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Spending on books in the UK fell by more than £56m last year, Nielsen BookScan data has revealed. Sales during the 52 weeks to 25th December 2010 totalled £1.696bn, down 3.2% on 2009, with volume sales falling 4.3% to 225.5m. Average selling prices increased slightly, by 1.1% (eight pence) to £7.52.
The total is the lowest since 2006 when £1.692bn was spent on printed books in the UK, and is down 5.7% (£103.2m) on a 2007 peak of £1.799bn.
Sales were particularly low around the two periods of significantly poor weather last year. In January sales were down 8.5% (£10m) year-on-year, and in late November/early December sales slumped by 7.4% (£18.8m) over a four-week period. Any increases in online book sales during these periods was insufficient to make up for sales shortfalls on the high street.
However, BookScan's General Retail Market panel of booksellers, Nielsen's best indicator of high street performance and includes all branches of Tesco and Asda, reported sales in 2010 were down a shallower 1.9% year-on-year, to £950m.
As well as the weather playing a significant part in 2010's poor sales, other factors leading to the decline include the loss of Borders in late 2009, as well the uncertain economic climate. A weak pound, strikes and the Icelandic ash cloud meanwhile, affected sales of travel maps and guides last year, while the increasing popularity of e-books may also have had a small, negative impact on printed book sales in 2010.
The bestselling book in a difficult year for the trade was Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus), which sold 1,225,465 copies across all editions, taking £6.6m through bookshop tills. However, as the majority of its sales were split between two editions of the book (the original mass-market edition sold 783,864 copies to the film tie-in edition's 437,245), the best-selling single edition book was Jamie Oliver's Jamie's 30-minute Meals (Michael Joseph) with sales of 1,167,457 copies.
Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles (also Michael Joseph) takes the crown as the bestselling celebrity memoir of the year with sales of 388,372 copies across all editions—some 47,083 more than Penguin stablemate Michael McIntyre's Life and Laughing. Meanwhile, TV meerkat Aleksandr Orlov's A Simples Life (Ebury), the undoubted surprise hit of the year, ended 2010 with sales of 327,500 copies across all editions.
The bestselling children's book of the year was Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn with total sales of 596,200 copies across all editions. Meyer was once again one of the most popular authors in the UK with sales totalling £16.8m in 2010. Remarkably, however, this figure is down 43% on a massive 2009 for the US author when £29.4m was spent on her Twilight titles and her adult novel, The Host.
A more detailed analysis of 2010 begins on 14th January in the first part of The Bookseller's four-part Review of the Year.