Julia Donaldson supplants JK Rowling to become the UK’s all-time top author by volume

The Gruffalo has taken a bite out of Harry Potter as Julia Donaldson surges past JK Rowling to become Britain’s bestselling author since accurate records began – in terms of units sold.

Donaldson shifted just over 3.1 million copies in 2024 through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, moving over two million more units than Rowling during the past 12 months. This puts The Gruffalo co-creator’s lifetime sales at 48.6 million units, versus Rowling’s 48 million.

Rowling, however, remains by some distance the all-time leader in value, having earned £390.5m through the TCM to date, £150m greater than Donaldson. The two writers and Jamie Oliver (£208.7m) are the only authors to have crossed BookScan’s £200m threshold. 

As revealed in our Review of the Year: Authors, in 2024 Donaldson once again retained her crown as the UK’s bestselling author. Over the past decade, Donaldson has routinely outsold Rowling in volume terms by 1.5 million to two million units via BookScan, chipping away at what previously seemed like Rowling’s insurmountable volume lead. Donaldson should now win the race to be the first author to sell more than 50 million copies through the TCM, a mark she will most likely hit in late summer this year.

Donaldson is also on course to cross the £250m TCM barrier in 2025; with a bit of a following wind, Rowling should become first author to burst through the £400m threshold this year.  

The two authors’ sales have been remarkably consistent throughout the years but it also helps that their careers roughly coincide with BookScan’s launch in 1998: series opener Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) debuted in June 1997, and, while Donaldson has been published since 1993, her sales kicked into overdrive with the launch of her and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s The Gruffalo (Macmillan Children’s) in 1999.

But they are two different (fantastic) beasts at the tills. Though she backlists extremely well, Rowling has achieved a good portion of her sales through some the fastest-selling titles in history and a string of the biggest publishing events of the 21st Century. She has had 13 different editions sell over one million copies through BookScan, 11 of her books have exceeded £10m. The original hardback edition of 2003’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury) is her top-seller on both counts, chalking up just under £34m on 3.1 million copies.

For Donaldson, it is a slower and steadier pace. She has had three titles hit seven figures in volume, with the 1999 paperback of The Gruffalo leading on 1.47 million copies. That edition is also her top earner, at £7.4m, with no other above £5m. But Donaldson has had a record 110 books crest the TCM 100,000-copy mark to Rowling’s 63; 179 Donaldson works have moved more that 50,000 units via BookScan to Rowling’s 92.

Donaldson has also published 430 more editions than Rowling, no surprise given the model in Donaldson’s picture book wheelhouse usually means multiple new titles per year which can be spun into a variety of formats. The Gruffalo has had 156 different editions record sales through BookScan, including felt flaps, lift-the-flaps, finger puppet, jigsaw, sticker, magnet, soundbook, and push, pull and slide versions.  

Will Donaldson’s slower and steadier pace be able to close the gap to win the all-time TCM value race? Well, if sales patterns over the last three years were to continue, in which Donaldson has shifted an average of £4.9m more than Rowling per year, Donaldson would top the all-time chart in a little over 30 years. We’ll check back some time in 2055.