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Super Thursday boosts book sales

07.10.08 Victoria Gallagher

“Super Thursday” helped book stores to an 11% upswing in sales last week, with books continuing to defy the wider retail gloom. Last Thursday publishers released 800 new books, triple the daily average, including dozens of new non-fiction hardback titles expected to become Christmas bestsellers. The blitz was picked up by the media, with the Guardian devoting its page three to the book surge.

According to Nielsen BookScan the Total Consumer Market rose 11.3% by value week-on-week, with the number of books shifted up by 5.8%. Year-on-year value sales were down marginally, but volume sales stayed in the black, up by almost 1%. In total 31 hardback non-fiction titles, led by Guinness World Records 2009, sold more than 2,000 copies in the week, down by just two on the 33 books that passed the same sales mark in the comparable week last year before the credit crunch took a grip.

Of the titles released last Thursday, Jamie’s Ministry of Food was the topseller, in at number three on the hardback non-fiction chart, selling 26,050 copies. Michael Parkinson and Dawn French debuted at fourth and fifth respectively.

"It went very well overall," said David Cooke, category manager at Tesco, "it kicked off our book sales for Christmas." Cooke said that the sales for Jamie Oliver’s book had been good, along with some strong competition from Paul O’Grady, Dawn French, Nigella Lawson and Michael Parkinson.

Michael Jones, senior fiction buyer at Borders, said: "It was quite a lot of work in stores - people put in a lot of hard work, but it was completely worth it, there was some great footfall."

Steph Bateson, book buyer at Asda, said that their two stand-out bestsellers were the Dawn French and Michael Parkinson memoirs.

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By A.B.Seller

Although late September/early October has always been a traditional time for publishers to release their big-hitters, never in my experience have so many arrived into stock within a 48 hour period. Although in sales terms this is a positive thing for a bookshop, logistically it is a nightmare. Given that thousands of bookshops currently have one eye on academic season, and will continue to do so deep into October, finding the space for Christmas stock is incredibly difficult. And it is this time of year that my heart goes out to all booksellers, and most importantly, goods-in clerks who must be pulling their hair out under extreme pressure. Goods-in areas are overloaded with Christmas stock arriving on the same day, as well as unpacking the sought-after replenishments of student textbooks, making it incredibly difficult for a timely turnover in getting the stock from box to shelf/table.

08 Oct 08 11:03

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By Prediction Books

Given that so many publishers have bought out so many books on the same day are we to assume some catastrophic mis-communication and obliviousness by the industry? One can't help feel that, given the current credit climate and customer average spending data, they are only likely to buy two at a time at most and will have had to have made a decision on which of the numerous celeb memoirs/cookery books to buy. With Random House releasing Nigella and Dawn French within 48 hours of each other, Hachette doing the same with Parkinson and Walters, HarCol doing the same with Alan Carr and Stephen Fry and Penguin doing the same with Jamie and Clarkson, one can't help but feel that they all beat each other up - none made it anywhere near toppling Paul O'Grady and Guinness to top spot and given the likelihood of them all stealing sales from each other, I can't foresee one title in particular breaking away from the bunch and conquering all like Peter Kay did in 2006.

08 Oct 08 11:04

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By Bert

Some of us nearly had nervous breakdowns trying to cope with it all. Trying to reconcile the raft of new titles with the older lines still selling in the market was a near impossible task. All that can be guaranteed on these lines is that shops will be filled with rushed displays, older titles (IE, released a week or more previously) displayed incorrectly or not at all. While sales may be up overall, there are many titles that haven't, aren't and never will reach their full sales potential.

08 Oct 08 18:10

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