Sunday Times 'got it wrong' on White

The Sunday Times moved Oli White's Generation Next (Hodder & Stoughton) to its Children's and Young Adult bestseller chart on Sunday's issue (19th June), after it topped the adult fiction list in the previous Sunday's edition (12th).

Hachette had argued for the book's inclusion in adult fiction, saying that while acquired as YA, the publisher had "reclassified" the novel once the manuscript arrived. The novel, the story of a group of teenagers who develop a new social platform, is the first book by the 21-year-old YouTuber. Its placing in the adult chart gave Generation Next a number one spot, ahead of Peter James's Love You Dead (Macmillan).    

ST literary editor Andrew Holgate told The Bookseller: "We just got it wrong. I realised Amazon classified it as YA, and The Bookseller was doing it, and Nielsen was, so I made the decision [to shift]." He added: "This is the first time I can remember this happening – as I said last week, YA is a tricky area."

White's debut sold 3,269 copies in the past week, a 77% tumble from its 13,184 first-week sales, putting it at number seven on the latest children's chart. Were it to have been included on this week's adult chart, it would have taken second place to Stephen King's End of Watch (Hodder).