155,505


Total volume for The Wrong Sister


Summer paperback fiction 2024 The paper-brat summer hits new heights


But arguably the star was Freida


McFadden whose sales soared from 47,426 units in 2023 to a whopping 471,658 in 2024—up nearly 900% and accounting for a full third of 2024’s increase on the previous summer. McFadden has five books inside the top 50 bestsellers of the season this year, tied with Sarah J Maas who appears with each title in her A Court of Thorn and Roses series. The quintet helped Maas achieve sales of 350,644, a quarter of a million more than in 2023. Between them, Douglas,


McFadden and Maas’ indi- vidual year-on-year performances account for 56.7% of 2024’s summer bump, but some of their sales are merely covering the absence of some of 2023’s bestsellers—including Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow and Lessons in Chemistry. These two big-hitters together shifted 62,599 copies in summer 2024—impres- sively still some of the most popular books of the summer—but are massively down on their standout 2023 performance (combined unit sales of 317,589). In fact, the top 50 paperbacks of


the past 12 weeks achieved a little under three million copies sold, just


Title


1 The Wrong Sister 2 It Ends with Us 3 It Starts with Us


4 A Court of Thorns and Roses 5 Yellowface


6 The Housemaid


7 The Housemaid is Watching 8 The Last Devil to Die 9 Murder on Lake Garda 10 The Exchange 11 The Figurine 12 It Ends with Us 13 The Burnout 14 The Edge


15 The Housemaid’s Secret 16 Someone Else’s Shoes 17 Daydream 18 Fourth Wing


19 A Court of Mist and Fury 20 The Secret


TheBookseller.com Author Imprint Claire Douglas Penguin


Top 5 authors


L J ROSS: MYSTERY GROWTH


01


1.6% more than 2023, meaning that while these titles account for 20% of the total paperback sales for the summer, the rest of the market is providing the increase. Outside of the top 50 the Crime,


REBECCA F KUANG: SOLID APPEAL


ISBN (+978) Volume 1405957618


Colleen Hoover Simon & Schuster 1471156267 Colleen Hoover Simon & Schuster 1398518209 Sarah J Maas Bloomsbury Rebecca F Kuang Borough Press Freida McFadden Little, Brown Freida McFadden Poisoned Pen Richard Osman Penguin Tom Hindle Cornerstone John Grisham Hodder Victoria Hislop Headline


Colleen Hoover Simon & Schuster 1398531734 Sophie Kinsella Transworld


1804990810


David Baldacci Pan 1529062113 Freida McFadden Little, Brown Jojo Moyes Penguin


Hannah Grace Simon & Schuster 1398525740 Rebecca Yarros Piatkus Sarah J Maas Bloomsbury Lee & Andrew Child Transworld


0349437019 1526617163 0552177566


0349132600 1405943505


1526605399 0008532819 1408728512 1464223310 0241992401 1804942369 1399724869 1472263940


155,505 149,344 124,747 109,940 103,892 97,214 92,910 90,854 89,255 83,104 82,516 80,312 79,811 72,498 69,398 65,686 64,323 60,909 60,439 50,541


Thriller & Adventure sub-category has grown by 14.6%, driven in part by established authors such as Lee (and Andrew) Child, Karin Slaughter and Patricia Cornwell who all see spikes in their backlist. However, the biggest success story here— setting aside McFadden’s massive achievement—is L J Ross whose mystery novels have grown 49.8%, a climb of over 30,000 copies. The biggest area of growth,


though, is the Romance & Sagas category where sales outside the Top 50 titles have mushroomed by 32.1% (over half a million books). This huge growth is due in part to new authors such as Chloe Walsh (64,063 copies), Stephanie Archer (52,738) and Shain Rose (41,655), but also because of good showings for some more established authors. Elsie Silver takes gold in


Romance & Sagas with sales of 158,909 copies—nearly 100,000 more than 2023—while Emily Henry’s sales rise by just over 21,000 units to 59,643. It’s not just about the new talent though: backlist promotions from their publishers mean that members of the old guard such as Josephine Cox and Anna Jacobs also enjoyed 2024’s “brat summer”.


Date Range Paperback Fiction sales 30th June to 21st September. Source Nielsen


Colleen Hoover Total sales: 537,115


02


Freida McFadden Total sales: 471,658


03


Sarah J Maas Total sales: 350,644


04


Elsie Silver Total sales: 239,437


05


Richard Osman Total sales: 196,226


 Date Range


Paperback Fiction sales 30th June to 21st September.


17


© Mike Styer


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