Summer promotions set to make market sizzle

The sun is set to shine on the summer book market this year, boosted by a crop of fresh nationwide promotions targeted at the season.

W H Smith is bringing back its Thumping Good Read Award on 31st May after 15 years, The Bookseller can reveal, which will champion seven titles over eight weeks in 1,300 High Street and Travel stores. Meanwhile, the “Zoë Ball Book Club” is due to hit screens on 17th June, running for 10 weeks with the aim of “encouraging the nation to get reading this summer”.

The summer holiday period is an important one for the trade, typically chalking up around a quarter of annual sales: the biggest sales season outside of Christmas. Between 21st May to 9th September 2017 (Nielsen BookScan’s summer period), £414.2m worth of print books were rung through the tills—25.98% of the full-year total. The sales are weighted towards fiction, with typically a third of all adult fiction sales recorded in that period, compared to around a quarter of sales in both children’s and non-fiction.

W H Smith is capitalising on the season’s zest for adult fiction by relaunching its Thumping Good Read Award campaign, originally launched in the early 1990s but abandoned in 2003. Aiming to “provide readers with a selection of books they can’t put down”, it will see seven titles—picked by a W H Smith reading panel from titles submitted by publishers— championed in stores over eight weeks. Jojo Moyes and Peter James will take into account the results of a public vote when choosing the winning titles, which will be revealed on 26th July. The campaign is designed to strengthen W H Smith’s summer reading offer and the retailer aims to build the Thumping Good Read Award into a “major” annual book prize, it said. Alex Call, head of books and marketing at W H Smith, said: “For everyone looking for their holiday read this summer, Thumping Good Read will ensure just that. This is a book prize for everybody, no matter who you are, you will be able to find a book that you love.”

Meanwhile, the 10 titles to have won a place in the “Zoe Ball Book Club” (in association with Specsavers) were revealed on Thursday (17th May), comprising an all-British author line-up and ranging from memoir to début fiction, from romance to Scandi noir.

Selected by Cactus TV’s Amanda Ross from publishers’ submissions with the help of an expert panel, the line-up comprises six débuts: Adam Kay’s junior doctor diaries This is Going to Hurt (Picador); “Gavin and Stacey” creator Ruth Jones’ novel about an affair, Never Greener (Transworld); former bookseller Laura Purcell’s gothic chiller The Silent Companions (Bloomsbury’s new genre imprint Raven Books); boxer-turner-barrister Tony Kent’s début novel Killer Intent (Elliot & Thompson); Sally Magnusson’s novel of 17th-century Iceland A Sealwoman’s Gift (Two Roads); and Will Dean’s atmospheric Scandi noir Dark Pines (Oneworld).

Also on the list is Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am (Picador), about a series of true near-death experiences; Mike Gayle’s “life-affirming bromance” The Man I Think I Know (Hodder); Rowan Colman’s The Summer of Impossible Things (Ebury), which asks readers how far they would go to save the person they love; and historical crime set in 1920s India from Abir Mukherjee, A Necessary Evil (Vintage).

Ball will discuss one book a week with celebrity guests, aired first on “Zoe Ball on Saturday” and repeated on “Zoe Ball on Sunday” (both broadcast on ITV at 8.30a.m.). Retailers across the country have pledged support for the book club, including supermarkets Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, chain booksellers Waterstones, W H Smith and Foyles, along with 3,000 libraries.

Alastair Aldous, trading controller for books at W H Smith High Street, said: “We are really excited about this summer. The New TV book club will be a huge success [and] we’re also really excited to be bringing back the Thumping Good Read Award, which we’re doing as part of our focus on the future. We not only want to help our customers browse and feel inspired to read—a core part of our strategy—but we also want to help the very best up-and-coming authors and take them to the next level. What a great way to deliver both.”

The key trends this summer

Publishers and retailers have tipped uplifting, feel-good literature referred to as “uplit” to be popular among fiction customers this summer, along with stories with a feminist angle, with the popularity of crime and thrillers set to continue unabated. Meanwhile, true crime with a literary treatment, along with books about self help and mental health, are likely to win the cash of adult non-fiction readers, employees in the trade have said.

