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Mis-mem sales continue to dip

28.08.08

The misery memoir market is continuing to flag, with the latest figures from Nielsen BookScan showing an accelerated decline in the genre.

The list of the top 20 titles in the genre in 2008 show numbers down by more than 30% by comparison with the equivalent titles last year, on a full seven months of sales. Volume sales are down 31.2% at 987,837, with value falling 34.2% to £4,595,867. Both figures are down further on what was reported in May when volume sales were off by 27%.

Tesco category manager David Cooke said: “It’s still a very important genre, but there’s an element of slowdown.” Asda book buyer Steph Bateson agreed: “We still sell misery really well but it’s definitely the case that there is fatigue in the market, with too much publishing and too much mediocre publishing with publishers who missed out on the first wave trying to get on the bandwagon.”

Publishers are also bringing out both a hardback and a paperback edition when they should stick to paperback originals, Bateson added. “Readers are savvy and they know if they wait four or five months a hardback title will come out in paperback, and meanwhile they can satisfy their misery urge with the other paperbacks which are available. Except for Torey Hayden or Cathy Glass, the authors don’t have brand loyalty because it is very much a market for one-offs.”

Home Nielsen Bookscan Charts Misery Memoirs

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By Little Miss Edi

I'm not sure if there isn't something a little bit wrong about the phrase: "We still sell misery really well" and I personally am hoping that people don't feel a compelling need to satisfy a 'misery urge'... perhaps this is a positive ebb - but then again, Shakespeare's best loved are Tragedies. Who knows.

28 Aug 08 07:49

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By croftsa@aol.com

How are we measuring what is or isn't 'mis-mem'? They are just powerful stories starring great heroes and the world will never grow tired of reading them. Over the last few months I have been involved with four books that might be included in the genre: "Cry Silent Tears" by Joe Peters (currently number one), "Daddy's Little Earner" by Maria Landon, (recently number two), "Disgraced" by Saira Ahmed, the story of a girl who escapes an arranged marriage in Pakistan and goes on the game to support her family, and "For the Love of Julie" by Ann Ming, a woman who spent 17 years battling to change the law of double jeopardy in order to bring her daughter's murderer to justice. They could all be labelled "misery" or perhaps "women in peril", or "crime", or "prostitution", or "culture gap" stories, or perhaps they are just powerful tales about heroes and heroines who battle against adversity and have extraordinary and extreme experiences that the rest of us are fortunate enough to avoid. Or are we saying that "mis-mems" are only the stories told by abused children? If that is the case how can they be said to be in decline when Joe Peters, Maria Landon and Judy Westwater were all in the top ten together a couple of weeks ago? People overcoming adversity, (or misery), always make for gripping reading, both in fiction and non-fiction and the subject matter they deal with will always develop as we learn and understand more about the world about us. No publisher would have been willing to touch the incendiary material contained in "Cry Silent Tears" five years ago when Kevin Lewis's "The Kid" was first published. We have all learned a lot in those five years and I suspect there are many more moving, inspiring and powerful personal stories to come, whether we choose to label them "mis-mems" or not.

01 Sep 08 12:49

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By A Beauchamp

I think Andrew makes a very good point in that although the genre may be down in comparison to last year, the top 20 titles have still taken close to £5m thus far this year. That doesn't sound like a genre in its last throes to me, although, yes, it may be "in decline" in comparison to last year. Perhaps the market is oversaturated however - with too many books vying for the same customer. I wonder if there are customers who just read mis-mems all year round or who buy one or two. That would explain why a Top 20 comparison would show a sales decline.

01 Sep 08 14:38

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