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34


2nd April 2019


8,353


e as es falter


CONTEXT OF FUNDING CUTS


SAID THIS YEAR’S FIGURES WERE PLEASING IN THE


THE READING AGENCY


a sticker for each book read. If they read six books, they officially completed the chal- lenge and received a special, additional sticker. This year, 58% of participants (390,828) reached the end goal. In addition, 83,419 children joined a library as a new member, and 389,728 kids atended library events.


Hack attack


Email Online Twitter


The agency again ran Reading Hack—the scheme of training young people aged 12–24 to help run the challenge, launched in 2014 thanks to funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation—and this year nearly 7,000 volunteers signed up. They are recruited from schools and youth groups, and many return year aſter year to help younger children over the summer break, said Sarrag. “They get a taste of the working


A lot of budget cuts hit really hard this year and libraries are changing... Tere is less capacity in the public library system Anne Sarrag, director,


Summer Reading Challenge


in gender terms is also moving towards a more equal basis: 45% of participants in 2018 were boys, up from 44% last year, and Sarrag said this year’s theme, Mischief Makers (with the Beano), helped to get boys onside.


o


“Librarians adored the theme and it worked with boys, their dads and their granddads. It was Beano revamped for a new generation. The boys’ completion rate went up a few percentage points, too.” To take part in the challenge children could read any book borrowed from the library, whether that be fiction, non- fiction, poetry, picture books or audiobooks, and they received


environment and can use it as work experience, or part of their Duke of Edinburgh awards. We don’t just want bookworms and very literate people to take part, it’s for everyone.”


The agency also conducted a


survey of libraries, and 98% said they wanted to take part again in 2019. “I am genuinely touched by the enthusiasm librarians have for the challenge in difficult times,” said Sarrag. “Because they are confident about wanting to take part, they probably have funding in place.” The Reading Agency could do more to work with libraries in terms of training staff and volunteers, and wants to work more closely with schools and make sure they understand the benefits of pupils participating in the Summer Reading Challenge durin holidays, she ad Next year is t


Reading ng the school dded.


versary of the S Challenge and Space Chase, i 50th annivers Moon landing currently loo ties to promo technology, mathematic


TheBooksell cs) subjects. ller.comr.com


the 20th anni- Summer Reading d theme will be inspired by the sary of the first g. The agency is oking at opportuni- ote STEM (science, engineering and bj ts


In memoriam Beaconsfield to honour former resident Uttley with plaque following local society campaign


Uttley didn’t like [fellow Beaconsfield B


uckinghamshire town Beaconsfield will next month unveil a plaque


dedicated to children’s author and former resident Alison Uttley. Kari Dorme of Te Beaconsfield


Society committee, who campaigned for the plaque to be installed, said she felt “very strongly” that Uttley, whose chil- dren’s books includeA Traveller in Time, Te Country Child and the Little Grey Rabbit series, had been forgotten by the town. Uttley moved to Beaconsfield in 1938 when she was 54, 11 years after the first Little Grey Rabbit title, Te Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit, was published by Heinemann. Her house,


Tackers, is still standing and she is buried in the grounds of Penn’s Holy Trinity CofE Church, where hrheadstone bears the epitaph “Spinnero


her h Sp


PICTURED ABOVE ALISON UTTLEY CR OF THE LITTLE GRE RABBIT SERIES AN BEACONSFIELD RESIID IS TO JOIN ENID BLYTD BLY IN HAVING A P AQPLA U THE TOWN


S A D D RES Y


QU 


Y, C EA GR Y ND


E: EY REA one er ofTales”.


Dorme said she wantedt tl


e s idshewanted to t Uttleypartly be


partl because d


resident] Enid Blyton, calling her a ‘vulgar, curled woman’, but


both authors became millionaires from their books


but both authors became millionaires from their books in their lifetimes, said Dorme. “Tey were great rivals. Tey lived in Beaconsfield at the same time (1938 onwards). Enid Blyton died in 1968 and Alison, who was older, outlived her and died in 1976.” Te plaque is being paid for by


Te Beaconsfield Society and will be unveiled in the Beaconsfield Town Council garden, near Enid Blyton’s plaque, on Uttley’s birth- day: 17th December. Uttley has sold 19,152 books through Nielsen BookScan since record beganin 1998, worth 24 004invalue terms Se of er books a e s


s began in s £124, £124,004 in v . Several al


of herher books are still in int:prinin pr A iTimeisavailable frome from ld


Copies Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time has sold in the UK since records began, in 1998


