Book sales surging as we rediscover love of reading
Fiction sales soared last year by more than £100 million for UK publishers, as readers locked down at home made their escape into books, with audiobook sales also climbing by more than a third.
New figures from the Publishers Association show that fiction sales for UK publishers rose by 16 per cent from £571 million to £688 million last year, with key titles cited for the rise including Maggie O’Farrell’s Women’s prize-winner Hamnet, Douglas Stuart’s Booker-winner Shuggie Bain, Richard Osman’s cosy crime novel The Thursday Murder Club, Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize wnner Girl, Woman, Other and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing.
The best selling title of last year was Charlie Mackesy’s philosophical
picture book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.
The boom came as print sales for UK publishers fell 6 per cent, to £3.4 billion during 2020, a period when bookshops in the UK closed their doors for months. Total digital sales soared, up 12 per cent to £3 billion. The £0.4 billion gap – with print accounting for 53 per cent of sales, and digital for 47 per cent – is the smallest it has ever been.
The Publishing Association said the results demonstrated how “the nation turned to books for comfort, escapism and relaxation” in 2020, and that “reading triumphed, with adults and children alike reading more during lockdown than before”.
“It’s quite remarkable,” said Publishing Association
chief executive Stephen Lotinga. “We are delighted but also a little surprised the industry has managed to do so well. During lockdown people had more time on their hands and were looking for escapism. There’s been a rediscovery of love of reading.”
Non-fiction book sales also grew for UK publishers in 2020, up 4 per cent to £1 billion with top-selling titles including the Pinch of Nom cookbooks and Jamie Oliver’s 7 Ways.
Children’s sales also climbed two per cent to £396 million. The biggest growth was seen in audio downloads, which rose by 37 per cent compared to 2019, to £133 million. Overall, the total income from consumer sales rose 7 per cent to £2.1 billion.
The growth masks a slump in education publishing, which saw income fall 21 per cent to £528 million. The fall was driven by a 27 per cent decline in export sales of educational books, which the PA said was “severely impacted” by the pandemic.
“Despite the overall positives, we shouldn’t ignore that it’s been a particularly challenging year for education publishers, smaller publishers, booksellers and authors whose livelihoods have been enormously disrupted,” Lotinga said.
“With bookshops now able to reopen, and physical events returning, we are optimistic that people will soon be able to enjoy books together again. We need to harness this return to reading and build on the opportunity this presents.”