Crime paperbacks are likely to rule the roost, with 22 of the top 50 Fiction titles over summer 2017 hailing from this genre, although this year may see a break away from psychological thrillers in favour of a return to police procedurals, with Cara Hunter’s next DI Fawley book In The Dark (Viking), Helen Fields’ fourth DI Callanach novel Perfect Silence (Avon) and a follow-up to Jane Harper’s The Dry, Force of Nature (Little, Brown), all due out in the period alongside offerings from Val Mcdermid, Mark Billingham, Ann Cleeves and Peter May. Perhaps due to the current turbulence in world politics, spy titles also look set to have a moment, with books from Mick Herron and Charles Cumming joining Rob Sinclair’s Sleeper 13 (Orion) and Luke Jenning’s Codename Villanelle (John Murray) among the titles tipped by trade insiders.

Romance, in particular “holiday romance”, is also likely to sell strongly, with the likes of Sarah Morgan’s How to Keep a Secret (HQ), Cathy Bramley’s A Match Made in Devon (Corgi), Karen Swan’s The Greek Escape (Pan Macmillan) and Ali Mcnamara’s Daisy’s Vintage Cornish Camper Van (Sphere) all vying for the airport purchase.

Along with crime, Waterstones believes "uplit" will prove successful with customers. "The ongoing success of titles such as Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan will continue into summer reading and create interest in new uplit titles such as Libby page’s The Lido and Dear Mrs Bird by A J pearce,” said a spokesperson.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson fiction publisher Kirsty Dunseath agreed. “I think that people are looking for uplifting books. The popularity of Eleanor Oliphant..., The Lido and Dear Mrs Bird shows that there is a real desire for books that have warmth and the feel-good factor, and maybe part of the appeal is the idea of community and the emphasis on the more positive aspects of human nature,” she said.

Waterstones is also placing its bets behind true crime and books that analyse the dangers of big data. "A notable non-fiction trend is the resurgence of true crime and, in particular, a more literary approach to the books being published," the spokesperson continued. "The books we have done really well with are Michelle Mcnamara’s posthumously published book on the hunt for the Golden State Killer, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, David Grann’s riveting and superbly put together Killers of the Flower Moon and Hunting El Chapo by DEA agent Andrew Hogan. [There is also] growing demand for titles exploring the pitfalls of big data, algorithm-led decision-making, and social media, such as Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom, Madeleine Albright’s Fascism and Benjamin Carter Hett’s The Death of Democracy.”

Nic Bottomley, the Booksellers Association’s new president and owner of Mr B’s Emporium of reading delights in Bath, pointed out that summer was “hugely important for children’s books”, with new releases from authors such as David Walliams and Liz Pichon coming. “No one is looking for e-books for children for the summer period,” he said. “People still seem to be taking huge piles of books on holiday. Our summer sales have gone up each year in the past few years, so i think the e-book market has plateaued. I don’t see it coming back.”

Meanwhile, both Bluebird publisher Carole Tonkinson and Canongate publishing director Francis Bickmore believe titles around mental health will be popular. “The answer to why is obvious,” Bickmore said. “Anxiety is on the rise. The world is accelerating and the more networked we become, the harder it is to keep up. We need a new emotional vocabulary to improve our mental health and books on the subject can make all the difference.” He cited Matt Haig’s upcoming Notes on a Nervous Planet as likely to be a “huge publication”, while Tonkinson cited the paperback of Russell Brand’s Addiction.

Manpreet Grewal, editorial director at HQ, said feminist dystopia was “very much in the mainstream” following the recent resurgence of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with her publisher releasing Vox in August by Christina Dalcher, a novel set in a world in which women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day.

Meanwhile, Profile publisher Hannah Westland said “I think what’s interesting about summer is that it isn’t yet obvious what is going to break out. Some of the strong performers from earlier in the year, like Lullaby and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, will keep going, and established writers such as Madeline Miller and Emma Healey look likely to be very big. but otherwise it’s still quite an open playing field.”