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Review of the Year: Fiction hits an all-time high to keep the market steady
A successful year for Fiction, led by the indomitable Richard Osman, as Non-Fiction trails behind.
In 2024, Fiction notched up its biggest haul since accurate records began – a blistering £50m greater than the previous high-water mark – to help the overall British books market remain flat year-on-year, despite a flagging Non-Fiction sector and a drop in many big-brand authors’ revenue.
Just over £1.82bn was rung up through the tills last year via Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, a marginal drop (–0.6%) on 2023, the year which technically holds the TCM all-time record (the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 almost certainly topped 2023 but are missing weeks of data, so there are no full-year official totals). Yet, as has been the case for the past few years, robust returns in value are partially attributable to rising prices masking a shrinking sales footprint. Just over 195.3 million books were shifted through the TCM last year, a drop of 3.3 million units (–1.7%). Conversely, average selling price (ASP) jumped 10p (+1.1%) to a TCM-record £9.33. British book buyers paid an additional 62p per unit versus five years ago; the average book costs £1.60 more than in 2014.
While those 195.3 million units compare favourably against the pre-pandemic years (beating annual totals from 2013 to 2019), it is not a patch on the heyday of the mid-Noughties to early 2010s, when the TCM would regularly churn out 210 million-plus unit sales. That should not detract from Fiction’s sizzling 2024; its £552.7m of sales are a massive 9.8% improvement on the previous annual record (set in 2023). Running counter to the “sell fewer books for more dosh” direction of travel in the rest of the market, Fiction’s 64.5 million copies is its best volume return since the Fifty Shades/erotica boom of a dozen years ago.
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BookTok, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and the indomitable Richard Osman led Fiction, with the category accounting for the year’s top five titles, 16 of the top 20 and 32 of the top 50. Osman holds the top two spots with the launch of his new series, We Solve Murders, and the mass-market paperback of The Last Devil to Die.
He also bags three entries in this Top 50, level with romantasy queen Sarah J Maas, but bettered by one of the biggest breakouts of the year: Freida McFadden. The latter has hardly come from nowhere – she sold £755,000 in 2023 through BookScan and was a digital superstar – but she was the author of the summer, aided by a BookTok bump and a raft of new publishing and re-releases from both Little, Brown and US-based Sourcebooks. Osman and McFadden combined to earn £18m last year, or £1 in every £8 spent on a Crime, Thriller & Adventure book.
Yet, the upper echelons of the chart in general were not clicking. This Top 50 collectively generated £79.4m, a far cry from the £96.9m of 2023. Yes, the previous year had a monster hit in Prince Harry’s Spare, but in a Top 50 stripping out both year’s number ones, 2024 is still £15.5m down on 2023. The top 100 books last year shifted £114.8m against 2023’s £139.3m.
Even Osman’s chart-topper’s volume was 13.4% off the pace of his 2023 hardback, and there were similar declines for the likes of Jamie Oliver’s Simply Jamie (-17.1% on 5 Ingredients Mediterranean) and In Too Deep by Lee and Andrew Child (-8.9% against The Secret). David Walliams, usually a fixture in an annual Top 50, has no titles in it for the first time in 11 years.
The decline in the bestseller revenue partially stems from Fiction’s greater footprint and fewer Non-Fiction titles (BookScan’s Non-Fiction: Trade category’s ASP is almost £4 more than Fiction’s). There were 14 Non-Fiction: Trade titles in 2023’s Top 50, all but one of which had an RRP £15 or above; in 2024, 11 Non-Fiction: Trade titles feature, four of which were £14.99 or below. There was a sub-par Christmas run-in for Non-Fiction: Trade, with the category down 4.5% by value in the last 12 weeks of the year. This is borne out by the Top 50: those 11 titles are full of 2023 returnees (GT Karber’s Murdle), deep backlist (James Clear’s evergreen Atomic Habits) and paperbacks of 2023 hardback hits (Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge, David Mitchell’s Unruly).
