Blogs

Tom Tivnan

Tom Tivnan is the features editor of The Bookseller. He will be blogging about the magazine's in depth coverage.

The R&J brand can grow

15.08.08

The final "Richard & Judy" Summer Read strand on Channel 4 is going out with a bang. No less than seven of the eight titles featured on the series are currently sitting in Nielsen BookScan's top 50, with Linwood Barclay's No Time for Goodbye (Orion) at number one.

Yet this autumn the couple are taking their show to non-Freeview digital broadcaster UKTV. Even the most liberal estimates from television insiders say the new show may struggle to hit 500,000 viewers, a far cry from the 1.5 million currently being pulled in on Channel 4. If viewing figures are set to plummet, is the sun about to set on the biggest industry-wide promotion in recent memory?

With an economy lurching into recession, it is a promotion that publishers and booksellers can ill afford to lose. The numbers are simply staggering. Since January 2004, the titles on the 10 R&J Book Club and Summer Read lists have sold more than £158m through BookScan. That is just 82 titles accounting for 2.5% of the entire retail books market.

Hearteningly, the R&J book brand seems to have almost outgrown the television show. With R&J stickers on the cover, the books sell before, during and after they are featured on air. This is due in large part to astute picking of titles. In the past four-and-a-half years, R&J selections have built rock-solid credibility with the public; customers know they will get a good read.

Yet the momentum must be kept up. Cactus seems to be canny enough to recognise that to keep "brand" Richard & Judy going, they need to look to other avenues. Hence, a number of initiatives are scheduled around the launch of the UKTV show, including a new writers' book club link-up with the Daily Mail and another Christmas books series. The two will also continue the Book Clubs, the Summer Reads and their association with the Galaxy British Book Awards. More partnerships outside the UKTV box will keep R&J's visibility high.

Crucially, the trade must also do its part and continue to embrace brand R&J. Publishers need to submit strong titles for inclusion in the clubs and retailers must continue to put weight behind promoting the books. If so, the R&J book brand can still be an industry-wide spur for book sales—whatever the viewer numbers. 

Add comment

By posting on this website you agree to the Bookseller Comments Policy. Comments go direct to live, please be relevant, brief and definitely not abusive. Report any "unsuitable" comments by clicking the links.

Name

Comment

Email

Comments on this article

By R.Appleton

The books do indeed sell before, during and after they've been feautred on air. But, since the books sales peak in the week discussed on air, it surely means there is a link between viewing figures and book sales. In which case, a move to UKTV is bound to affect sales. I would be interested to read your evidence in your assumption that "the R&J book brand seems to have almost outgrown the television show". As far as I am aware, there is none.

15 Aug 08 21:53

Unsuitable?

By Tom Tivnan

Thanks for you comment R.Appleton. We did some number crunching on how the books sell after the series air, and by and large, the books continue to shift in enormous quantities. You can find that article here: http://www.thebookseller.com/in-depth/feature/65076-last-hurrah-or-new-beginning.html The Bookseller of Kabul, for example, sold just over 35,000 copies during the course of the 2004 Book Club, then went on to sell 303,000 for the rest of the year, and has life sales to date of over 475,000. There were other factors affecting sales, but without that "R&J" sticker, I don't think it would have continued to sell so well. This is consistent for all of the titles.

18 Aug 08 14:59

Unsuitable?

See Also