Ex-Manchester United manager's memoir My Autobiography has sold more than 647,000 copies since publication in October
His team may be languishing mid-table over the festive season, but the former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson will sit down to Christmas dinner in pole position once more, as his latest autobiography is declared 2013's bestselling print book.
Ferguson's memoir has dominated the charts since publication in October, when it became the fastest-selling work of non-fiction on record, going on to amass sales of more than 647,000 copies. According to Waterstones' Jon Howells, the scale of My Autobiography's success has been something of a surprise. "It looks like it's going to be one of the biggest-selling autobiographies since records began," Howells said, "and I don't think anybody would have predicted three months ago that would happen."
For Howells, Ferguson's literary success shows the winner of 13 Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues and five FA Cups has managed to transcend sport.
"It's reaching a readership which is interested in management and leadership as a broader issue."
With just one week of sales data to add to the UK top 100 before Christmas, Dan Brown's latest Robert Langdon thriller, Inferno, is in second place on the Nielsen BookScan chart. With sales of 228,000 in its first week, this Dantean vision of Armageddon has gone on to shift more than 626,000 copies during 2013 – compared with the 1.2m copies notched up for the previous outing for his academic adventurer, The Lost Symbol.
But according to Howells, this dip doesn't mark a loss of form from one of popular fiction's biggest stars, but rather is an indication of wider shifts in the books industry.
"I'm not into Dan Brown snobbery," Howells said. "I've read Inferno and the others and they're great fun." Nobody was reading digitally when The Lost Symbol was published back in 2009, he said. "Now there's a massive ebook market for popular fiction. If you add in ebook sales, then the figure for Inferno would be much closer to 1m. But most of those sales will be on Kindle, and Amazon don't release those figures."
For Nielsen's Russell Bremner, Amazon's refusal to release figures for Kindle downloads is "the big issue for ebook sales". With electronic books accounting for 17% of UK sales by volume according to consumer research conducted by Kantar World Panel and the internet retailer accounting for 79% of those sales, ebook figures for popular fiction remain something of a mystery, Bremner said. "We have no idea, unfortunately. I wish we did."
Third on the list of print sales is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl – proof that four years after the Richard and Judy show was axed from UKTV their book club still wields considerable commercial clout. After partnering with WHSmith and shifting online, the book club sees five of its 2013 selections in the top 100, alongside a debut novel from one of the presenters – Judy Finnigan's Cornish ghost story, Eloise, is in 55th place.
David Jason has won the battle of the showbiz memoir with almost 300,000 books sold, comfortably ahead of Morrissey, who sold more than 140,00 copies of his Penguin classic, and Miranda Hart whose 2012 memoir Is It Just Me? sold more than 137,000 copies during 2013 in paperback.
Just behind Jason in 11th place is JK Rowling, whose first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, sold almost 275,000 this year in paperback.
Rowling makes a second appearance a little further down the charts in her guise as Robert Galbraith. Her novel featuring the private investigator Cormoran Strike offers a chance to measure the power of a name in cold, hard cash. The Cuckoo's Calling sold 8,500 copies in hardback, ebook and audio edition before the identity of its author was revealed. It has since sold more than 112,000 copies: sales worth almost £1.2m.
This will come as a welcome fillip to publishers still struggling to cope as the slide in print sales continues. Early indications show the number of sales in 2013 will be down almost 9% on 2012, a year which was itself down 4% on 2011.
According the editor of the Bookseller, Philip Jones, publishers have still put out "event books", such as William Boyd's James Bond novel, Solo, and Helen Fielding's latest Bridget Jones, Mad About the Boy, which appears at 18th in the 2013 chart with 225,000 copies sold. The continuing fall in print sales is partly due to the recession and the shift to digital, Jones argues, but also pays tribute to the breakout success of 50 Shades of Grey. Take out EL James from figures from 2012 and the decline is only 4%.
EL James's influence on publishing can be still be seen in 2013 with two appearances for Sylvia Day's Crossfire erotic romances – Entwined with You is in 12th slot with almost 255,000 copies sold. But with a film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey due in early 2015, Howells is confident EL James will return to bestselling ways.
"When that happens – presuming the film is the faithful adaptation of the book all her fans expect – she'll be back in the top 100 again," he said, citing cinema versions of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. "You think everybody's read something the first time around, but if the film works, you see sales rocket again," he said.
Another author propelled on to the UK top 100 by cinematic success is Jeff Kinney, six of whose eight Diary of a Wimpy Kid novels appear on the chart, with the latest, Hard Luck, in fifth position with almost 350,000 copies sold. With the children's market due to contract by only 5% David Walliams is another writer who has translated screen success into a publishing gold, with five of his recent novels for eight to twelve year olds among this year's top sellers.
The influence of the silver screen extends to literary fiction as well, with Ang Lee's 2012 film adaptation of The Life of Pi enough to make Yann Martel's 2001 novel a star of 2013. Martel appears alongside fellow Booker winners Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel on the top 100, but there was no space for this year's winner, Eleanor Catton, or for Donna Tartt, though according to Jones both titles should figure very strongly next year in paperback.
Despite the continuing fall in print sales, Jones remains bullish about prospects for 2014, suggesting that with almost 50% of the sales for big commercial titles shifting to digital editions and falling off the charts, a slide of 8% is "not bad".
"We saw a lot of optimism at the London Book Fair and Frankfurt in 2013," he added, "a lot of buying. Publishers have discovered that the more their business shifts to digital the more profitable it becomes, and they were spending some of that this year. Publishing is remarkably robust and incredibly positive, though with Amazon's domination extending over more and more of the industry, who knows what the future will bring." Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
His team may be languishing mid-table over the festive season, but the former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson will sit down to Christmas dinner in pole position once more, as his latest autobiography is declared 2013's bestselling print book.
