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THE LEAD STORY SUPER THURSDAY


07.07.17 www.thebookseller.com


Brown and Pullman bookend strong Super Thursday offer


Kids’ titles dominate autumn, as celebs join the trend BY THE BOOKSELLER NEWS TEAM


hardbacks scheduled to hit shelves on that day, all competing for a slice of the Christmas-gifting pudding. The stakes are high, with booksellers vying for their portion of more than £558m worth of book sales; 66 million books were shifted between 2nd October and 24th December last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, with the success of key titles making or breaking many businesses in the last quarter. Super Thursday will see the release


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of Five Escape Brexit Island by Bruno Vincent (Quercus)—the follow-up to Five on Brexit Island, which finished second in the race to be Christmas Number One last year—Tom Fletcher’s The Creakers (Puffin) and Mary Berry’s Mary’s Household Tips & Tricks (Michael Joseph). Also out that day are Richard Branson’s Finding My Virginity (Virgin Books), David Jason’s Only Fools and Stories (Century), Nadiya’s Bake Me a Festive Story by “Great British Bake Off” winner Nadiya Hussain (Hodder Children’s) and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair (Picador). And pipping Super Thursday titles to the post by just two days is Dan Brown’s fifth Robert Langdon book, Origin (Bantam Press), out on Tuesday 3rd October.


XMAS#1 PREDICTIONS


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Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage was heavily tipped by booksellers to claim the Christmas Number One


To boost the titles’ chances of


success, retailers across the country will be holding parties on Bookshop Day to mark the launch of cross- industry campaign Books Are My Bag on Saturday 7th October. A “mini Super Thursday” falls two


weeks later on 19th October, with the release of 260 hardbacks, including the first in Philip Pullman’s much- anticipated Book of Dust series, La Belle Sauvage (Penguin Random House Children’s and David Fickling Books), which several retailers are


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“A Ladybird [spoof] title, or Guinness World Records”


KATE SKIPPER BUYING DIRECTOR WATERSTONES


We are still hoping that something might emerge to replace the previously very successful trend of adult colouring


SARAH WALDEN GROUP BUYING AND MERCHANDISING DIRECTOR THE BOOK PEOPLE


tipping to grab the Christmas Number One crown. However, the novel, which returns to the bestselling world of His Dark Materials, is likely to tussle for the top spot with two new Harry Potter books coming from Bloomsbury: Harry Potter: A History of Magic, a £30 hardback with full-colour illustrations, coinciding with a British Library exhibition entitled “Harry Potter: A History of Magic”, on 20th October; and paperback Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic (£12.99), published on the same day.


his year’s Super Thursday falls on 5th October, The Bookseller can reveal, with 505 new


“Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage . . . [it will be] a publishing event”


KATHARINE FRY TRADE BUYING MANAGER BLACKWELL’S


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