The Official UK Top 50 Kay withstands Fire and Gail to top charts


Title  m WEEK ON WEEKEK ON W


After a lengthy and incredibly consistent run in the print charts, Adam Kay’s junior doctor memoir finally tops the pile, displacingl Deliciously Ell


lla


Kiera O'Brien @kieraobrien


I


n its 20th week in the chart, Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt leapt into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for the first time, selling 17,491 copies— its highest single-week volume to date. Despite its long tenure in the charts, the junior doctor memoir has kept its momentum. Its August volume was 34% higher than its June equivalent, and last week it jumped 10% week on week. Impressively, it has never dipped below 10,000 copies sold per week (bar its first three days on sale) and, since mid-July, has doggedly shiſted at least 15,000 units weekly. It’s not


t It s no oſte ot o a long


a long build up one spot


spot, and when it d it’sdoes, it hm t fictionment


spot, and when it doe , oment


g build-up to the d


the numbe oment fict


not oſten a title has such h number


mber


1  This is Going to Hurt 2  A Column of Fire


3  Eleanor Oliphant... Fine 4  Snap 5  Origin


6  The Chalk Man 7  Life of Crime


8  Jamie Cooks Italy 9  Deliciously Ella...


11  The Fall of Gondolin 12  End Game


13  I’ll Keep You Safe 14  Sapiens


15  The Wife Between Us 16  Fairytale 17  The Break


18  The Couple Next Door 19  Last Letter Home 20  Mythos


21  Into the Water


22  Three Things About Elsie 23  The Rooster Bar


24  The Accidental Further... 25  The People vs Alex Cross 26  Surprise Me 27  Damaged


28  The Midnight Line


30  Perfect Silence 31  Normal People


Author


Adam Kay Ken Follett


Imprint ISBN


Picador 1509858637 Pan


Corgi


Gail Honeyman Harper 0008172145 Belinda Bauer Black Swan Dan Brown C J Tudor


Penguin


TCM total 291,654


1784160852


Volume 17,491


1447278757 30,187 15,031 648,201 23,500


14,455 13,477


0552174169 223,454 11,688 1405930956


18,199


Kimberley Chambers HarperCollins 0008144760 17,305 Jamie Oliver Ella Mills


10  21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari Jonathan Cape J R R Tolkien


David Baldacci Pan Peter May


Yuval Noah Harari Vintage Hendricks & Pekkanen Pan Danielle Steel Pan Marian Keyes Penguin Shari Lapena Corgi Rachel Hore Stephen Fry


Michael Joseph 0718187736 48,789 Yellow Kite 1473639218 1787330672


riverrun 1784294977 0099590088


26,579 8,843


HarperCollins 0008302757 7,985 1447277415 74,948 69,824


704,700


1509842834 43,732 1509800575 38,006 1405918756


199,452 0552173148 508,451


Simon & Schuster 1471156960 53,628 Penguin


Paula Hawkins Black Swan Joanna Cannon Borough Press John Grisham Hodder


Jonas Jonasson Fourth Estate James Patterson Arrow Sophie Kinsella Black Swan Martina Cole Headline Lee Child


32  Where the Light Gets In 33  Do Not Disturb


34  Why Mummy Swears


35  As the Sun Breaks Through 36  Munich 37  Lullaby


38  The Love Letter 39  A Mother’s Courage


40  Dog Man 5: Lord of the Fleas 41  The Tattooist of Auschwitz 42  The Greek Escape


43  The 104-Storey Treehouse 44  Murder Mile


45  A Stranger in the House 46  Nadiya’s Family Favourites 47  Homo Deus


50  Peppa’s Magical Unicorn


Unlesless oth book sal


therwise stated, charts use data from Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market, representing print book sales through ar und 6 500 retailers. Any title discounted by more than 74.5% is ineligible for inclusion.


s otherw gh arh round 6,50 d 6,500


29  The World’s Worst Children 3 D Walliams & T Ross Helen Fields Sally Rooney Lucy Dillon


Ellie Dean


1405934138 1784162245 0008196943 1473616998 0008275570 1784753634 1784160432 1472201096


Bantam 0857503619 HarperCollins 0008304591 Avon


Faber & Faber


Claire Douglas Michael Joseph Gill Sims


HarperCollins Arrow


Robert Harris Arrow


Leila Slimani Faber & Faber Lucinda Riley Pan Dilly Court Dav Pilkey


Arrow Scholastic


Heather Morris Zaffre Karen Swan


Pan


A Griffiths & T Denton Macmillan Lynda La Plante Zaffre Shari Lapena Corgi


48  Wedding Bells for Land Girls 49  Oxford English Mini Dictionary - -


Nadiya Hussain Michael Joseph Yuval Noah Harari Vintage Jenny Holmes Corgi OUP


Ladybird


Week ending 1st September 2018. Key New Up Same Down U


Black Swan 1784162092 0718187903


214,212 45,288


152,272 28,820 65,359


125,478 123,971 295,405 274,947


0008275174 9,224 0571334643


26,063 29,916


0008284213 49,522 1784758127 1784751852 0571337545


10,051


117,701 37,540


1509825042 54,918 1784752569 0545935173 1785763649


16,989 4,122


79,044


1509838110 51,039 1509833771 11,909 1785764660


0552173155 90,400 0241348994 1784703936


34,351 303,991


0552173674 6,642 0199640966 170,803 0241353783


30,521 6,758 5,231 41,994


10,772 9,443 8,811 8,729 8,386 7,808 6,849 6,421 6,173 6,148 6,144 6,095 5,979 5,956 5,773 5,716 5,649 5,588 5,457 5,423 5,260 5,247 5,184 5,165 5,115 4,902 4,847 4,615 4,468 4,240 4,177 4,137 3,998 3,788 3,515 3,507 3,498 3,458 3,457 3,447 3,443 3,437 3,435 3,432 3,427


