13.04.16 www.thebookseller.com


FEATURE SHAKESPEARE


17


BOOKSCAN UK’S BEST OF THE BARD


Bill Bryson Shakespeare: The World as a Stage Harper Perennial, 9780007197903, £8.99


A brief life of Shakespeare,


with a chapter devoted to debunking questions of authorship. 37,124 copies sold


Neil MacGregor Shakespeare’s Restless World: An Unexpected History in 20 Objects Penguin,


9780718195700, £8.99


An offshoot of a British Museum 2012 exhibition, by the organisation’s former boss. 18,686 copies sold


James Shapiro 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare Faber,


9780571214815, £12.99


Shakespeare scholar Shapiro


focuses on the year Shakespeare wrote four plays, including “Hamlet”. Shapiro’s follow-up, 1606, was published in October 2015, selling 14,000 copies in hardback. 12,442 copies sold


Pictured above: the Globe Theatre, on London’s Southbank


Shakespeare: The Bard’s Guide to Abuses and Affronts Running Press, 9780762453863, £3.99


“Till point” mini-


edition of Shakespearean insults. 11,350 copies sold


James Shapiro Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? Faber,


9780571235773, £10.99


A look at the controversy


Chart, left: the top five publishers of Shakespeare’s plays and study guides, ranked by volume and market share


around the Shakespeare authorship question. 11,052 copies sold


upon which everyone can strut. He is an important author for Wordsworth Editions; its managing director, Derek Wright, says the publisher sold nearly 250,000 Shakespeare titles worldwide last year. “I’d be disappointed if we don’t go over 300,000 this year, through a combination of school sales and the anniversary. We advertise on specialist educational websites—places such as Browns Books for Students—and on Facebook, where you can nominate teachers as your target audience and it gives you clickthrough data.” He notes that budget cutbacks and


austerity measures have had an effect on schools’ spending, which has played into Wordsworth’s hands. “Schools used to be very conservative, and perhaps always chose Penguin. But that began to change three or four years ago, when they asked themselves ‘why pay more?’” Away from the plays and sonnets,


there are many Shakespeare-related titles this year, ranging from the literary (Angela Thirlwell’s imagined biography of Rosalind, from Oberon Books), to the frippery in Nosy Crow’s To Wee or Not to Wee!, which reinterprets some of the plays for children. The Shakespeare graphic novels from Birmingham- based Classical Comics are also aimed at a younger audience. Founded in 2006, Classical Comics aims to make Shakespeare as “energetic and colourful as Spider-Man”—and to that end, even uses Spider-Man illustrator and comic- book artist Jon Howard. It is offering online customers a 25% discount on 23rd April, Shakespeare’s birth (and death) day.


BEHIND THE CURTAIN Non-traditional outlets are of some importance for Shakespeare 400. Edinburgh-based wholesaler Bookspeed is supplying a range of Shakespeare titles for an exhibition by “a sizeable heritage customer”, and m.d. Matthew Perren said a number of general gift outlets were putting together Shakespeare ranges for consumers. Nick Hern, founder of Nick Hern


Books, says that sales per minute at the Royal Shakespeare Company bookshop at the RSC’s Stratford-upon-Avon base can sometimes be “higher than


THE PLAY’S THE THING


Play sales through BookScan are dominated by schools’ reading list titles, and Wordsworth’s cheap as chips £1.99 range. The three top sellers since 2010 are all from the indie classics publisher: Macbeth (9781853260353, 43,599 units), Romeo


and Juliet (9781840224337, 34,303 copies), and Othello (9781853260186, 22,159). Unlike the top trio, RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Palgrave, 9780230200951, £19.99), in fourth place on 21,073 copies, is a staple on university reading lists. The Penguin Classics edition of Macbeth (9780141013695, £7.99, 19,252) rounds out the top five.


Sales of Shakespeare study guides (standalone guides and plays/guides) are primarily a battle between rivals Oxford and Cambridge University Press. OUP takes the top two spots with Macbeth: Oxford School


Shakespeare (9780198324003, £6.99, 43,895 copies sold), followed by Romeo & Juliet: Oxford School Shakespeare (9780198321668, £6.99, 39,356 units). CUP grabs positions three and five with Romeo and Juliet: Cambridge School Shakespeare (9780521618700, £6.50, 26,834) and Macbeth: Cambridge School Shakespeare (9780521606868, £6.50, 24,762). Study guide specialist CGP breaks the Oxbridge top five monopoly, placing fourth with GCSE English Shakespeare Text Guide: Romeo & Juliet (9781841461182, £5.95, 26,679).


through a conventional bookshop”. Other important outlets for Shakespeare publishers include the National Theatre, the Royal Court and the Globe Theatre in London; the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford; and drama bookshops such as Samuel French in London and the Drama Bookstore in New York. But it’s not all good news for Hern,


as he confesses: “When something like this happens, we heave a collective sigh. Suddenly the world turns up outside our door and we think, ‘we’ve been doing this all the time . . .’” 


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32