Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tops the
Bestselling Black authors chart
Yomi Adegoke sits resplendent in 126th place in the TCM rankings
that list of 1,000. Interrogating that statistic reveals that a mere fraction of the UK’s book sales are generated by Black authors: taking up 1.8% of the slots in the Top 1,000, this Top 20 only accounts for 1.6% of the money spent. Meanwhile, the 2021 census
estimates that 4% of the UK’s popu- lation is Black, with a further 1.3% describing themselves as Mixed White/Black African or Mixed White/Black Caribbean – suggest- ing that, with all things equal, we should be seeing at least another 30 Black authors in the Top 1,000. Just under half of the £5m that
In the Spotlight
Marcus Rashford, Isaac Hamilton-McKenzie The Goblin’s Revenge Macmillan Children’s, £7.99, 9781035062294
Marcus Rashford’s Breakfast Club Adventure titles – on which he has collaborated with both Isaac Hamilton- McKenzie and Alex Falase-Koya – have helped the footballer’s total value reach £215,505 so far this year. That is a 38.4% drop compared with the equivalent period in 2024, although this is partly due to this year’s addition to the series, The Goblin’s Revenge, selling 16,361 copies fewer than The Treasure Hunt Monster did in 2024.
TCM copies sold
has been spent on those authors comes from the top three alone, with Russell and Percival Everett appear- ing alongside Ngozi Adichie in the overall Top 100 bestsellers of the year thus far. It is Everett who has the bestsell- ing title from a Black author in 2025, setting aside Benjamin Dean’s World Book Day (WBD) title This Story Is a Lie for a moment. Everett’s James – which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2025 and last month, perhaps most prestigiously, was awarded the Nibbie for Fiction Book of the Year – has sold a total of 77,473 copies in mass-market paperback since its end-of-February launch and is
one of only three Black-authored titles to appear in the overall UK Top 100.
The other two slots are taken up by the previously mentioned Dean and his WBD stable-mate Joseph Coelho whose All Poems Aloud (illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett) interested 20,000 fewer children than did Dean’s offering. At this point in 2024 there were
also three books from Black authors in the TCM Top 100, however in this instance they were all £1 WBD titles – given away by booksellers in exchange for the WBD voucher handed out to children across the country. It is not until position 126 on the chart that we find the first non-WBD Black-authored title – The List by Yomi Adegoke – which sold 40,465 copies, just over 37,000 units fewer than Everett’s James. So far in 2025, £5.1m has been
spent on the Top 20 Black authors – that is roughly the same amount of money earned by Sarah J Maas’ titles, significantly less than the amount spent on Dav Pilkey, Rebecca Yarros and Julia Donaldson, respectively, and roughly half the amount generated by revision guides from CGP. Still, one glimmer of hope is that figure is up 11.9% on the bestselling Black authors in 2024, when the list could only take 1.4% of the total pie. At this rate of growth, the market sales will reflect the UK-wide demographics in just under two decades.
REPORTING Alex Call 1
TCM copies sold
This Story Is a Lie Benjamin Dean ( 1) Simon & Schuster, 9781398542679 The bestselling book by a Black author so far in 2025 comes from the World Book Day (WBD) list. Dean’s titles excluding This Story Is a Lie have racked up sales of 2,698 copies – down 72.2%
TCM copies sold
James Percival Everett Picador, 9781035031269 The paperback edition of Everett’s reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has seen the American author’s sales rise 260% compared with the same period in 2024. Everett’s previous Booker-nominated title, The Trees, has only sold 17,445 copies in paperback in its lifetime.
TCM copies sold
All Poems Aloud Joseph Coelho; Daniel Gray-Barnett Wide-Eyed Editions, 9781836002864 The second WBD title in the Top Five for Black authors, it is just one of 34 books for Coelho in the TCM data this year. That number is down from 38 in 2024, with both sales units and volume following suit for the poet.
TCM copies sold
Dream Count
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 4th Estate, 9780008685737 Dream Count since 2013’s Americanah and, with 43,823 copies sold in hardback since publication at the beginning of March, it is outstripping its predecessor, which sold a total of 13,387 units in hardback.
TCM copies sold
Dork Diaries: I Love Paris! Rachel Renée Russell S&S Children’s, 9781471196850
The author has held second place in the Black author Top 20 – but has seen sales rise 31.7% in 2025. Just £17,761 behind Ngozi Adichie, it is likely Russell will take the crown as the UK’s biggest-selling Black writer before the summer is over.
Five biggest titles overall
MANNY JEFFERSON
BRYAN BERLIN
Charts
Market Spotlight
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