21 22 23 24 25
Charles Dickens is a perennial favourite author at Christmas
Ziyi Gao illustrated J K Rowling title Christmas at Hogwarts
Anyone who has worked in a
In the Spotlight
Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler Squirrel’s Snowman Macmillan Children's, £7.99, 9781529034370
In this festive edition of Donaldson ( 1) and Scheffler’s popular Tales from Acorn Wood board book series, Squirrel decides to take advantage of a fresh covering of snow to build a snowman. Along with her friends, she must search the forest for all the items she needs to complete her creation. With lifetime sales of more than 300,000 copies, it is the most popular of the 10-strong series which first appeared in 2020.
bookshop will be able to tell you that children are less respectful of the calendar than their adult coun- terparts, so it is also not a huge surprise to see that sales of festive- themed titles for the younger market are steady throughout the year, with £10,000 spent on them regularly each week. One surprising blip in 2024, though, came at the beginning of June when sales jumped 174% to £25,264 for a week before settling back down. Closer inspection reveals this jump was due to three titles – We’re Going on a Sleigh Ride by Martha Mumford and Cherie Zamazing; What the Ladybird Heard at Christmas by Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks; and Dear Santa by Rod Campbell – all of which saw their average selling prices drop to just over £1 for the week. For the former, this seems to
have been a clearance exercise ahead of a new edition released this autumn, but the other two titles have continued to sell well in the latter part of 2024 on their existing ISBNs, both appearing inside the overall top 10 for the year so far.
26 27 28 29 30 With sales of just over 40,000
copies, June’s clearance sale has helped What the Ladybird Heard fly into third place on the list of bestselling Christmas titles, but it is still not the bestselling title from Donaldson whose Acorn Wood collaboration with Axel Scheffler, The Squirrel’s Snowman, is proving the most popular with children. Both titles help Donaldson
take the biggest slice of the Christmas cake when divided up by author, with sales of £664,985 – although Tom Fletcher is not far behind, shifting £609,920 when you account for his various collaborations with fellow McFly bandmate Dougie Pointer, as well as his solo-penned Christmasaurus series. With the last weeks of the year
left to be accounted for, it is likely that sales of Christmas-themed books are yet to peak, but one sub-category that may have had its time already is the advent calendar collections. These collections – often featur-
ing 24 small versions of picture books – account for 9.2% of the category’s total volume but, with relatively high price points, one in every five pounds spent on Christmas titles this year has found its way towards an advent calendar. With lower levels of interest antici- pated from 1st December, stock of these collections is held pretty tightly, so the £240,000 notched by these titles in the last week of November is likely to be the annual peak.
1 REPORTING Alex Call 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Jingle Bell Jokes... Gary Panton; Andrew Pinder Buster, 9781916763234
I Love You More Than Christmas Hattie; Warnes Little Tiger, 9781788816786
Mr Men Little Miss Advent... Adam Hargreaves Farshore, 9780008610050
A Christmasaurus Carol Fletcher; Devries Puffin, 9780241595893
16,778 16,226 16,179 15,862
The Christmasaurus and the Night... Fletcher et al Puffin, 9780241591109
One Snowy Night Nick Butterworth HarperCollins, 9780007146932
The Christmas Pine Donaldson; Sandøy Alison Green, 9780702318009
15,775 15,652 15,568
That's Not My Reindeer Fiona Watt; Rachel Wells Usborne, 9781805076476
Sticker Dolly... Christmas Fairies Watt; Miller Usborne, 9781805072423
14,777 14,430
There’s a Little Snowman In Your Book T Fletcher Puffin, 9780241466674
You Choose Christmas P Goodhart; N Sharratt Puffin, 9780141378961
The Story of Christmas Bookoli, 9781802491500
Is It Christmas Yet? Jane Chapman Little Tiger, 9781848956506
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens Wordsworth Editions, 9781840227567
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens CGP, 9781789089462
Santa's Christmas Quackers Sam Samson Imagine That, 9781801051743
14,297 14,093 13,375 13,309 13,192 12,579 12,531
The Boy Who Slept... Christmas Lucas; Burdett Farshore, 9780008519926
The Jolly Christmas Postman J & A Ahlberg Puffin, 9780141340111
12,016 11,853
Dear Father Christmas A Durant; V Cabban Walker, 9781406351491
Where's Santa Claus? Ingela P Arrhenius Nosy Crow, 9781788003490
11,216 11,202
Christmas Baking... Children Wheatley; Patchett Usborne, 9780746097649
Pop-Up Peekaboo! Christmas Dorling Kindersley, 9781409334668
Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare... Studio Press, 9781800781221
Magic Painting: Christmas Bookoli, 9781787725010
10,981 10,823 10,764 10,625
The Night Before the Night Before... Gray; Powell Hodder Children's, 9781444939231
One-a-Day Christmas Stories Enid Blyton Hodder Children's, 9781444974744
10,445 10,177
Santa Needs a New Bum! McMillan; Kinnaird Scholastic, 9780702338779
Happy Christmas, Spot! Eric Hill Puffin, 9780241638866
10,101 9,987
Christmas Bear Ian Whybrow; Axel Scheffler Macmillan Children's, 9781035048038
9,968
Little People, Big Dreams: Advent... Vegara et al Frances Lincoln, 9781836000808
9,830 53
SHUTTERSTOCK
Festive hits Top sellers
JEREMIAH GURNEY/WIKIMEDIA
Charts Market Spotlight
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