Booksellers split on likely Christmas Number One

Booksellers are divided on whether David Walliams' The Midnight Gang (HarperCollins) will hang on to the charts top spot through to Christmas or whether a final surge from Five on Brexit Island (Quercus) or even The GCHQ Puzzle Book (Michael Joseph) will help one of them claim the festive Number One spot in their stores.

Walliams' The Midnight Gang (HarperCollins) is the most popular book with Tesco shoppers this Christmas, according to the supermarket's head of buying for books Karen Brindle. “David Walliams is now such a perennial favourite that he has carved himself a real niche as an author you can rely on for a book present to delight children at Christmas," she said, predicting he would leave J K Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Little, Brown) and Tim Peake's Hello Is That Planet Earth? (Penguin) trailing behind in second and third place.

Sainsburys' head of music and books Pete Selby agreed Walliams was most likely to grab the top spot. The book has been number one for the last six weeks and is currently selling 67% faster than 2015 blockbuster Grandpa’s Great Escape, according to The Bookseller's charts and data analyst Kiera O'Brien. “Given its later release date, the volume momentum is really behind Walliams' [The Midnight Gang (HarperCollins)] as we enter the final few weeks of trade, so appears to be in the box seat for Christmas No1," said Selby.

"However we also know that children’s books tend to slow up a bit in the final week, largely due to more efficient planned parental shopping missions, so expect Five on Brexit Island to continue its growth trajectory with a last minute default stocking filler surge,” he added.

Emma Corfield of Book-Ish in Crickhowell, Brecon Beacons, also predicted Walliams would “once again rule the Christmas charts” while noting both nostalgic spoof series - Penguin's Ladybird Books for Grown-Up series and Quercus' Enid Blyton Five Go series - were selling apace.

"With regards to Christmas Number One, it’s difficult this year, although I suspect in the final week David Walliams will once again rule the Christmas charts,” said Corfield. "We’re doing phenomenally well with the Ladybird books again this year, closely followed by the Famous Five spoofs. With regards to fiction we’re seeing excellent sales of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (Hamish Hamilton) and Tim Peake is topping our non fiction chart."

However Rosamund de la Hay, owner of the Mainstreet Trading Company in St. Boswells and current Booksellers Association president, tipped Five on Brexit Island to creep up the charts in the last week to claim the number one slot, as did independent booksellers Marie Moser from the Edinburgh Bookshop and Alex Milne-White from the Hungerford Bookshop.

Milne-White said it was "difficult to pick out" a clear favourite but certainly in his store Walliams would have to "go some guns" to beat Five on Brexit Island in terms of sales. The title is currently number one in the indie charts and this week took the indie bookshop number one for a fifth week running, with Walliams only in 10th place.

"Walliams, it's doing quite well but it's not soaring off the shelves," said Milne-White. "Definitely Brexit Island will beat Walliams [for us]. Walliams would have to go some guns to catch up with that now. We've sold nearly 50 of Brexit Island; I don't think we're anywhere close with Walliams."

Five on Brexit Island, the Famous Five spoof inspired by the European Union referendum campaign, has sold 66% more than the bestselling title of the rival Ladybird Books for Grown Ups series—despite being released two weeks after the latest Ladybirds crop—and last week jumped into second place, with a total of 186,021 copies sold in six weeks, according to The Bookseller's Kiera O'Brien. "Its sales just keep rising week on week—it increased 47% in volume last week on the week before—and as Ladybird book How it Works: The Husband came out of nowhere a year ago to swipe the 2015 Christmas number one, maybe Five on Brexit Island will live up to its namesake and cause an upset," O'Brien said.

Nic Bottomley, owner of Mr B’s Emporium in Bath, said he hoped Five on Brexit Island wouldn't get to the chart top spot. “I don’t enjoy selling them," he said, "I don’t think customers really enjoy buying them. [The trend is like] like colouring books, so many books flood the market. I don’t object to selling them, anything that makes money for the sector is good, but for an indie they’re less crucial, they’re almost given away elsewhere.” He added: "David Walliams could hang on; he is perennially well received."

