THIS WEEK


The Lead Story Review of the Year: Digital sales


Osman and Haig lead e-book chart for 2021 as market stalls


Data from Bookstat suggests that the market as a whole may have stagnated in 2021 as print surged— but whatever the format, Richard Osman led the way


Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan A


dd digital to Richard Osman’s print dominance, as The Thursday Murder Club easily topped the Bookstat full- year e-book list in 2021 and last year’s Audible chart (see opposite). According to Bookstat, Osman’s début was 30,000 units clear of second-placed Mat Haig’s The Comfort Book and a whopping 100,000 copies ahead of L J Ross’ third-placed The Rock. The Thursday Murder Club actually never


notched a weekly Bookstat number one in 2021, though its follow-up, The Man Who Died Twice, did so in its launch week in September. But there has been a consistency for Osman’s début: in 19 weeks of 2021 it appeared in the top 10, nine of which were within the top five. Impressive, given the changeabilit in Bookstat, as it is affected greatly by dynamic pricing of backlist and Amazon promotions.


Bookstat Top 10 Weeks spent in digital chart


Author


1 Richard Osman 2= Matt Haig 2= Julia Quinn


3= Michael Connolly 3= T M Logan 3= Jojo Moyes 4= Alice Hunter 4= Eve Chase 5= D S Butler


5= Beth O’Leary


Entries 18 14 14 11 11 11 10 10 7 7


Bookstat, which uses web-scraping data gathering to estimate figures, looks at Amazon and other players’ bestsellers, so it is not really a tool for gauging a full market picture. But as with our look at the Big Six trade publishers’ e-book sales (see pp06–07), there looks to be a slowing down of digital in year two of the pandemic: the top 25 e-books through


08 4th February 2022


L J ROSS IS ENJOYING SUCCESS IN PRINT AND DIGITAL WITH HER DARK SKIES IMPRINT


Bookstat shiſted 2.7 million units in 2021, compared to 4.1 million in 2020, a 34% drop. Twelve books last year exceeded the six-figure unit mark, compared to 34 in 2020. The chart has a strong contingent of digital- first hybrid authors, led by Ross, who is joined by a quartet of crime writers: Alex Smith, J M Dalgleish, Rachel Abbot and Rachel McLean. Ross hit the Bookstat chart 10 times across 2021, with six entries from The Rock and four from summer release The Cove. Ross also continues to make inroads into print, with her titles published under the Dark Skies imprint shiſting £584,000 through BookScan last year. Amazon must be levelling the playing field a bit, as in recent years its publishing arm’s imprints have got a lot of welly in the Kindle promotional space. In 2020, seven Amazon- published titles hit the BookStat top 25 (three from Montlake and four from Thomas & Mercer), a trio of which hit the top 10. In 2021 it was just two, led by Carol Wyer’s An Eye for an Eye in 13th place.


The BookStat full-year 2021 top 25


Source Bookstat; the volume and value figures are estimates. For more information, contact


info@bookstat.com. Clarification: Hachette said sales for Where the Crawdads Sing was 106,192 copies, American Dirt 79,560 and One August Night 87,173.


Title


1 The Thursday Murder Club 2 The Midnight Library 3 The Rock


4 The Other Passenger 5 Paper Girls


6 Harry... Philosopher’s Stone 7 Where the Crawdads Sing 8 The Catch


9 The Man Who Died Twice 10 The Holiday


11 The Beekeeper of Aleppo 12 One Lost Soul


13 An Eye for an Eye 14 The Glass House


15 The Viscount Who Loved Me 16 The Serial Killer’s Wife 17 Bridgerton


18 The Family Upstairs 19 The Couple at No 9 20 Close Your Eyes 21 Deadly Wishes 22 Bring Them Home 23 American Dirt 24 Last Night


25 One August Night Author 1 Imprint


Richard Osman Penguin Matt Haig L J Ross


Louise Candlish Alex Smith J K Rowling Delia Owens T M Logan


Christy Lefteri J M Dalgliesh Carol Wyer Eve Chase Julia Quinn Alice Hunter Julia Quinn Lisa Jewell


Claire Douglas Rachel Abbott


Canongate Dark Skies


2 3


ISBN (+978) Volume 0241988268 233,968 1786892737 202,292 1912310180 132,296


Simon & Schuster 1471183478 130,415 Relentless Media 1913877002 118,704 Pottermore Corsair Zaffre


Richard Osman Penguin T M Logan


Zaffre Zaffre


Hamilton


1408855652 114,108 1472154668 108,454 1838771164 107,134 0241425428 105,631 1785767685 103,597 1838770013 101,897 1696245319 101,573


Thomas & Mercer 1542020985 99,184 Penguin Avon Avon Avon


Cornerstone Penguin


Black Dot


Rachel McLean Ackroyd D S Butler


Jeanine Cummins Tinder Press Mhairi McFarlane HarperCollins Victoria Hislop


1405946179 98,908 0749936587 93,757 0008414078 92,499 0349429212 91,214 1787461482 91,141 1405943406 90,791 1999943745 90,219 1913401023 84,297


Thomas & Mercer 1503904934 82,722 1472261403 81,745 0008169534 80,634


Headline Review 1472278449 80,411


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