Retailers offering hefty discounts of up to 80% in post-Christmas sales

Retailers are offering hefty discounts of up to 80% for backlist titles in the post-Christmas sales this year, with some bestselling frontlist titles also seeing discounts of more than 65%.  

At W H Smith, frontlist titles with big discounts include Ripley’s Believe It or Not! 2023 (Century), being sold at £7 from £22. The retailer is selling Philip Schofield’s 2020 hardback Life’s What You Make It (Michael Joseph) for £4 cut from £20, and has cut the hardback of J K Rowling’s The Ickabog (Little, Brown) to £5 down from £20. It is also offering a signed edition of Jeffrey Archer’s 2021 thriller Over My Dead Body (HarperCollins) for just £6, a 70% discount from its r.r.p. of £20. 

One of The Works’ biggest discounts is for bestseller Jeremy Clarkson’s 2021 book Diddly Squat: A Year on the Farm (Michael Joseph), for £4.50 from £16.99 (74% off). The Twelve Dels of Christmas by David Jason (Century), released in October, is discounted 64% to £8 from £22. The majority of frontlist, including Pinch of Nom Enjoy by Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone (Bluebird) and The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (Viking) are discounted by 50%.

Amazon has cut its bestsellers by up to 75% with this year’s Christmas number one, Guinness World Records 2023, cut by 68%, selling for £7 instead of £22, and Douglas Murray’s The War on the West (HarperCollins) now just £4.98, cut from £20.

Waterstones is offering up to 75% off backlist titles, such as the paperback of Promise Me, Dad by US President Joe Biden (Pan) now £2.24 cut from £8.99, Matt Lucas’ Thank you, Baked Potato (Farshore) now £1.25 from £4.99 and 101 Things to do to Find Love in the Modern World by Cleopatra Valentine (Short Books) now £1.50 from £5.99. 

There are hefty cuts to some of the biggest annuals, including the Minecraft Annual 2023 (Farshore) and The Pokemon Annual 2023 (Farshore), which are both cut 66.7% to £2.99 from £8.99.  

The majority of frontlist hardback titles are cut by 50%, including Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday), now £8.49 from £16.99, Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (Tinder Press), now £12.50 from £25, and Colleen Hoover’s It Starts With Us, now £7.49 from £14.99 (Simon & Schuster).  

A note on Waterstones’ website says: “From Monday 26th to end of shop trading on Wednesday 28th December, customers can get 50% off thousands of hardback books in Waterstones bookshops”. 

Last week The Bookseller reported Waterstones had requested an 85% discount from indies on "bestselling, frontlist titles" published this year, for the retailer’s January sale.