The Best Selling Books of 2015

Happy New Year!

I’m allowed to keep saying that until March and then stop.

Included in my New Year  Resolution list is one to blog more –must blog more, must blog more, so...

Before we get into the main “listy” part of this blog, I was chuffed to see that in the year’s best lists in that youff mag “The Skinny”, that I had actually seen some of their Films of 2015, namely “Inherent Vice” (number 1), and “Mad Max: Fury Road” (number 3),”It Follows” (number 4),and a couple outside the top ten like “Birdman” and “Sicario”.

Likewise, in their album picks I had actually purchased Kurt Vile’s “B’lieve I’m goin down” (number 9), Father John Misty’s “I Love You Honeybear” (number 8), and the michty Sleator-Kinney’s “No Cities to Love (in at number 1 with a bullet).

Speaking of lists, between Christmas and New Year,”The Guardian” published a list of the 100 best-selling books in the UK. These ranged from the number one selling book - “Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian” by EL James, which sold over one million copies, all the way down to number 100,which was “The Taxidermist’s Daughter” by Kate Mosse which sold almost 97,000 copies.

What was striking about James’ success was that she sold almost 500,000 copies more than the second placed book: “Grandpa’s Great Escape” by David Walliams. Not that Walliams was too bothered, I would think, given that he appeared another six times in the top 100, and a TV version of his “Billionaire Boy” just aired at Christmas. Children’s books didn’t have a bad showing overall, with 20 fiction books filling the list, including a couple from Julie Donaldson and the return of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. However, there were other children’s books in the top 100, including books about the film ”Frozen”, Minecraft and natural history which were among the non-fiction books.

If my maths is correct there were 67 fiction books, and 33 non-fiction books, the latter included cookery books and baking books and slimming books and the usual autobiographies that are now half price in the January sales and will soon be selling for £3.99 at a “The Works” near you. These included titles by an American Sniper, Sir Alex Ferguson, Guy Martin (twice), Steve Gerrard et al. Annual favourites like “The Guinness Book of World Records 2016” and “Ripley’s Believe it or Not! 2016” made the list, which also included the Beano Annual. Among the non-fiction were six colouring books, and “Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom” came in at number 4, selling over 400,000 copies as the top selling non-fiction book, so much for being a celebrity.

On the speculative fiction front there were only three entries, the highest being “The Shepherd’s Crown” by the late Terry Pratchett at number 33, “The Martian” by Andy Weir at number 55; and “Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R. R. Martin at number 59. Notably no Stephen King, nor any other science fiction or fantasy novels. Crime and thrillers fared better, but then they always do, coming in at number 3 with Paula Hawkins “The Girl on the Train” selling over 477,000 copies, through some other 17 titles in the top 100 (with some of the usual suspects like Grisham, Child, Patterson and Flynn in among them), and what you might call, “yer actual literature” dotted throughout the list from the likes of Ian McEwan and Anne Tyler.

Lessons to be learned, probably don’t write any erotica if you want to get rich (EL James was the only writer of that ilk), nor speculative fiction unless it becomes a film or TV series, so I’m going to devote 2016 to writing my crime novel, or a colouring book.

Until next time.

By: Ian Hunter On Thursday, 07 January 2016 Comment Comments( 0 ) Hits Views(2828)
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