Fiction sales lead Ireland’s domestic market to recovery

Is the Celtic Tiger roaring again? While economists remain cautious on the Irish economy’s recent impressive growth, the nation’s book industry has ample reasons to be cheerful. While the UK market has spent the past 18 months or so inching forward in growth, the Irish market is cantering ahead— posting a 6% bump in volume and a 7% jump in value for the year to date, compared to the UK’s much more muted 0.8% increase in volume and 2.1% increase in value.

Emma Hannigan’s Letters to My Daughters is the bestselling Irish-authored title of the year to date, taking third place overall and coming in fewer than 1,300 copies below second- placed US author A J Finn’s New York-set The Woman in the Window. Hannigan (pictured), who beat breast cancer 10 times in 13 years, announced in February that, at just 45 years of age, all her treatment options had “been exhausted”. Irish authors, including Marian Keyes, Liz Nugent and Carmel Harrington, launched a social media campaign to get Letters to My Daughters to the overall top spot—and it promptly soared straight there. It sold 4,065 copies in the final week of February, more than double the volume of the second-placed title. Hannigan also topped her goal of raising €100,000 for Breast Cancer Ireland. Since her death in early March, Letters to My Daughters has continued to sell strongly, shifting over 17,000 copies more than her previous bestseller, 2010’s Miss Conceived.

Nugent’s Skin Deep was in sixth place overall, the second-bestselling crime title after The Woman in the Window, having sold 14,892 copies since April. Nugent, the leading light of the “Emerald Noir” trend, is in fact the only female crime writer in Ireland’s top 50, with Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water just missing out (in 57th place). Nugent’s previous title, Lying in Wait, shifted more than 60,000 copies in the UK after being selected for the spring 2017 Richard & Judy Book Club. Despite the Irish market’s volume roughly being 5% that of the UK, Lying in Wait has shifted an impressive 29,035 units across all editions in Nugent’s native land—nearly 50% of its UK volume.

For the year to date, Adult Fiction in particular is booming, with a 8.9% bump in volume and a 10.1% jump in value compared to the same period in 2017. Irish literary authors really punch above their weight on the global stage—the nation has the best ratio of Man Booker Prize winners per capita in the world—and Ireland’s book-buyers faith- fully boost them up the chart as well. Louise O’Neill, winner of The Bookseller’s inaugural YA Book Prize, hit 21st place with her much-awaited adult début Almost Love. Her previous title, Asking for It, won the Irish Book of the Year in 2015 and is now a stage play in Cork. Fellow Irish Book Award winner Donal Ryan also charted, with From a Low and Quiet Sea in 33rd place. His Guardian First Novel Award-winning The Spinning Heart has exceeded 50,000 units in Ireland, nearly five times the amount it shifted in the UK. John Boyne, whose The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has shifted over 150,000 copies across all editions since 2006, hit 25th place with The Heart’s Invisible Furies, his second-bestselling title to date.

Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen’s Oh My God What a Complete Aisling, Ireland’s biggest-selling fiction title of 2017 and its Christmas Number One, charted twice, with both the August 2017 and April 2018 editions selling within 300 copies of one another.

Irish authors made in impact in non-fiction too—while the non-fiction bestseller of the year is Michael Wolff’s White House exposé Fire and Fury and the bestselling memoir (in 17th place overall) was John Connell’s The Cow Book. Mirroring the quirky, literary nature-writing trend in the UK—which included Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows and James Rebanks’ A Shepherd’s Life—Connell’s story of calving season has shifted 8,513 copies to date.

It’s just the Children’s market where Irish authors are seemingly struggling to break through. Of the 35 kids’ titles that charted in the Irish top 100, only one was by an Irish author: Gerard Siggins’ World Book Day Ireland title Rugby Roar.

This article featured in our Ireland Country Focus. For more content from this focus, click here.