Cursed Child was France's 2016 bestseller

Harry Potter returned to number one among the Top 50 bestselling books in France last year, according to a study carried out by market research firm GfK for French trade publication Livres Hebdo.

The figures show that the script of Jack Thorne’s play Harry Potter et L’Enfant Maudit (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) sold 851,800 copies, and was followed by two novels by Guillaume Musso, L’Instant Présent (The Present Instant) with sales of 632,800 copies and La fille de Brooklyn (Brooklyn Girl) with 545,200.

Sales of all Harry Potter titles totalled nearly 1.6 million copies, and included 152,000 for the English version of The Cursed Child, while this was the third year running for Musso to rank among the top three, confirming he is the most widely read French novelist in France.

But volume sales of the Top 50 fell 18.1% from 15.5 million copies in 2015 to 12.7 million last year, and fell in value terms by 17.3% from €211.1m to €174.6m.

The decline was due partly to the absence of a new Astérix title, Livres Hebdo editor Fabrice Piault noted. Le Papyrus de César (Asterix and the Missing Scroll), which was published in 2015, sold 1.6 million copies in France that year, and will be followed by the 37th album, whose title is under wraps, on 19th October.

The sales decline in 2015 was due also to a drop in sales of blockbusters in several categories--graphic novels, adult fiction, illustrated children’s and coffee table books, as well as practical and paperback titles. Only non-fiction and hard and paperback children’s and young adult books reported increases.

GfK's findings are based on takings between 4th January 2016 and and 1st January 2017 from a cross-section of some 5,000 retail outlets across mainland France. These inlude indies, newsagents, cultural product chains, supermarkets, and internet, as well as toy, DIY and home decoration supermarkets. But the figures exclude exports, French overseas territories and departments, and distance selling.

Nielsen BookScan does not operate in France, and has no equivalent. In 2012, Antoine Gallimard, chairman and c.e.o. of the Madrigall Group, the holding company for Gallimard, Flammarion and other publishing houses and then president of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE), called for a similar mechanism à la française to be created.

“The idea has not progressed since then,” Pierre Dutilleul, SNE director, told The Bookseller. “But it will probably be raised again this year. Publishers are now in favour of the idea, whereas they weren’t five years ago.”