The UK’s bestselling Black authors by value (2021)


Author


1 Barack Obama* 2 Rashford & Anka 3 Brit Bennett 4 Will Smith*


5 Bernardine Evaristo 6 Michelle Obama 7 Malorie Blackman


8 Chimamanda N Adichie 9 Jay Blades


10 Colson Whitehead 11 Rachel Renee Russell 12 Malcolm Gladwell 13 Amanda Gorman 14 David Olusoga 15 Abi Daré


16 Michael Holding 17 Kalynn Bayron 18 Kiley Reid


19 Alison Hammond 20 Yaa Gyasi


21 James Baldwin 22 B B Alston


23 Benjamin Zephaniah 24 Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé 25 Akala


26 Reni Eddo-Lodge 27 N K Jemisin


28 Angie Thomas 29 Lenny Henry


30 Vashti Harrison 31 Robinne Lee


32 Candice Carty-Williams 33 Nathan Bryon


Volume 72,340


220,538 167,047 98,704


115,701 71,955 88,845 64,503 39,602 42,582 78,596 34,911 34,760 35,622 43,010


Value


£1,363,080 £1,245,400 £1,165,276 £1,130,821 £907,103 £687,497 £598,015 £509,536 £489,946 £446,331 £428,492 £367,378 £344,853 £320,793 £301,793


19,271 £289,267 40,642 37,055 24,273 23,977 27,669 31,405 25,446 28,412 23,121 23,179 20,258 30,860 22,840 26,998 30,915 20,593 23,319


Date range 14th March 2021–1st January 2022. *Includes co-authors. The ranking is based on Nielsen’s Top 1,000 author sales by volume, except where noted.


Crystal Mahey-Morgan FOUNDER & C.E.O., OWN IT!


I firmly believe any growth we see in sales for Black authors needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. We shouldn’t get too comfortable in thinking that this is as a result of publishing being more progressive. Growth in sales for Black authors can be misleading


when they are predominantly driven by big names such as Michelle Obama and Will Smith. We need to see sustained growth over a number of years, otherwise we fall back into the trap of Black authors being published as part of a marketing trend instead of them just being seen as writers. As an agent I see this reflected a lot when I submit something by a Black author; it tends to be more favoured if it is somehow issue-based and there is often a desire from publishers to editorially make it lean than way. Even when things are not “issue- based” books, publicity and marketing campaigns inevitably end up being pinned around “diversity”, which can limit the writer’s potential audience and, as a result, sales. This, of course, then impacts the profit and loss (P&L) for that author’s next book or, worse still, the P&Ls of other Black writers, as looking at sales of “compa- rable” titles are still a huge part of how they are created.


TheBookseller.com


£271,272 £269,872 £258,430 £253,227 £221,139 £206,651 £202,049 £199,766 £198,762 £197,231 £193,948 £190,209 £182,629 £174,424 £160,986 £141,643 £137,853


president’s volume. The duo’s inspirational title was a huge hit across summer 2021, securing a four-week streak in the Children’s top spot upon publication in late May. Aſter the England player missed a penalt in the Wembley final of Euro 2020, sales soared 74% week on week to their highest point, as book- buyers responded to the racist threats he received online. You Are a Champion would go on to become the 16th-bestselling book of the year, boosting its sub-category, Young Adult General Interest & Leisure, by 58% in value against the same period in 2019. Rashford and Anka’s guide solely accounted for 38% of the sub-category’s total value.


The million club


In 2021, four Black authors brought in over £1m, with Will Smith joining Rashford, (Mr) Obama and Brit Bennet at the top; only Michelle Obama and Rachel Renée Russell did so in 2019. However, the top-selling 100 authors across the TCM as a whole only included two Black writers—Obama and Rashford, in 70th and 92nd respectively—and there were just six in the top-earning 250, with children’s fiction legend Malorie Blackman falling just outside that. During the Black Lives Mater protests around the world in summer 2020, sales of Black-authored titles and anti-racism guides soared up the charts. In June 2020, Reni


Michelle Obama’s memoir brought in £2.1m along in 2019, a far bigger chunk than any author or title did individually in 2021


Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, published in paperback two years previously, became the first Black British-authored title to top the Official UK Top 50 in the Nielsen BookScan era. Of course, because of that other big societ-shiſting event that happened that year, BookScan was unable to report sales figures for the full 52 weeks. Yet, even without the 17 lockdown weeks of 2020, Eddo-Lodge’s value stood at £1.33m (with 184,827 copies of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race sold). Aside from the US’ first Black president, no Black author has betered that value in the 42 available weeks of 2021. We should note that Eddo-Lodge’s non- fiction paperback was selling at an a.s.p. of £7.17 in 2020, whereas Rashford and Anka’s You Are a Champion was changing hands for an average of £5.64 in 2021—notwithstanding the substantial number of copies donated for free to those from underprivileged backgrounds. Hence, You Are a Champion sold nearly 36,000 copies more last year than Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race throughout 2020, yet Eddo-Lodge was nearly £90,000 up. Bernardine Evaristo was the highest-earning


author to appear in both 2021 and 2019’s chart—the literary fiction author demonstrated remarkable consistency, earning £819,000 and £907,000 in those two years. While, of course, 2019 was the year she won the Booker Prize, Girl, Woman, Other’s paperback sales absolutely took off during the first lockdown in spring 2020, and shiſted more than 80,000 copies in the available weeks of 2021 alone, worth nearly £540,000. Her hardback non- fiction title Manifesto joined it in the charts last autumn, earning £223,000.


Joelle Owusu COMMISSIONING EDITOR, CORONET


I welcome the positive results, but this was expected after Black Lives Matter swept through the industry and highlighted both staff and author injustices. With that said, the growth is still minute. What is interesting is that the top names are already well-known figures and US buy-ins, with no new homegrown talent topping the list just yet. Speaking from a personal capacity, I find that quite disappoint- ing, given the number of talented authors currently doing amazing things. Was some of this performative? I believe some was, but not all of it. I guess we won’t know if this was just a trend until we see the 2022 results. I’ve said it many times, but true change will come when Black writers are not only able to write about whatever they want but are also able to be kept on as “brand authors” who get to experiment with their writ- ing and build a following over years. Publishers need to put proper support (time and money) behind Black authors to avoid this “one and done” performative book approach that seems to be creeping in across the publishing industry at all levels.


07


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