Booksellers back Jamie Oliver for new Christmas hit

The big Christmas book contenders have been tallied up, with The Bookseller revealing 20th October as this year’s Super Thursday.

On that date a bumper list of potential Christmas big-hitters are released, including Jamie Oliver’s long-awaited Christmas Cookbook (Michael Joseph), a fresh crop of nine new Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups by Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris (Michael Joseph), and memoirs from Phil Collins (Century), Ken Clarke (Macmillan) and referee Howard Webb (S&S).

Fiction tipped to get booksellers’ tills ringing is due on that day from Ali Smith (Autumn, Hamish Hamilton), Martina Cole (Betrayal, Headline), Lynda la Plante (Hidden Killers, S&S), James Patterson (Kill or Be Killed, BookShots) and Sebastian Barry (Days Without End, Faber), along with Face by beauty vloggers Pixiwoo (Blink) and Julia Donaldson’s new book Christmas with Princess Mirror-Belle (Macmillan Children’s).

Retailers have told The Bookseller they are generally positive about the strength of the autumn market, with Amazon UK book director Dan Mucha hailing the offerings as a “high-calibre” crop “reflecting the strength of publishing in the UK”.

However, others believe the line-up is slightly weaker than previous years, with Waterstones m.d. James Daunt saying there wasn’t “the usual number of sure-fire bankers that I might have wished to see”. Blackwell’s trade buying manager Katharine Fry agreed that while there were “not any major gaps”, the autumn publishing appears “not as obviously strong as in the past couple of years”.

Christmas Number One king Jamie Oliver has been tipped to reclaim the coveted festive chart top spot by both Tesco and Blackwell’s. The celebrity chef last topped the Christmas chart in 2012 with Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals, which at the time was his third successive Christmas Number One.

Meanwhile, several booksellers believe “nostalgia” publishing will continue to be popular, with five Enid Blyton for Adults books by Bruno Vincent (Quercus), based on the Famous Five characters, following hot on the heels of the Ladybird spoof books which débuted strongly last year. Booksellers are also quietly confident that titles about the Danish “cosiness” lifestyle philosophy hyyge will strike a chord with customers this autumn and break through as a Christmas trend.

Foyles head of marketing Simon Heafield and senior book buyer Heather Baker told The Bookseller: “We expect to see last year’s trend for nostalgia publishing grow to the next level, with new additions to the Ladybird range, and the new Enid Blyton for Adults series. The popularity of books on how a more orderly home can lead to a happier life—such as Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (Ebury)—and the boom in titles proclaiming the benefits of a Scandinavian lifestyle have come together in Hygge by Marie Søderberg (MJ), which we expect to be a big hit.”

Rosamund de la Hey, owner of the indie Mainstreet Trading Company in St Boswells in the Scottish Borders, agreed. “There’s no doubt many stockings will overflow with the new Ladybird titles, which is great news for high street till-points,” she said. “One of the big gift questions is which hygge title will cut through, with so many to choose from.”

Booksellers generally concurred that non-fiction had the strongest feel, with much-anticipated memoirs from Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run, S&S), John le Carré (The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life, Viking) and Guy Martin (Lone Ranger, Virgin Books), and Alan Bennett’s diaries (Keeping On Keeping On, Profile/Faber).

Mucha believes the adult colouring trend is morphing towards dot-to-dot books, tipping Superstars of YouTube: The 100% Unofficial Dot-to-Dot Book by Abi Daker (Ilex Press, 6th October). Meanwhile, no one YouTuber title was highlighted by retailers, with Waterstones saying success would be spread over a “plethora” of titles.

Children’s books are solid yet “more spread out this year”, according to Tesco book buyer Karen Brindle, who highlighted Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt’s Clover Moon (Doubleday Children’s) and Rachel Renée Russell’s Dork Diaries: Puppy Love (S&S) as books she expected to sell well, along with David Walliams’ new, yet-to-be-named title. Blackwell’s recommended Matt Haig’s The Girl Who Saved Christmas (Canongate), while several booksellers named Jeff Kinney’s new Wimpy Kid, Double Down (Penguin), as an upcoming bestseller.

In fiction, booksellers are hoping Ian McEwan’s Nutshell (Jonathan Cape, 1st September) will sell in high numbers, with Waterstones book buying director Kate Skipper also naming Jilly Cooper’s Mount! (Bantam Press), Robert Harris’ Dictator (Arrow), Lee Child’s Night School (Bantam Press) and Jeffrey Archer’s Cometh The House (Pan Macmillan) as key sellers. The retailer also expects continued sales of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J K Rowling and Jack Thorne, along with the forthcoming screenplay Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, also by Rowling (both Little, Brown). “The overall calibre of the line-up seems good,” Skipper said. “Although it would be nice to see a few more big general interest names to help draw more occasional book buyers into shops.”

Amazon also believed Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold (Hogarth), Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (Orion) and Graham Norton’s “darkly funny” novel Holding (Hodder & Stoughton) would be its fiction bankers for Christmas.

Meanwhile, Foyles hailed 2016 as “a great year for great literary fiction by women”, gleefully anticipating new work from Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, Eimear McBride and Nell Zink. “Customers will find them front and centre at Foyles,” Heafield and Baker proclaimed. Jonathan Safran Foer’s new novel, Here I Am (Hamish Hamilton), is also “destined to be one of the big publishing events of the autumn,” according to Foyles.