Ferguson's memoir has dominated the charts since publication in October, when it became the fastest-selling work of non-fiction on record, going on to amass sales of more than 647,000 copies. According to Waterstones' Jon Howells, the scale of My Autobiography's success has been something of a surprise. "It looks like it's going to be one of the biggest-selling autobiographies since records began," Howells said, "and I don't think anybody would have predicted three months ago that would happen."
For Howells, Ferguson's literary success shows the winner of 13 Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues and five FA Cups has managed to transcend sport.
"It's reaching a readership which is interested in management and leadership as a broader issue."
With just one week of sales data to add to the UK top 100 before Christmas, Dan Brown's latest Robert Langdon thriller, Inferno, is in second place on the Nielsen BookScan chart. With sales of 228,000 in its first week, this Dantean vision of Armageddon has gone on to shift more than 626,000 copies during 2013 – compared with the 1.2m copies notched up for the previous outing for his academic adventurer, The Lost Symbol.
But according to Howells, this dip doesn't mark a loss of form from one of popular fiction's biggest stars, but rather is an indication of wider shifts in the books industry.
"I'm not into Dan Brown snobbery," Howells said. "I've read Inferno and the others and they're great fun." Nobody was reading digitally when The Lost Symbol was published back in 2009, he said. "Now there's a massive ebook market for popular fiction. If you add in ebook sales, then the figure for Inferno would be much closer to 1m. But most of those sales will be on Kindle, and Amazon don't release those figures."
For Nielsen's Russell Bremner, Amazon's refusal to release figures for Kindle downloads is "the big issue for ebook sales". With electronic books accounting for 17% of UK sales by volume according to consumer research conducted by Kantar World Panel and the internet retailer accounting for 79% of those sales, ebook figures for popular fiction remain something of a mystery, Bremner said. "We have no idea, unfortunately. I wish we did."
Third on the list of print sales is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl – proof that four years after the Richard and Judy show was axed from UKTV their book club still wields considerable commercial clout. After partnering with WHSmith and shifting online, the book club sees five of its 2013 selections in the top 100, alongside a debut novel from one of the presenters – Judy Finnigan's Cornish ghost story, Eloise, is in 55th place.
David Jason has won the battle of the showbiz memoir with almost 300,000 books sold, comfortably ahead of Morrissey, who sold more than 140,00 copies of his Penguin classic, and Miranda Hart whose 2012 memoir Is It Just Me? sold more than 137,000 copies during 2013 in paperback.
Just behind Jason in 11th place is JK Rowling, whose first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, sold almost 275,000 this year in paperback.
Rowling makes a second appearance a little further down the charts in her guise as Robert Galbraith. Her novel featuring the private investigator Cormoran Strike offers a chance to measure the power of a name in cold, hard cash. The Cuckoo's Calling sold 8,500 copies in hardback, ebook and audio edition before the identity of its author was revealed. It has since sold more than 112,000 copies: sales worth almost £1.2m.
This will come as a welcome fillip to publishers still struggling to cope as the slide in print sales continues. Early indications show the number of sales in 2013 will be down almost 9% on 2012, a year which was itself down 4% on 2011.
According the editor of the Bookseller, Philip Jones, publishers have still put out "event books", such as William Boyd's James Bond novel, Solo, and Helen Fielding's latest Bridget Jones, Mad About the Boy, which appears at 18th in the 2013 chart with 225,000 copies sold. The continuing fall in print sales is partly due to the recession and the shift to digital, Jones argues, but also pays tribute to the breakout success of 50 Shades of Grey. Take out EL James from figures from 2012 and the decline is only 4%.
EL James's influence on publishing can be still be seen in 2013 with two appearances for Sylvia Day's Crossfire erotic romances – Entwined with You is in 12th slot with almost 255,000 copies sold. But with a film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey due in early 2015, Howells is confident EL James will return to bestselling ways.
"When that happens – presuming the film is the faithful adaptation of the book all her fans expect – she'll be back in the top 100 again," he said, citing cinema versions of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. "You think everybody's read something the first time around, but if the film works, you see sales rocket again," he said.
Another author propelled on to the UK top 100 by cinematic success is Jeff Kinney, six of whose eight Diary of a Wimpy Kid novels appear on the chart, with the latest, Hard Luck, in fifth position with almost 350,000 copies sold. With the children's market due to contract by only 5% David Walliams is another writer who has translated screen success into a publishing gold, with five of his recent novels for eight to twelve year olds among this year's top sellers.
The influence of the silver screen extends to literary fiction as well, with Ang Lee's 2012 film adaptation of The Life of Pi enough to make Yann Martel's 2001 novel a star of 2013. Martel appears alongside fellow Booker winners Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel on the top 100, but there was no space for this year's winner, Eleanor Catton, or for Donna Tartt, though according to Jones both titles should figure very strongly next year in paperback.
Despite the continuing fall in print sales, Jones remains bullish about prospects for 2014, suggesting that with almost 50% of the sales for big commercial titles shifting to digital editions and falling off the charts, a slide of 8% is "not bad".
"We saw a lot of optimism at the London Book Fair and Frankfurt in 2013," he added, "a lot of buying. Publishers have discovered that the more their business shifts to digital the more profitable it becomes, and they were spending some of that this year. Publishing is remarkably robust and incredibly positive, though with Amazon's domination extending over more and more of the industry, who knows what the future will bring." Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.