recorded, rose a massive 167% year on year, to £36.3m, an all-time high since Nielsen records began in 1998.

Our top three colouring book queens, Johanna Basford, Millie Marotta and Emma Farrarons, were responsible for £10.1m, or 28%, of the category’s total. Basford’s £5.2m represented 70% of publisher Laurence King’s 2015 TCM values, while Marotta’s £3.6m meant she earned 53% of Pavilion’s. Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom earned its author 22 Paperback Non-Fiction number ones in 2015.

Richard Merritt is the bestselling author (his totals include collaborations with the likes of Hannah Davies and Claire Scully) in the Michael O’Mara stable of colouring books. Fifth-placed Christina Rose is published by Inverness-based indie Bell & Mackenzie, and earned just under half of the publisher’s 2015 TCM total. Colouring books’ top-selling authors perhaps slightly underplay the genre’s breadth, as many such bestsellers are technically unauthored, including Harry Potter Colouring Book (Studio Press, £1.7m).

 

YouTubers

After the successes of Zoe “Zoella” Sugg’s and Alfie Deyes’ first titles in 2014, publishers signed up a raft of other bright young vloggers, which paid dividends in 2015. Dan Howell and Phil Lester’s The Amazing Book is Not on Fire (Ebury) was the bestselling memoir in BookScan’s Autobiography: The Arts category, outselling traditional celeb books such as Sue Perkins’ Spectacles (Penguin) by a two-to-one ratio, and Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) by three to one.

In fact, four of the top 10 celeb memoirs last year were authored by YouTubers, with Louise “SparkleofGlitter” Pentland, Tyler Oakley and Marcus Butler joining Howell and Lester.

It is difficult to build non-fiction “brand” authors, even those with millions of fans, so what happens next with the book careers of YouTubers will be interesting. Perhaps the Sugg siblings have a leg up on the competition, then. Leading light Zoella writes Young Adult fiction, while Joe “Broella” Sugg’s £1.1m derives from his graphic novel Username: Evie (Hodder).

Joseph “Stampy Cat” Garrett is not in this chart as he is uncredited (through BookScan) on Stampy’s Lovely Book (Egmont) and its associated activity titles, all of which combined to earn £430,000 through the TCM.

 

High-priced

Last year’s £7.95 average selling price was the all-time record in the BookScan era. Meanwhile, the percentage discount off r.r.p. (23.1%) was the lowest in 10 years. If this is an age of not-so-deep discounting, then, let us celebrate the authors who readers do not mind shelling out a bit more for.

Oxford don Peter Frankopan tops the list by a healthy margin with an a.s.p. of £24.95, derived from his provocative The Silk Roads (Bloomsbury), a world history rewritten from a Central Asian perspective. The Silk Roads generated £563,000, and was discounted by a relatively small 16.8%.

With a £500,000 minimum on this chart, the authors here should be well known. Still, it is interesting— and perhaps indicative of the where many of titles were bought: physical bookshops—that many of these authors’ earnings were generated primarily by Christmas hits, including Mary Beard’s SPQR (Profile), Coralie Bickford-Smith’s The Fox and the Star (Particular) and Lars Mytting’s Norwegian Wood (Quercus). Fifth-placed David Hodgson and Nick Von Esmarch may be the unfamiliar entry to some readers; the duo co-authored two guides to “Fallout 4”, the second-bestselling video game of 2015.

 

Graphic novels

Not only did BookScan’s Graphic Novel sector hit an all-time high in 2015 (£26.3m), it did so in style, topping 2014’s high-water mark by almost £6m—or 28.9%.

For the third year in a running, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is tops among graphic novelists, his sales rising 19% on 2014. It is the fourth consecutive year of sales totalling £1.3m or more through the TCM for Kirkman and his artists (frequent collaborators include Tom Moore and Jay Bonansinga).

