We’ve passed halfway point for 2024 (already!) and the UK print book market held up well in the first six months of the year, with spending on books down just 1% despite a steeper 3% drop in number of books bought. Thanks to a string of strong weeks, that’s an improvement from as recently as the five-month mark, when the stats were -2% and -4%, respectively, so things are moving in the right direction. The shortage equates to 2.7m in volume and £8.6m in value, although in the first half of 2023, Spare by Prince Harry had already brought in £9.8m, so outside of the royal memoir, spending on print books is slightly up as of the end of June. This year’s top earner to date is Bored of Lunch Healthy Slow Cooker: Even Easier by Nathan Anthony, approaching £1.7m, although the cookbook ranks third by volume, surpassed by the paperbacks of The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman and The Secret by Lee & Andrew Child.
But travelling around the UK gives a different picture. Anthony has held onto the top of the chart in his home region of Northern Ireland, as well as the next two spots in the list with his air fryer cookbooks, and Healthy Slow Cooker: Even Easier also shifts up a spot in Yorkshire and the North East compared to the total market, ahead of the latest Jack Reacher. Osman and the Child duo take the leading positions in seven of the eleven regions but with positions swapped in Scotland; however, even with their widespread success, neither title gets the clean sweep of top five appearances, shown on the right. The Last Devil to Die ranks seventh in Northern Ireland, while The Secret just misses at sixth in London. Both regions feature a different fiction bestseller, as Northern Ireland has favoured The Housemaid by Freida McFadden and London is still looking to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The latter also differs in its non-fiction bestseller, led by Atomic Habits by James Clear. As well as being tied together by their anomalies, the two regions have something in common if we extend to their respective top tens: they both have the same children’s title in the mix, The Scarlet Shedder by Dav Pilkey, which ranks 15th for the total UK market (excluding the World Book Day £1 books).
London is also the only region to feature Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, and a few other regions have unique fiction entries. Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes has walked up to fifth in the East of England, I Will Find You by Harlan Coben has found a spot in Lancashire’s top titles, Past Lying by Val McDermid has moved past the competition in Scotland and The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves has surged into the chart in the South West. The latter is the only region to have a full fiction top five, with Homecoming by Kate Morton also ranking higher there than elsewhere, although it does make the Southern top five as well. The South West also ranks None of This is True by Lisa Jewell the highest, with the thriller only missing the top five in London and Northern Ireland. Jewell’s latest paperback does make every top ten though, along with The Last Devil to Die and The Secret. Fiction takes the largest share of spots within the top tens, but one more non-fiction book manages to make an appearance: Pinch of Nom Air Fryer by Kay & Kate Allinson has already reached sixth in Yorkshire and eighth in the North East after just two weeks.
Driven by so many of those bestseller spots, fiction is performing the best for the year so far, up 8% in value for the overall UK and only trailing 2023 in the Midlands. Non-fiction hasn’t been so fortunate, with sales down around the country, while the children’s sector is a bit more mixed: spending on children’s books has increased this year in Lancashire, London, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Bringing all those together, both Scotland and London have seen value growth in the first half of 2024, despite a 1% drop in volume. Still plenty of time to go before year-end, so we shall see what the second half of the year brings!
Based on data extracted from the UK Total Consumer Market (TCM) to 29 June 2024. For more information, contact infobookresearch@nielseniq.com.
