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An abundance of celebrity memoirs will be filling stockings around the country come Christmas Day as sales soar after a lacklustre 2009.
With less than 50 shopping days left until Christmas, Nielsen BookScan data suggests that sales of celebrity memoirs are up in 2010. Sales of the Top 20 bestselling celebrity memoirs published since June are up 56% year-on-year to 765,700 copies sold. Eight celeb memoirs published within the past four months have sold more than 40,000 copies in hardback, compared to just two by the same point last year. However, sales are still down by 22% on 2008.
Phil Carroll, Sainsbury’s book department manager, said generally volumes were through the roof. "Jamie [Oliver] has been absolutely outstanding for us. It will be our biggest Jamie book ever,” he said. Titles by John Grisham, Michael Caine and Guinness World Records were other highlights.
Waterstone’s spokesman Jon Howells said that there was a strong range of books this year. He said: "The one I would pick out in front of all others is Michael McIntyre. He has been fantastic at doing events. He has done events the length and breadth of the country and stayed hours longer at each event."
Howells also singled out Oliver’s 30-minute Meals (Michael Joseph) as a big seller plus Life by Keith Richards (W&N) which he said was "flying out faster than a riff from his guitar".
"It has become our fastest ever rock’n’roll autobiography ever,” he said. "It has sold more in the first five days than we did with the Bob Dylan book in the first month."
The first part of Waterstone’s Christmas campaign will go into stores today with point of sale and its value message. A more decorative display follows next week.
Retailers said they expected Christmas shopping to fall later. Phil Edwards, senior buying manager at Gardners, said: “Christmas is on a Saturday so it’s a full week before. It will be an even later one.”
The wider retail market saw sales rise by 2.5% in the third quarter, according to the British Retail Consortium, with non-food up 1.4%. However, Tim Denison, director at Synovate, said: “It is very close to call, given demand is delicately balanced with no consistency across regions, sectors or even within individual retailer estates, and local, tactical promotional activity might well be more evident to spur demand where it is needed.”
Roger Miah, buying director at Bertrams, said: “We’re feeling positive about Christmas—consumers have some good-quality titles available and trading over the last week has been particularly bright even prior to month-end."
Edwards sounded a cautious note following the chancellor’s spending review. "It’s clear people haven’t got the money," he said. "There is gloom and doom forecast for 2011."