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This year's Super Thursday, looking set to fall on 11th October, has the potential to be bigger than ever following the increased media attention on books due to the success of Fifty Shades, sales chiefs say. However, publishers continue to shy away from committing to a concerted co-operative venture to boost the promotion.
Non-fiction offerings from David Walliams (Michael Joseph), Tulisa Contostavlos (Headline), Rod Stewart (Century), Frankie Dettori (S&S), Miranda Hart (Hodder), Gregg Wallace (Orion), Will Young (Sphere) and David Mitchell (HarperCollins) are all due on the 11th, as is Jo Nesbø's The Bat (Harvill Secker), A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday) and Judy Finnigan's début Eloise (Sphere). Other stand-out titles include Counting One's Blessings, a volume of letters by the late Queen Mother edited by William Shawcross (Macmillan), and Jon Ronson's Lost at Sea (Picador). According to Nielsen BookData, 232 hardbacks are already listed for publication on 11th October—more than three times the daily average.
The grouping of heavyweights appear to edge out the nearest Super Thursday rival, 27th September, despite two giants—J K Rowling's A Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown) and Jamie Oliver's 15-minute Meals (Michael Joseph)—being published then. However, Sainsbury's head of books Phil Carroll said the supermarket was gearing up for 27th September as the biggest release date, securing "more front-of-store space than ever before for this date", while also working on gaining a "similar space" for October releases.
Amazon highlighted the Walliams memoir, as well as autobiographies by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cheryl Cole, as well as the Rowling and Oliver titles, as key Christmas offerings at a Christmas Wishlist event held in London this week, which showcased the products the online retailer is tipping to be festive bestsellers.
Sales and retail chiefs said Super Thursday was crucial in grabbing media space for books, as they compete with other entertainment products for the Christmas gift spend.
Pan Macmillan creative director Geoff Duffield called the day a "stepping stone" to a book's success, arguing it gives them an "additional platform". He said: "I think all the talk about 50 Shades and also the J K Rowling will make Super Thursday bigger this year . . . the media will be more interested, and thus the public will be too." Pan Mac deliberately and "very successfully" published Sir Alan Sugar on Super Thursday last year, and will do the same for Andrew Marr's A New History of the World this autumn, Duffield added.
Others said it was a time for retailers, publishers and the media to work together, with Booksellers Association head of marketing Andy Staton arguing Super Thursday was a "good opportunity" for a "cross-industry promotion".
Little, Brown marketing director Charlie King said Super Thursday was an opportunity to work with retailers: "We need to fight for that share of market and share of mind." Foyles web editor Jonathan Ruppin said the date "gives bookshops a rare chance to tie in withwidespread media coverage".
However, Publishers Association c.e.o. Richard Mollet said "publishers organically coalesce around a handful of dates" in the autumn, with HarperCollins group sales director Oliver Wright saying that spreading out the release of strong titles over the autumn generates "a number of opportunitites to shout about books".
Constable & Robinson sales and marketing director Martin Palmer said publishers might not be keen to collaborate to make Super Thursday a more official promotion date as "it really only works for the big boys, who dominate the shelf space at that point, and the retailers' time, energy and budgets".
Last year, Super Thursday fell on 29th September, with sales of hardback books soaring 35% week on week, according to an analysis of BookScan TCM Top 5,000 data.