Irish market surged in locked down 2020

The Irish books market withstood Covid-19 restrictions and rose to its highest point in 12 years with sales of €161.4m on 13.1 million units. That represents a 9.5% jump in value sales year-on-year and a 7.8% climb in volume, though last year's numbers are slightly inflated by 2020 being a 53-week year, against 52 weeks for 2019, and a modest expansion of BookScan's retailer panel.

The announcement follows similar BookScan full-year estimates of a bouyant British market in 2020.

While Ireland's two bestsellers of 2020 were American and British imports—Delia Owen’s Where the Crawdads Sing (Corsair, 63,170 units) and Charlie Macksey’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury, 61,100), respectively—there was a strong local flavour at the top of the charts. Seven of the top 20 books in Ireland last year were released by Irish-based publishers, while a further four titles were by UK-published homegrown talent: Graham Norton’s Home Stretch (Coronet; 5th place; 46,182 units), Marian Keyes’ Grown Ups (Michael Joseph; 15th; 28,420) and two from Sally Rooney: Normal People (Faber; 7th; 40,073) and Conversations with Friends (Faber; 20th; 22,135).

The top Irish-published book was Champagne Football (Sandycove; 3rd place; 49,037), an investigation by the Irish Sunday Times journalists Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan based on the duo’s series of articles in their paper chronicling 15 years of misrule by the Football Association Ireland's former boss, John Delaney, a polarising public figure who left the FAI with liabilities of more than ‚Ǩ55m. When published in the autumn, Champagne Football was a sensation—it kept Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking; 9th; 33,805) off the top spot—helped by a companion documentary shown on Virgin Media.

By far the bestselling book in value terms, and the only title in Ireland to shift more than ‚Ǩ1m through BookScan last year, was John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley’s Old Ireland in Colour published by Country Kildare-based indie Merrion Press. The illustrated title is the colourisation through AI technology of 19th and early 20th-century black and white photographs, a project which began when NUI Galway computer science professor Breslin started researching his family tree. Old Ireland in Colour topped the charts for three weeks in December and grabbed the Christmas number one, helped by its win of the An Post Irish Book Award for Best Irish-Published Book of the Year.

In the battle of former presidents' memoirs, Barack Obama's A Promised Land (Viking; 16th; 28,254) may have eclipsed Mary McAleese's Here's the Story (22,856), but the former Irish president's 19th-place finish meant Sandycove—the rebranded Penguin Ireland imprint—was one of two Ireland-based publishers to have a brace of titles in the top 20. The other was Gill, which had the hit of the spring with Gina and Karol Daly's slimming cookery tome, The Daly Dish (a.k.a. "the Irish Pinch of Nom") shifting 29,564 units to hit 13th place, while Never Mind the B#ll*cks, Here’s the Science by Trinity College Dublin immunologist Luke O'Neill, whose profile rose exponentially during the lockdowns, sold 32,170 copies, good enough for 11th in the year-end chart.