Review of the Year 2019: Top illustrators hold firm in annual chart

Tony Ross is once again top of The Bookseller’s chart of the bestselling children’s illustrators, with 2.9 million books sold for £18.5m in 2019. A record year for author David Walliams resulted in an eye-popping year for Ross, with an 11.6% boost for the illustrator on his 2018 value. Walliams and Ross produced three kids’ novels in 2019 (taking the Children’s category top three in one fell swoop); spent 13 weeks in the overall UK Top 50 number one; and notched up their third Christmas Number One, with The Beast of Buckingham Palace. Fing and The World’s Worst Teachers also both sold upwards of 450,000 copies apiece. 

Before we get into the nitty-gritty: the small print. To compile the illustrator chart, The Bookseller looks at the top 1,000 titles from the Nielsen BookScan categories Children’s & YA Fiction, Picture Books and Pre-school, and Children’s Non-Fiction, and manually adds the illustrators’ names to any uncredited illustrated works. 

Axel Scheffler also improved year on year, his value increasing 8% to £9.03m. With long-term collaborator Julia Donaldson, Scheffler’s strength lies in a consistently strong backlist. Scheffler may have had just two titles in the overall top 100 for 2019—the Donaldson-authored The Smeds and the Smoos and Zog—compared with Ross’ seven, yet his title count in the kids’ top 1,000 was 46, versus Ross’ 28, and Scheffler’s combined volume of 1.9 million books sold was 
two-thirds that of the number one illustrator.

The top four remained identical year on year, with Rachel Wells and the sales firepower of the That’s Not My… series rising into fifth. Jeff Kinney, who retained third position, was the list’s most valuable author-illustrator, with fellow scribe-cum-draughtsman Liz Pichon just below. With a number one Wimpy Kid book in Wrecking Ball, a tranche-leading World Book Day title Diary of Greg Heffley’s Best Friend, and a bonus spin-off in Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, Kinney’s sales soared 22% in value. Owing to the £1 r.r.p. of his World Book Day title, Kinney’s volume sales jumped by an even more impressive 34%. 

Katz Cowley scored a top 20 place in the 2018 illustrators’ chart with just a single book—The Wonky Donkey sold 213,310 copies over Christmas 2018 alone—yet last year she really vaulted into the stratosphere, with her and author Craig Smith’s donkey duology, including November release The Dinky Donkey, shifting over 400,000 copies between them, earning £1.85m. YouTuber The Scottish Granny may be the most powerful influencer in UK publishing—eat your heart out, Barack Obama—as it was her video that boosted The Wonky Donkey to viral fame in the first place. Ross Kinnaird, illustrator of the similarly Scottish Granny-approved I Need a New Bum!, generated just under £500,000 in 2019.

Time for tea
Nibbies Illustrator of the Year Judith Kerr rose 46% in value, and climbed six places up the illustrator top 20 year on year. The Tiger Who Came to Tea rocketed in sales in May, on the announcement of her death, aged 95, and again after the Channel 4 television adaptation was broadcast on Christmas Eve. The originally 1968-published title is already the bestselling picture book of 2020 to date, so it looks like Kerr’s legacy will continue into the new decade.

Aside from Ross, the illustrator with the highest ratio of money earned per title in the top 1,000 was Jim Kay, whose four illustrated Harry Potter titles earned £2.28m, nearly £600,000 per book. He also notched up the highest average selling price by far, with Harry Potter fans forking out a whopping £18.72 per copy, more than £10 above second-placed Dav Pilkey (£7.44). 

Jim Field slipped from fifth to sixth, but against a 2018 in which his and Kes Gray’s Oi Goat! was the World Book Day bestseller. Despite strong sales for the Oi Frog and Friends series in 2019—with the fourth-wall-busting Oi, Duck-Billed Platypus! shifting a whisker under 60,000 copies since publication in July—the Children’s Fiction title Birthday Boy, authored by David Baddiel, was Field’s bestseller. 

Similarly, Steven Lenton hit the top 20, with two World Book Day-illustrated titles in 2019—Peter Bently’s Cruella and Cadpig and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s The Great Rocket Robbery. 

Judging by the top 20, the book illustrators sector is in rude health. The combined value of the top 20 illustrators was up 10.6% compared to 2018’s combined value. Even with Ross stripped out, given the effect of an extra Walliams book on the chart, 2019 was still up 10.2%. The previous year, 15 illustrators earned £1m or more through the top 1,000—last year it was 18.