Donaldson reigns supreme as backlist surge sees new authors make top 50

Julia Donaldson pictured above has extended her seemingly unstoppable record-setting run of earning eight figures through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The £14.1m that the Gruffalo co-creator chalked up in 2021 is the 12th year on the trot she has eclipsed £10m, as she claimed the bestselling author in Britain crown for the second year in a row. Richard Osman muscled into the top three, consigning David Walliams to fourth place, the latter’s lowest position in the year-end authors chart since 2013. 

As with last week’s review of the top-selling books of 2021, an aside for the T&Cs. We are not playing with a full BookScan deck as there is no volume and value data for the first 10 weeks of 2021, owing to lockdown. These charts are therefore based on the final 42 weeks of TCM data, which we’ll call TCM42. 

Alas, this does affect authors who had hits in the first quarter last year, for example Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson. The Pinch of Nommers are in fifth place at £6m on this chart, but since they opened 2021 with six consecutive number ones—and they earned £4.1m in the first 10 weeks of 2020—it is certain that their actual sales eclipsed £10m last year—and with a following wind, that may have been enough to displace J K Rowling in second. But we are playing the cards we have been dealt. 

We have noted over the course of the pandemic that backlist has been bountiful and that was certainly the case in 2021. This is a rather crude measure, but just 42% of the £1.26bn earned by TCM42 Top 5,000 titles last year was from titles published in 2021. Compare that to the same 42 weeks in 2019, when 62% of the Top 5,000 value (£1.24bn) was published in that year. 

That means 2021 has been beneficial for brand authors with loads of backlist. Not least our top two, Donaldson and Rowling, who had 851 and 515 different ISBNs earning sales last year. But also the names we are all familiar with; James Patterson (679 ISBNs), Stephen King (458), Roald Dahl (442) and Fiona Watt (430). This effect is illustrated more clearly outside this top 50—which understandably has its fair share of new-ish authors, with Christmas hits including Bob Mortimer, Miriam Margolyes and Dave Grohl. Positions 51 to 200 are replete with series crime stalwarts such as David Baldacci (£1.7m), Ann Cleeves (£1.7m) and Michael Connolly (£1.5m); big kids names such as Eric Carle (£1.7m), Allan and Janet Ahlberg (£1.6m) and Michael Morpurgo (£1.4m); and heritage brands such as William Shakespeare (£1.4m), Enid Blyton (£1.4m) and Agatha Christie (£1.3m). 

Further afield
It is not just the old hands that the backlist trend helped. Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara makes her first appearance on this list as 169 different editions of her Quarto-published Little People Big Dreams series hit the TCM42 last year to earn her £2.1m. None was a blow-the-doors-off massive hit—somewhat surprisingly, the Mikyo Noh-illustrated David Attenborough was tops at £290,000 (are the kids into David Attenborough?). But 57 editions exceeded £10,000 last year, and 107 rung up more than four figures. 

That backlist trend has also helped another Top 50 newbie, Sarah J Maas, as the fantasy author has slowly built up a critical mass since first being published in the UK in 2012—a series livery refresh of A Court of Thorns and Roses in 2020 did not hurt, either. Like Sánchez Vegara, Maas had no huge hits but an impressive seven of her books shifted more than £100,000 last year. Maas’ fellow American YA/adult fantasy crossover author Leigh Bardugo also makes her Top 50 bow—it was not necessarily backlist but Netflix that helped here, with the adaptation of Shadow & Bones helping her earn £2.5m, five times greater than her previous annual TCM best.

Julia Donaldson image © Steve Ullathorne