THIS WEEK
The Lead Story Half-year review
Half-year review Author top 10
BRENDA BLETHYN AS ANN CLEEVES’ VERA STANHOPE IN ITV’S VERA
Trendwatch
Procedurals and hit series outmuscle cosy crime
G
enre fiction has been in fine fetle recently, with TikTok boosting Science Fiction & Fantasy and Romance in
particular. Crime has been largely BookTok- free—Colleen Hoover’s occasional dip into thrillers excepted—but is nevertheless surg- ing, earning £56.5m in 2023 through Nielsen BookScan, the genre’s best first-half showing in 12 years. It is tempting to think cosy crime has been
the category’s BookTok equivalent: the engine currently driving the rest of the market. The sub-genre is certainly prevalent at the summit, with four of 2023’s top six titles—three Richard Osmans and the Reverend Richard Coles’ Murder Before Evensong. But it thins out
Title
1 The Thursday Murder Club 2 Jack Reacher
Top10 Crime series
3 Dr Ruth Galloway 4 Canon Clement 5 Rebus
6 The Family Upstairs 7 Vera Stanhope 8 Harry Bosch 9 Roy Grace 10 Poirot
08 21st July 2023
quickly, with only 14 “cosies” in crime’s top 250; tried-and-tested police procedurals are the bedrock, accounting for 64% of that top 250.
As procedurals’ wheelhouse is recurring characters, we assembled a 2023 top 10 series. Admitedly, this is unfair to the more standalone psychologi- cal thriller space—Lisa Jewell is the sole representative and
The Family Upstairs’ total comes from just two titles. New boys Osman and Coles appear but the commonalit for most is a ton of backlist. Of the remaining seven authors, Elly Griffiths has the fewest ISBNs recording sales in 2023, at 47; Agatha Christie is tops with 544. This chart is also unfair to authors with a
portfolio of series, among them James Pater- son (Alex Cross, Michael Bennet, Women’s Murder Club, ad infinitum…) and even Ann Cleeves, who still makes seventh on just her Vera Stanhopes. And sorry, St Mary Mead- stans—Christie’s Hercule Poirot has outsold Miss Marple by almost two to one in 2023.
Author Richard Osman
Lee & Andrew Child Elly Griffiths
Reverend Richard Coles Ian Rankin Lisa Jewell Ann Cleeves
Michael Connolly Peter James
Agatha Christie
TCM Value £3,289,723 £1,972,201 £1,096,311 £1,033,385 £857,095 £727,055 £705,222 £576,799 £538,031 £493,557
Anthony crashes the top five after clearing £5m mark
P
rince Harry, Duke of Santa Barbara and Grifter of Spotify, easily tops the top-earning authors for the first
half of 2023 over perennial powerhouse Julia Donaldson and TikTok fave Colleen Hoover. In value terms, Harry’s Spare is now the third-bestselling memoir since Nielsen BookScan records began, trailing only Sir Alex Ferguson’s My Autobiography (£10.8m) and Michelle Obama’s Becoming (£11.8m). Nathan Anthony is the other non-fiction
star of 2023, with his two Bored of Lunch titles combining to shift £5.3m, while grab- bing five overall and 16 Hardback Non-fiction number ones along the way. Dav Pilkey is the other newcomer to this
top 10, after just missing out last year. His £2.5m represents a record first-half, led by £570,000 from his 11th Dog Man title, Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea. Breakouts just off the top 10 include Nibbies Author of the Year Bonnie Garmus (£2.2m) and BookTok-blessed Ana Huang (£1.5m). Huang’s originally self-published work was scooped by Piatkus and released since May last year; in the subsequent 13 months, her Twisted tetralogy and two titles in her Kings of Sin series have combined to shift £3m.
Title 1 Prince Harry
2 Julia Donaldson 3 Colleen Hoover* 4 Nathan Anthony 5 J K Rowling*
6 David Walliams 7 Fiona Watt*
8 Richard Osman 9 James Patterson* 10 Dav Pilkey
TCM value £9,832,395 £6,320,343 £6,168,364 £5,343,054 £3,704,647 £3,616,565 £3,452,929 £3,289,723 £2,501,687 £2,459,403
*Includes co-authored titles and pseudonyms
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