Author of the Year
WINNER LEE CHILD
“If there were some sort of prize for Most Widely Admired Thriller Writer, Lee Child would win it time and again,” wrote the critic Sam Leith in a 2018 essay on Child, written for the Times Literary Supplement after its editor, Stig Abell, declared himself a fan on Twitter. “Why, in a crowded field, does Child’s work so thoroughly outpace the rest?" asks Leith. Part of it must be the consistency: Last year, Child published his 23rd
Jack Reacher novel—Past Tense—with number 24 due later this year. In 2015 Child was worth £5.5m through Nielsen's UK Total Consumer Market, and in 2018 that had grown to £7.8m, a 42% increase. Perhaps it is because each new book packs a fresh punch. Past Tense
was the biggest selling hardback novel of 2018, spending seven weeks at number one; meanwhile Reacher 22, The Midnight Line, remained at the top of the Sunday Times paperback list for three weeks, and was the second-biggest selling paperback of the year. Maybe it is his staying power: Child’s Reacher backlist (titles not pub-
lished in 2018) took in £3m through the TCM—almost 17% of the total backlist Crime & Thrillers market in 2018—outselling the backlist titles of rivals such as John Grisham and Martina Cole. Could it be his reach? Child’s Reacher series sells across the market,
equally strongly in Waterstones and independents as in the supermar- kets; he is an e-book bestseller and his audio sales are rising fast; he is a bestselling author in the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and has long dominated the most-borrowed top spot in libraries. Mostly likely it is because he is just so damned good at it. As the
author Margaret Drabble recently wrote: “The book I wish I’d written: anything by Lee Child. What page-turners, what prose, what land- scapes, what motorways and motels, what mythic dimensions! He does all the things I could never do, and I read, awestruck, waiting impatiently for the next.” Child, whose long-time UK editor is Doubleday’s Marianne Velmans, follows Philip Pullman as The British Book Awards’ Author of the Year.
Remarkable consistency of output, with the 24th Jack Reacher novel due this year
Sales of £7.8m through the UK TCM in 2018, an increase of 42% year on year Popular in overseas markets,
and across a number of formats
40
THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS WINNERS 2019
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 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
