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THE BRITISH BOOK AWARD FOR EXPORT (£10M+)
OVERVIEW British book exports are now worth £3.7bn a year, Association—more This award, now in its third year, recognises who achieved yet more growth in pandemic, and now Brexit, has thrown in their way.
BLOOMSBURY Responsible for fiction, non-fiction and children’s books in nearly 100 open markets and South Africa, Bloomsbury’s exports team switched very well to remote selling and virtual presentations when Covid hit. Well over two decades on from J K Rowling’s first book it is still carving out new sales for Harry Potter, and in 2020 it achieved stellar sales for Camilla Reid and Ailie Busby’s Lulu series of picture books. There were five-figure sales for 17 adult titles, led by Reni Eddo-Lodge’s (right) agenda-setting Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, non-fiction from Rutger Bregman and Lisa Taddeo, and novels by Sarah J Maas, Elizabeth Gilbert and Madeline Miller. “They are dedicated, enthusiastic and real book lovers—I can’t recommend them highly enough,” said one testimonial.
HARPERCOLLINS HarperCollins’ 14-strong team in its exports division excelled with its teamwork and customer outreach in 2020, using a dedicated international trade website, author videos, digital assets and extensive mailings to make up for the absence of face-to-face meetings. Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light was the highlight of a very good year for fiction exports, along with renewed energy for many of HC’s big backlist author brands. A strategy of finding more non-fiction titles with global appeal is starting to pay dividends, as with Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk, which topped the charts in South Africa and India. The power- ful children’s list was led around the world, as usual, by David Walliams, backed up by Oliver Jeffers (left) and strengthened even further by the addition of the Egmont list.
LAST YEAR’S WINNER
PAN MACMILLAN The 2020 British Book Award for Export winner—not to mention the reigning Publisher of the Year—had a seventh successive year of growth in export markets. Sales to Australia and New Zealand were the highest ever, and the children’s list, spearheaded by the indefatigable Julia Donaldson, flourished in Asia. Fiction benefited from Booker winner Douglas Stuart, Toshikazu Kawaguchi and Picador’s deep range, while global brand authors including Ken Follett, Ann Cleeves, David Baldacci and Danielle Steel rolled on. A blockbuster campaign for Mariah Carey and the worldwide popu- larity of Joy at Work by Marie Kondo (left) bolstered non-fiction. A few authors managed to tour overseas before the pandemic hit, but Pan Mac’s exports team switched quickly to virtual events to keep authors connected with territories worldwide.
WONDERBLY Personalised books specialist Wonderbly has been an interna- tionally minded business from the get-go. The large majority of its turnover comes from beyond the UK, and it sold books to customers in 159 different countries worldwide in 2020, achiev- ing six-figure sales in 16 of them. Occasion- and TV-led marketing powered record sales in the US and Canada, its two biggest over- seas markets, and there was especially good growth in Japan and France, its largest non-English market. Unusually for a publisher, Wonderbly handles all its translations in-house, and has now published more than 100 foreign-language editions. Alongside the strategy of creating original content in its own studios and its direct-to-consumer delivery model, it has a uniquely powerful grip on its sales and profitability around the world.
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ANN CLEEVES
WAS AN OVERSEAS SUCCESS LAST YEAR FOR PAN MACMILLAN
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