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Sales of the titles in the latest incarnation of the Richard & Judy book club remain robust, according to Nielsen BookScan data, despite initial nervousness about the ability of the brand to survive its recent move to digital television.
All major book retailers have backed the latest R&J book club with money-off promotions. Waterstone’s and Borders have placed all titles into three-for-two campaigns, with W H Smith offering the titles as part of its “buy one, get one half-price” offer.
Amazon.co.uk meanwhile, is currently selling all book club titles at less than 50% of their recommended retail price. Amanda Ross, m.d. of Cactus TV and creator of the R&J book clubs, told The Bookseller that “stickers and posters—a cohesive campaign is what is important”. David Cooke, category manager at Tesco said: “It is off to a good start in Tesco. I’m pleased with sales and market share to date and the prospect of more to come as the campaign continues.”
The average sale across all editions of the 10 titles in this year’s book club totalled 7,933 copies last week. Although this figure is down on the 11,000-plus figures posted by the last two book clubs in their début week, it is a higher figure than the first week of the book clubs of 2006 (6,699 average), 2005 (7,768) and the inaugural book club in 2004 (2,113).
Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? (Black Swan) sold more than 20,000 copies through the Total Consumer Market last week, with Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bloomsbury) and Jesse Kellerman’s The Brutal Art (Sphere) both selling more than 10,000 copies. Kellerman’s début novel was the first to go under the R&J spotlight last week.
According to UK TV audience measurement service, BARB, Richard and Judy’s tea-time talk show was being watched by about 1.8 million viewers this time last year, significantly larger than the 40,000 currently watching their “New Position” show at the new time of 6 p.m. on digital TV channel Watch.
Although R&J’s viewing figures may be down some 98% on last year, sales of the book club titles remain strong.