2016 half-year review: Superstar authors boost six-month sales figures

The number one author thus far in 2016 and our highest-rising Nielsen BookScan category are inextricably linked. Instagram superstar Joe "The Body Coach" Wicks is the breakout star of the year, earning £7.1m through the TCM.

That means his two titles—Lean in 15 and Lean in 15: The Shape Plan (both Bluebird)—account for a whopping 42.5% of Health, Dieting & Wholefood Cookery’s sales. This is impressive as HD&WC is coming off a record year in 2015. Yet, at the halfway point this year, 2016 has established a new record for the category, already beating 2015’s full year (£16.7m to £15.1m for 53 weeks in 2015). However, Wicks has had some help, with strong performances from Ella Mills Woodward (£1.8m), the Hairy Bikers (£666,000 in the category) and Jasmine & Melissa Hemsley (£738,000).

Another high-flying category has been hugely influenced by our top authors. The Ladybird for Grown-Ups braintrust Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris have shifted £3.6m this half- year, worth almost half of Humour: Collections & General’s £7.6m. Of the top 10 titles in H:C&G thus far in 2016 by value, Hazeley and Morris have authored nine of them, with only Alfie Deyes’ The Scrapbook of My Life (Blink, £512,000) able to break the Ladybird stranglehold.

It will be interesting to see how the Ladybird for Grown-Ups continue to sell after their breakout in autumn last year (Hazeley and Morris sold £6.8m though the TCM from October to the end of December 2015). Publisher Michael Joseph has been smart this year, releasing How it Works: The Mum and How it Works: The Dad prior to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day respectively, with much success (the two titles have combined to sell £1.3m). Michael Joseph has eight new adult Ladybird books out on 17th October, with How it Works: The Cat and How it Works: The Dog almost certain to be the top sellers; The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse may be more niche.

Graphic descriptions

BookScan categories that grow significantly tend to be the smaller ones that are greatly influenced by one author or book—Mary Beard’s SPQR (Profile), for example, accounts for 40% of the second-highest rising category, Ancient History.

One of the bigger genres to jump significantly—and from a record 2015—is Graphic Novels. The overall category is up 28% to £13.1m in 2016, with sub-sets Manga (+40.5% to £3.4m), Graphic Novels: General (+24% to £4.7m) and Graphic Novels: Superheroes (+22.8% to £4.7m) all having excellent years.

*Minimum TCM value £1m

Three graphic novel specialists hit the Publisher High Riser chart, Image, comics giant Marvel and manga distributor Viz. Outside of that top 10, there were huge lifts for Marvel rival DC (+33.2% to £2.6m) and Titan (+24.2% to £2.1m).

Robert Kirkman leads the way among graphic novel authors with almost £850,000 sold for Image. The interesting thing about Kirkman and most other graphic novel creators is success is rarely about one book—with the occasional exception such as the team responsible for Joe Sugg’s Username: Evie (Hodder) which continues its impressive run from 2015 by shifting 16,900 units thus far in 2016. By contrast, Kirkman’s bestselling book of the year has sold only 4,596 units. But he has published 25 different volumes of the Walking Dead series and a number of compendia—in fact, his top three bestselling titles are Walking Dead collections with hefty £45 r.r.p.s.

J(ust) K(eeps) Rowling on

J K Rowling (and alter ego Robert Galbraith) could comfortably earn millions each year without writing a thing, yet 2016 is set for no fewer than three major Rowling releases—and that doesn’t even include all the Harry Potter colouring books.

While Galbraith has suffered a 5.6% year-on-year decline, Rowling’s 2016 total has been boosted by 56%— purely down to resurgent Harry Potter sales. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) has sold an extra 25,000 copies on the same period in 2015, with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them—ahead of the film’s November release—shifting 40,000. And Rowling’s year hasn’t really started—Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) which publishes on 31st July will make the first six months of the year look like a warm-up.

David Walliams’ half-year sales have rocketed, with the May release of short story collection The World’s Worst Children (HarperCollins Children’s) pulling in £1.9m and boosting his six-month value by 46%. Though still runner-up to Julia Donaldson in the Children’s market, Walliams’ success is similar to the picture book author’s “strength in depth” approach—the stratospheric sales of The World’s Worst Children account for only 38% of his total value for the year to date. Six of his titles— four of which were published before this year—chart inside the Children’s bestselling top 20 of 2016.

In 2015, 68% of Walliams’ £10.9m was made in the second half of the year, with £2.6m earned in December alone—so with his half-year value already at 50% of last year’s total, Walliams is set for another record year.

It is fitting to conclude with the mighty Donaldson. Hitting nearly £6.1m thus far in 2016, she is well on her way to extending her record to a seventh straight full year of £10m-plus TCM sales.

Again, it’s that depth and breadth of her list that drives this: Donaldson only has two titles in the top 100 of 2016 by volume—Stick Man (Alison Green, illus. Axel Scheffler) and What the Ladybird Heard Next (Macmillan Children’s, illus Lydia Monks)—but has an incredible 37 titles which have sold 10,000 units or more through the TCM.

Includes co-written titles.