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Spending at UK booksellers reached a 2010 high in the month of September but were nonetheless down on a strong 2009 when Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol smashed records upon hitting the shelves in hardback.
According to Nielsen BookScan, book sales in September were down 3.2% year-on-year in value terms, according to industry statisticians Nielsen BookScan. In BookScan's Total Consumer Market panel of some 6,500 book retail outlets, spending at UK booksellers totalled £132.2m during the four weeks to 2nd October, while volume sales were down 2.5% to 16.5m. Average selling prices were down 0.7% (six pence) to £8.03.
Despite till takings in the month of September being the highest of the year so far, sales were down on a strong 2009 when Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Bantam Press) hit the shelves in hardback and sold a massive 805,000 copies (taking £6.9m through the tills) in under three weeks. Strip that unique title out of the data and sales in September 2010 would be up 2% year-on-year in value terms.
Bestsellers in the month of September this year include Lee Child's 61 Hours (119,608 copies sold), Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (269,000 combined), Jilly Cooper's Jump! (49,500), Tony Blair's A Journey (110,000), Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles (84,700) and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (93,900).
Due to the success of Rhonda Byrne's The Power, the follow-up to her bestselling The Secret, sales through BookScan's "mind, body, spirit" category were up year on year, while the politics sector's sales were boosted by the release of Keith Jeffery's MI6 (Bloomsbury).
Meanwhile, thanks to new titles from Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, food and drink sales were also ahead of last year. Children's and young adult fiction sales were also strong thanks to bestsellers from the likes of Terry Pratchett, Stephenie Meyer, Derek Landy, Jeff Kinney and Robert Muchamore.
Conversely, and according to a similar analysis of BookScan's Top 5,000 bestseller list over the four-week period, crime sales were well down on last year (due to Brown), as was spending within the reference, self-improvement, travel and school textbooks/study guides sectors.
September's slump comes after two consecutive months of positive growth as sales were up marginally in both July (up 0.1% to £121.2m) and August (up 0.4% to £117.1m). Total spending in 2010 thus far now stands at £1.129bn — down 3.6% (£42.1m) year on year.