Cornerstone wins 'Book of the Year' in hotly-contested auction

In a "hotly contested" auction, Cornerstone has acquired a book of strange-but-true trivia authored by the "QI elves" behind weekly podcast "No Such Thing As A Fish".

According to Cornerstone, the book - entitled The Book of the Year - will provide a fun, fact-filled exploration of the past 12 months and will make "the perfect Christmas gift". The team of writers, which also worked on BBC Two show "No Such Thing as the News", comprises James Harkin, head writer on BBC2’s "QI", Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber.

Questions it will answer include "Who has played the greater number of golf rounds since the turn of 2017: Rory McIlroy or Donald Trump?" and "Why a parliamentary inquiry into why parliamentary inquiries take so long has been delayed?". It will share bizarre "unbelievable but true" factoids from around the world too (such as from Australia, where toad-flavoured sausages are being deployed to stop predators eating real toads).

Targetting the Christmas market, it publishes with Random House Books in hardback, audio and e-book editions in November 2017, and will be accompanied by a major publicity and marketing campaign. The book was bought from Sarah Lloyd at Quite Interesting Ltd.

The authors said: "We promised Penguin Random House we’d write the book of the year and we think the title is a very strong start. Right now the world is full of news that is believable but fake. This book will be packed with news that’s unbelievable but true."

Nigel Wilcockson, Random House publishing director, said: "With their blend of inspired humour and encyclopaedic knowledge, the 'No Such Thing As A Fish' team have created the best podcast around. Now they’re set to pen a Christmas bestseller. Is there no limit to their talents?"