07.07.17 Issue No 5674. Established 1858 Incorporating Bent’s Literary Advertiser, established 1802
Easy does it T
LEADER THIS WEEK
05 ‘‘
The season [is] an important barometer for the trade as a whole, and an indicator of the key months ahead
wo weeks ago, we talked about the call for a new industry-wide campaign for books; this week we remind you of the one we built earlier: Super Thursday (5th October), the yearly celebration of the autumn’s new titles loosely based on the French notion of la rentrée. As it has been in the past, Super Thursday is also followed by the Booksellers Association-run Bookshop Day (7th October), making the season an important barometer for the trade as a whole, and an indicator of the key months ahead. The mood around trade publishing so far this year has been curiously and cautiously optimistic, with the Nielsen-measured marketplace still a nose ahead—though perhaps lacking a single big defining title or trend. The titles to be released around Super Thursday this year build on that—there is no Cursed Child, but there is La Belle Sauvage, a new Dan Brown, more parody publishing and a rump of celebrities trying their hand at children’s fiction, including (we assume) a new bestseller from David Walliams. There are also two more Harry Potter books, both coming out of the British Library’s exhibition of 20 years of Potter. The offering feels broad and substantial. Booksellers are right to feel optimistic. The key trends to emerge from publisher presentations we’ve attended in the first half of the year have been a focus on design and the overall look and feel of “the package”, the importance of influencers (particularly the early buzz that can be generated by booksellers) and the bedrock of talent now available to publishers—from literary stars such as Jennifer Egan and Roddy Doyle, to emerging brands such as Nadiya Hussain, Tom Fletcher and Matt Haig, many of whom (according to our previews team) are writing at the top of their game.
Next week The Bookseller will begin its half-year analysis of the market and the top trade publishers. Unless something remarkable happens (and it probably will), this year will truly be one of two halves, with the market likely to look very different once comparisons with the publication of Cursed Child at the end of July 2016 kick in. That playscript took in £9m in its first week, and £16m in total over the year, amounting to around a quarter of the Total Consumer Market’s growth in the year.
We should be careful not to read too much into this, or talk the market down because of it. There is a genuine buzz around books and, despite the world around usround us, a sense of ebullience, marked as much by the growth of agents such as Felicity Bryan Associates (p17) as it is b the occasional eight-figure advance. The market may be unpredictable, but this year’s Super Thursday shows a sector increasingly at ease with itself.
h int a genuine
growth of 7) as it is by rket may be shows
PHILIP JONES, EDITOR
THIS WEEK’S PREVIEWS NEW TITLES: FICTION (OCTOBER) 20–26
THIS WEEK...
The countdown to the biggest day in the publishing calendar, Super Thursday, is under way . . .
LEAD STORY 06–07 The life of Bryan
Business is booming for Oxford-based literary agency Felicity Bryan Associates
COMPANY SPOTLIGHT 17 TOTAL CONSUMER MARKET £25.9m BOOKSCAN TCM UP 16% ON LAST WEEK’S FIGURES BORN TO SURVIVE
Holocaust survivor and acclaimed psychologist Edith Eger talks about her extraordinary memoir
AUTHOR PROFILE 18–19 CHARTS 10 BOOKS 18 CAREERS 27
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