Print market posts fourth consecutive year of value growth

The UK print market has grown in value for a fourth year running, with 2018 showing a marginal volume increase too. Last year, 190.8 million books were sold for £1.63bn through Nielsen BookScan's TCM, a 2.14% increase in value and a 0.33% lift in volume against 2017. Average selling price also rose, with 2018's a.s.p of £8.53 a record high.

While 2017 squeaked into growth with a rise of 0.1% in value, 2018 was entirely more comfortable, earning an extra £34m on the year before—while volume was slightly more on a knife-edge, with an extra 627,000 books sold last year. Compared to value, volume has been dragging its heels over the last few years, with 2018 only marginally up on 2017, which itself dropped 2.5% in volume on 2016.

Michelle Obama's Becoming (Viking) scored a fourth consecutive week as the UK Official Top 50 number one for the last week of 2018, shifting 37,702 copies through the Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market and soaring past the half a million copies sold mark in under two months. Falling just short of the bestselling non-fiction title of 2018—Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt (Picador) outsold Becoming by just 7,493 copies—the former First Lady's memoir is by far the most valuable title of last year, with its £7.7m earned nearly £3m ahead of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins). However, the Costa First Novel Award winner easily topped the 2018 chart in volume terms, outselling its HarperCollins stablemate David Walliams and Tony Ross' The Ice Monster (HarperCollins), in second place, by nearly a quarter of a million copies.

With two days of last week's charts falling before Christmas, the "new year, new you" wave hasn't yet completely engulfed the charts, though Joe Wicks' Veggie Lean in 15 (Bluebird) boomeranged back into the Paperback Non-Fiction number one spot and Tom Kerridge's Fresh Start (Bloomsbury Absolute) entered the Top 50 in 27th place. The Michelin-starred chef's Lose Weight for Good, the fifth-bestselling overall title of 2018, ruled over the charts in January 2018, even beating Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury (Little, Brown) to the top spot, and Fresh Start has had a similarly strong kick-off, shifting only 310 copies fewer than Lose Weight for Good's first week. Gemma Atkinson's The Ultimate Body Plan (Thorsons) also leapt energetically into the Top 50, scoring 21st place in its first three days on sale.

A new Richard and Judy Book Club saw the latest tranche flood the chart, with A J Finn's The Woman in the Window (HarperCollins) shifting 14,678 copies to chart in seventh place, and Clare Mackintosh's Let Me Lie (Little, Brown) soaring into 22nd place. However, Heather Morris' The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) was unassailable in the Mass Market Fiction number one, racking up its 13th consecutive week—the longest consecutive run since The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) in summer 2016.

Sally Rooney's Normal People (Faber) leapfrogged Lee Child's Past Tense (Bantam) to claim the author's first Original Fiction number one. The Waterstones Book of the Year and the critics' choice for 2018 shifted 10,754 copies, as her debut Conversations with Friends hit 11th in the Mass Market Fiction top 20.