Pinch of Nom's Featherstone and Allison top author earnings chart

Bloggers-turned-debut cookbook authors Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson have topped the chart of author earnings for the half year, with Pinch of Nom (Bluebird) earning £8.2m in just over three months on sale and the Pinch of Nom Food Planner contributing another £443k to take their total to £8.6m.

However, 2018’s bestselling author David Walliams was less than £1m behind them, with a rise of 18% year on year to £7.3m. His two releases—February-published Fing (HarperCollins) and a single week for The World’s Worst Teachers, out at the tail end of June—accounted for only 43% of his total, his backlist jumping 6% compared to the first six months of 2018. With a yet-to-be-announced autumn title presumably waiting in the wings as usual, Walliams could easily leapfrog Featherstone and Allinson to become 2019’s biggest-earning author by the year-end—and sail past the £20m earned mark for the first time.

Four Children’s authors made up 2019’s top five most valuable authors, with Featherstone and Allinson the lone non-fiction authors at the top. Julia Donaldson and her various illustrators cruised into third with £6.07m earned, up 4.7% year on year. Donaldson’s strength in depth was, as always, a factor—68 of her titles have sold 10,000 copies or more in 2019, with Walliams a distant second at 31.

J K Rowling was in fourth, with 84% of her £4.6m brought in by Harry Potter titles, and Jeff Kinney’s double whammy of spring titles—World Book Day title Diary of Greg Heffley’s Best Friend (Puffin) and Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, published in April—saw him rise 54% in value to £3.28m. Fiona Watt scored ninth place, with 50 titles in the first-half top 5,000 bringing in £2.6m.

Lee Child was the highest-earning Adult Fiction author, with £2.9m. While his total was 9.2% down on 2018’s half-year value, a Jack Reacher short story collection was published early last year alongside the usual paperback. The 23rd Jack Reacher mass market paperback Past Tense (Corgi), released in April, was actually 3% up in sales on 2018’s The Midnight Line.

Mrs Hinch and Michelle Obama rubbed shoulders as two of the top 10's new entries, with the Instagram cleaning guru bringing in £2.3m and the former First Lady earning £3m, after Becoming (Michael Joseph) was the most valuable book of 2018 at £7.8m. It was also the most expensive title, with bookbuyers willing to shell out an average of £15.83 for Obama's memoir.

Sally Rooney was just outside the top 10, with a 629% rise to £2m. Of Faber’s top four, three were Rooney-authored, impressive given that she’s only written two books. Heather Morris also soared 183% with her debut The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) earning £1.9m.