The Fifty Shades phenomenon has propelled Random House to the top of the publisher charts for the first half of 2012, taking the group above rival Hachette in print revenue for the first time in six years.
Random's sales through Nielsen BookScan stood at £72.6m for the first two quarters of this year, for a market share of 12.7%, while Hachette's garnered a 12.1% share on sales of £69m. Random has not taken the top spot at the full or halfway point of a year since the acquisition of Time Warner by Hachette Livre in 2006.
At the halfway point in 2011, Hachette had a sales of £88m for a 14.1% share, with Random at 12.9% on £80.8m.
E L James accounted for £15.2m, or 20.9%, of Random's entire group sales in the period. Yet Random chairman and c.e.o. Dame Gail Rebuck said the group was also performing well outside of Fifty Shades, both with big brands such as James Patterson and Sophie Kinsella and new authors such as S J Watson. She added: "Part of our role as publisher is to identify and nurture the stars of the future and I was delighted to see that we published half of the top 10 debut hardback fiction authors for the first half of 2012."
Rebuck also said "e-book sales continue to grow and are significantly ahead of last year".
Hachette c.e.o. Tim Hely Hutchinson said his group's TCM decline was "compensated by our e-book sales. We continue to outperform in digital, with sales growing month on month, and we are now well-established as the market-leading publisher of e-books in UK and export."
Hely Hutchinson also acknowledged that the Fifty Shades series was good for the industry as it appeals to "both to regular readers and to some who seldom buy a book for themselves."
He added: "The phenomenal numbers mean that [Fifty Shades] on its own could take 3% to 5% of the whole TCM this year, which will obviously catapult Random from second or third place in the market to top this year. But Hachette's market share will be up too and we are, and expect to remain, number one over any period that excludes such a special occurrence."