Waterstones said the Ladybirds and the Blytons were its "standout humour titles" this Christmas, with Five on Brexit Island and How it Works: The Grandparent its particular favourites. However, it is predicting The GCHQ Puzzle Book will take the Christmas top spot. Waterstones' head of books Kate Skipper said the book, which has leapfrogged from 33rd place to sixth in the charts this week, is "a brilliant idea and the perfect stocking filler". Also selling strongly for the bookshop chain is its Book of the Year The Essex Serpent by Sarah perry (Serpent's Tail), J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts (Little, Brown) and Tim Peake's Hello is That Planet Earth?

Moser at Edinburgh Bookshop praised The GCHQ Puzzle Book an easy "grandad present", joining Milne-White of the Hungerford Bookshop, Bottomley of Mr B’s Emporium, and Ron Johns of The Falmouth Bookseller in noticing a spike in sales for it. Milne-White reported it was currently out of stock while Penguin Random House reprints. 

Skipper said: "We’re predicting The GCHQ Puzzle Book will be the Christmas Number One. It’s a brilliant idea and the perfect stocking filler. Our exclusive edition of The Essex Serpent is our bestselling fiction title and will continue to be for the rest of this month. Meanwhile, our J K Rowling sales continue undiminished. We’ve also had a very strong year on Private Eye, David Walliams, Tim Peake and, of course, Five on Brexit Island. This year there have been few genuine standout bestsellers, with little which has successfully targeted the occasional book buyer, so while we have plenty to sell there are few of the easy wins of previous years."

Skipper added: "It has been a particularly tough year for Biography, outside of the Springsteen Born to Run juggernaut." 

Autobiographies weren't a hit with any of the independent bookshops asked by The Bookseller, with the exception of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (Simon & Schuster). According to Tesco's Brindle, Springsteen's book is a "popular stocking filler", alongside Guy Martin’s Worms To Catch (Virgin Books) and "relative newcomer" Joe 'The Body Coach' Wicks with Lean In 15 – The Sustain Plan (Bluebird).

Elsewhere in non-fiction, Moser noticed a positive sales trend emerging for feminist books this christmas, with Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World by Kate Pankhurst, descendent of Emmeline Pankhurst (Bloomsbury) almost out of stock at the bookshop, with others in this category also selling well including Bad Girls Throughout History by Ann Shen (Chronicle Books). Betsy Tobin, founder and owner of Ink@84 bookshop in Highbury, London, found that We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate) was a bestseller at her shop, too.

HarperCollins' adult 'I Spy' books were said to be "a parody too far", for Milne-White, while Moser said the same about Hodder's hygge parody Say Ja to Hygge. Both Milne-White and bookseller Ron Johns said Penguin Random House's The Little Book of Hygge (Penguin Life) was the best in the flurry of books on the Danish cosiness concept recently brought to market. "The hygge trend is doing well and the PRH Hygge book is the best of the bunch,” Johns said. 

Outside of the chart's top 10, independent booksellers reported surges of interest for local authors and titles in the run-up to Christmas. At the Hungerford Bookshop, Milne-White reported sales of local author Robert Harris were going well, as were sales of his own book published by the bookshop, Pub Walks Near Hungerford (Milne-White Books Ltd), and Terms and Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding-Schools by Ysenda Maxtone-Graham (Slightly Foxed). 

Peter Donaldson from Red Lion Books in Colchester said the indie was seeing Perry's The Essex Serpent "outselling everything else on our shelves".

"It is getting fantastic coverage in end of year round ups and with Costa shortlisting and Waterstones Book of the Year," said Donaldson "But mostly it is a novel we love and can recommend to a such wide variety of people. I am also involved in the Essex Book Festival which takes place each March and Sarah Perry will be our first writer in residence for the 2017 festival." 

Johns said likewise its Christmas bestseller was bound to be homegrown. "Our Christmas Number One will be a book called Christmas in Cornwall, which we publish ourselves," he said. "It's by Craig Green and illustrated by Oliver Hurst and we will have sold out our first print run of 4,500 next week. Local books add so much to independent book selling,” he said.