Really Good, Actually tops list for bestselling début fiction release of 2023

Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually (Fourth Estate) has reached the top spot for the bestselling début fiction release of 2023, with over 17,000 copies sold through TCM and four straight weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list.

The publicity and marketing campaign for the book has been orchestrated by senior marketing manager Liv Marsden, senior publicity manager Laura Meyer (now at William Collins), senior publicity manager Naomi Mantin and art director Jo Thomson. A bespoke, UK-wide events tour was hosted over two weeks as part of the campaign.

Mantin partnered with Chrissy Ryan, founder of Book Bar, to organise both a pre-publication influencer preview event in November and their first external event at the Crypt on the Green with Heisey, who was in conversation with Dolly Alderton. Further events were hosted at Waterstones Manchester Deansgate, Rare Birds Bookshop in Edinburgh, The Heath Bookshop in Birmingham, Mr B’s Emporium Bookshop in Bath and The Bound bookshop in Whitley Bay.

The publisher said its marketing campaign "involved a strategically planned approach to retail marketing" with the aim to incentivise support. This included a Waterstones special edition, a tote bag pre-order with Foyles, a signed print pre-order with Bookshop.org, exclusive POS for indie bookshops and specific BookBar Book of the Month activity.

Publication week activity included outdoor advertising across three multi-panel billboard sites in Shoreditch, Islington and London Bridge, alongside digital advertising across social media and Amazon. In addition, mass POS production in bookshops across the country created window and in-store displays.

Assets such as quote cards, product photography, POS, blogger images of both proofs and hardbacks, and animations were created for the campaign. The Harry Styles fantasy scene from the book was posted online on Valentine’s Day, driving the book back into the Amazon Top 100.

The book was snapped up in a 48-hour pre-empt in 2021. You can read The Bookseller’s author profile with Heisey here. 

Kishani Widyaratna, Fourth Estate editorial director, said: “It has been a dream for all of us at Fourth Estate to have the opportunity to work with an author as talented and wonderful as Monica Heisey and to publish a book as irresistible as Really Good, Actually. Naomi Mantin and Liv Marsden worked closely with Jo Thomson, the designer of the cover, and Laura Meyer to create a campaign that has been a shining example of the creativity and flair that the Fourth Estate team bring to our publishing. 

“Really Good, Actually has benefited from over a year of ingenious initiatives, stand out publicity, eye-catching design and reader-focused messaging across all channels, offering something new for both readers and the trade every step of the way. Through all this, it’s been a joy to see Monica established as the breakout new voice of the season.”

David Roth-Ey, Fourth Estate and William Collins executive publisher, said: “The competition for ‘début of the year’ is as ferocious in British publishing as any Oscar race, and so it’s immensely rewarding to see all the hard work pay off firstly for our talented author, Monica Heisey, as well the whole Fourth Estate editorial, publicity, marketing, design and sales team behind her. Fourth Estate really is firing on all cylinders.”

Claire Paterson Conrad of Janklow & Nesbit UK added: “Kishani and her vision for what was possible for Really Good, Actually right at the start and her and the team’s ability to follow through and deliver a bestseller has been amazing. Independent thinking and teamwork in a big corporate publisher doesn’t get better than this.”