YouTuber Joe “Broella” Sugg put his name on Username: Evie (Hodder), the runaway smash illlustrated by Amrit Birdi. With sales of £1.1m, it was not only the top graphic novel of 2015—Mark Millar’s Civil War (Panini) is in second place, at a distant £336,000—it is now the second bestseller in the category since records began, trailing only Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s classic Watchmen (DC).

The Manga category impressively outperformed the Graphic Novel market (up 35.5% to £6m), led by Hajime Isayama’s £580,000. Isayama is the creator of the ongoing Attack on Titan series; the 18th volume is due to be published in English by Kondansha in April.

 

Children’s

It shows the strength of the Children’s sector that every single one of the authors in this top 10 are in the overall Top 50—actually, they are all in the top 24.

We have analysed many of these authors previously, so let us look at those we haven’t, starting with Liz Pichon. The Tom Gates creator had an amazing year, up 30% on 2014. She had two new hardbacks in her Scholastic-published series, Yes! No (Maybe . . .) and Top of the Class (Nearly), both of which shifted more than 100,000 units through the TCM.

After three years of declining revenue, Jacqueline Wilson’s sales rose to over £4.1m. She had 11 different titles earn £100,000 or more through the TCM last year, with Katy (Puffin) leading the way, earning £542,000.

A high mover just outside our top 10 is Rachel Reneè Russell. The S&S-published Dork Diaries author’s profile was no doubt boosted by her 2015 World Book Day title How to be a Dork, which shifted 92,000 units, while her 2015 hardback releases, Drama Queen and Puppy Love, combined to sell £647,000. Overall, Russell’s sales shot up 71% year on year, to £2.3m.

Terry Pratchett just misses out on the top 10 despite his final book, The Shepherd’s Crown (Doubleday), being the bestselling YA book of the year by value (£2m).

 

Cookery

A cookery title was the Hardback Non-Fiction number one for 28 of the 53 BookScan weeks in 2015, and it was food blogger and Sainsbury’s heiress Ella Woodward who led the way, with Deliciously Ella (Yellow Kite) taking the crown an impressive 13 times.

But it was not all clean eating, was it? Yes, the Health, Diet & Wholefood Cookery sub-category was the prime generator of growth in cookbooks overall, up a massive 72.4% to just under £15m last year, and its two main proponents are the two breakouts in our top 10: Woodward and Amelia Freer. But there are plenty of the old guard here, led by Jamie Oliver, who rebounded from a poor recent run (by his lofty standards) to pocket £7.3m, up almost a third on 2014. Incidentally, while Oliver’s Everyday Super Food was more than a nod to the clean eating trend, it was categorised in the full-fat Food & Drink: General.

The discrepancy between Si King and Dave Myers’ totals here and the Top 50 is because this chart excludes the hirsute duo’s memoir, The Hairy Bikers: Blood, Sweat and Tyres (Weidenfeld). Nigella Lawson’s Simply Nigella (Chatto, £2m) was a decent comeback, though it was 23% down on her previous outing, 2012’s Nigellissima (Chatto).

 

Sport & celebrities

For the first time since The Bookseller started doing year-end Author Top 10s, we have combined the Celebrity chart with another. Why? Well, partly because we put YouTubers into their own category, but primarily because it was the worst year for the category in 14 years. Just over £18.3m was sold through BookScan’s Autobiography: The Arts, 11.6% down year on year, a total which includes those YouTubers. Stripping out vloggers, leaving only “traditional” celebrities, would see sales fall to around £14.7m. This may be partially down to the shift in what we perceive as a “celebrity”—vloggers and online stars (current healthy food heart-throb Joe Wicks, for example) can be more famous than TV stars—but the celeb memoir category ebbs and flows depending on who happens to be writing their story. If a few A-listers put pen to page this year, Christmas 2016 could be a cracker.

Yet there are a few authors that you would expect to have performed better. Sue Perkins, fresh off the highest-rated “The Great British Bake Off” final, seemed a certainty to hit £1m, but stuttered. Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) disappointed, while Nick Frost’s Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies (Hodder, £110,000) was, let’s not sugar coat it, a dud.