Mind over matters

Last year, in this space, I wrote about the magazine’s 6,000th edition, reflecting on how the origins of The Bookseller still inform its approach to the book business. One year on, and since it is the Wellbeing Focus in this week’s issue, I should ask, how is everyone? This year has not been easy, with the cost of living crisis, I suspect, contributing to a market that continues to look subdued, even if it has been bookmarked by two record-breakers, Prince Harry’s Spare and Alice Oseman’s fifth Heartstopper. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a real disruptor, while this week’s acquisition by Penguin Random House of Hay House shows that the trend of the big getting bigger shows no sign of abating.

On the books, it is worth recalling how the Prince Harry title, well published by Transworld, began the year mired in leaks (this time in Spain, not, as with Omid Scobie’s Endgame, in Holland), with pundits suggesting that the tabloid headlines immediately generated by the book would undermine sales. Reader, they did not. Instead Spare became the fastest selling non-fiction book since those records began, and was this week named Amazon’s biggest book of the year (it was also the sixth most read, based on Kindle and Audible data).

Here are books that arrive with a fandom attached, and a message, and speak to a larger societal shift, partly but not wholly driven by the visibility provided by social media

Meanwhile, after she picked up Illustrator of the Year at this year’s British Book Awards (now open for entries for 2024), Oseman continues to rise, with Heartstopper Volume 5 (Hodder Children’s) the fastest selling graphic novel, easily claiming her first Official UK Top 50 number one. What makes Oseman so interesting is how she represents real change in the format, subject-matter and audience. Here are books that arrive with a fandom attached, and a message, and speak to a larger societal shift, partly but not wholly driven by the visibility provided by social media. BookTok was not new in 2023, but its integration with and amplification of the trade and its books remains a stand-out trend.

In this respect, Oseman is part of a progressive history, which is also explored in Silver Moon co-founder Jane Cholmeley’s book, A Bookshop of One’s Own, which recounts the 17-year journey of the women’s bookshop. This is a tradition of providing customer choice as well as advocacy. As Cholmeley tells my colleague, deputy editor Benedicte Page: “I would claim to be a free speech advocate and the role of the bookseller is to make available the points of view, and the role of the customer is to read and make up their own mind.”

The Bookseller was founded to help the trade sell more books. We might argue that everything else that is not about doing that is noise. But I wouldn’t want to be too dismissive. In almost all areas of the sector, from AI to celebrity, there is a tension in how we best deliver on the challenge of nurturing and growing the market in a complicated and polarised world.

What we do really matters, but over 2023 we also heard how it can take its toll. As the onus shifts to booksellers to make Christmas happen, let’s remember that although this is a business of the mind, we need to look after the body and the spirit too.