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Spending on printed books in 2012 has passed the £1bn mark, but a fortnight later than last year. According to Nielsen BookScan data, sales of physical books in the week ending 6th October totalled £33.9m in the UK, pushing the total for the year to date into ten figures. Last year, the trade passed the £1bn mark two weeks earlier — in the week ending 24th September.
In total, £1.016bn has been spent on printed books in 2012 — down 5.5% (£58.7m) year on year, and down 15% (£177.6m) on five years ago due largely to the growth of the digital sector. Volume sales of printed books in 2012 are down a shallower 3.8% (5.6m) year on year, to 140.8m, with average selling prices falling 1.7% (12p), to £7.22.
According to Bowker, ebooks accounted for approximately 13% all book sales in the first half of 2012 — up from 7% year on year.
After a dire first quarter in which sales were down 11% year on year, printed book sales have improved helped by the record-breaking popularity of E L James' Fifty Shades trilogy (Arrow) which hit shelves in April. Overall book sales in quarter two (13 weeks to 2nd July) were down a shallower 4% year on year, while sales in quarter three (13 weeks to 29th September) were down just 2% year on year.
Worth £45.3m to booksellers in 2012, E L James has been by far the bestselling author of the year thus far. Four-and-a-half pence in every £1 spent on a printed book this year has gone towards a copy of one of the three books in her erotic trilogy. At the height of her popularity in early July, a massive 40p in every £1 spent on a novel went towards a copy of one of her three novels.
The three books in the series are comfortably the bestselling books of 2012 to date. Fifty Shades of Grey has sold 4.3m physical copies this year, with sequel Fifty Shades Darker scoring sales of 3.1m and the final book in the series, Fifty Shades Freed, enjoying sales of 2.8m. Books one and two in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (published by Scholastic), are the next bestselling books of the year, with sales of 1.4m copies between them.
Despite the record-breaking sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy, overall sales of novels are down 5% year on year in 2012%, while sales of novels not penned by E L James are down a massive 20% year on year. In comparison, sales of non-fiction books are down 9% year on year, with the children's sector, which remains largely unscathed by the digital books revolution, enjoying a slight uplift in sales, by 0.2%, year on year.
Bestselling Books
1) E L James' Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow): 4,337,000
2) E L James' Fifty Shades Darker (Arrow): 3,058,000
3) E L James' Fifty Shades Freed (Arrow): 2,785,000
4) Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games (Scholastic): 776,000
5) Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire (Scholastic): 614,000
6) Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife (Orion):592,000
7) Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay (Scholastic): 559,000
8) Sylvia Day's Bared to You (Penguin): 523,000
9) S J Watson's Before I Go to Sleep (Black Swan): 346,000
10) The Hairy Bikers' The Hairy Dieters (Weidenfeld): 255,000
Bestselling Authors
1) E L James: £45.3m
2) Suzanne Collins: £10.7m (up 1,590% year on year)
3) Julia Donaldson: £7.5m (-13%)
4) James Patterson: £6.3m (-11%)
5) George R R Martin: £6.3m (+17%)