one Kiera O H


ADAM KAY TOPS THE CHARTS AFTER SPENDING SEVEN WEEKS IN THE TOP TRIO


hit that has spread by word of mouth. Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing spent seven weeks in g the chart before hiting the overall number one spot in 2015, and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train clocked up 11 weeks in the list before reaching its destination in late March 2015, displaying a similar weekly consistency to This is Going to Hurt. However, while t five months from publication to top spot probably felt


longer than a weekend A&E shiſt to Adam Kay, spare a thought for John Green: The Fault in Our Stars’ original edition, released s in January 2013, didn’t hit the summit until June 2014. This is Going to Hurt, which t also recently racked up a string of Weekly E-Book Ranking number ones, has now spent a total of 19 non- consecutive weeks as the Paperback Non-fiction leader, a run disturbed


only when Anthony McCarten’s Darkest Hour swiped the pole in r June. Since 2010, only Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15 and Millie Marota’s


5


colouring book Animal Kingdom have spent longer in the category chart’s top spot. Ken Follet’s A Column of Continues overleaf


Tis is Going to Hurt off the top spot, and in


upon the Kay-Honeyman-Morris podium: t have collectively held the top three with t respective débuts for the past five weeks Fields has previous when it comes to th


E-Book Ranking. Her second D I Callanach Perfect Prey, thundered straight into the in July 2017, but follow-up Perfect Death out on a number one last January, pippe post by Jojo Moyes’ Still Me.Perfect Sile the sixth new title this year to top the its first week in the chart, due toElean is Completely Fine’s 14-week run acro and the “long tails” of recent hits Te T Auschwitz and Tis is Going to Hurt. Perfect Silencesecures publisher e-book number one achieved from just Fields and Scott Ma topped the inaugu ing back in May 20 Below the char


triumvirate, the t with new entries topper Ellie Dean


Breaks Trough hit fifth place, w h


Barbara Erskine’s Te Ghost Tree Broken Ground and Lynda La Pla


Title


1  Perfect Silence 2  This is Going to Hurt 3  Eleanor Oliphant is Com 4  The Tattooist of Auschw 5  As the Sun Breaks Thro 6  The Ghost Tree 7  Broken Ground 8  Murder Mile 9  Little Fires Everywhe 10  Origin 11  Friend Request 12  Vox 13  Pieces of Her 14  The Break 15  From Here to You 16  This Could Chang 17  The Guilty Dead 18  The Handmaid’s 19  Sapiens 20  Why Mummy Dr


Week ending 25th Augu as are titles priced £4.50 HarperCollins, Pan Mac


elen Fields’ Perfect Silence has ente the Weekly E-Book Ranking with a elbowing the current print numbe t


08.02.19 ISSN 0006-7539 At the heart of publishing since 1858. £5.95


s ng


going into mony, listees t literary nklow oke’s


h-Jayne lished by oscientist olescents’ 0 award. or Janklow’s Blackmore and econd, around on” space that


a multitude of ng in science and nt in the publish- ted to explaining o orientate od of turmoil. come so tribal— necessarily escape nce is something n objective standard is that hinterland


Mat “the Stand-up Mathematician” Parker (Humble Pi, Penguin i Press). Which is


this space with books hat seem to be hiting he zeitgeist, many f which have been recently published or are slated for the next year, including Adam Rutherford (The Book ofHumans, W&N) and s dp


of Hum it is s jus


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t is jusis just r is just reallyfundoing big dea ill Francis, m.d.,


y fun d i gbig d als Will F ancis, m.d., Janklow & Nesbit UK ho o since 2002; R since 2002; R Heaton in 20


to anklow in 20Janklow in 2012 ſter Se


ince 2002; RebeRebecca Carter, who m ved across the aid across nd Har il


er who moved


Secker; and Hellie Ogden, who joined from Greene& entl meon board


nklow in 2012 ſter 15 years on in 2013. Zoë Nelson has rece


aſter 15 years at Ch to andH vill ed f omGreene & y come on bo


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Hodder Headline rights department. Francis says: “One of the enjoyable things about this offihings about this office is that it’s just about small enough that we all know everything our colleagues are submiting, and we can talk about strategy as offers come in. We’re quite competitive but not really with each other, as we all have slightly different areas of specialisa- tion. But because we work so closely together, if one of us a big deal, it seems like all of us do.” h


as rights director aſter eight years at the long-serving Rebecca Folland, w tmen


does a big deal,


interesting, Francis says, because “you can’t really chase the trends. You are oſten submiting on a proposal and it can be many years before a book is published. You can get a psychological thriller out relatively quickly, but it doesn’t work that way with a big, fat science book. Sure, you get a sense of the tides turning in a particular way... But I think you ultimately just have to concentrate on finding the right authors. In this area, that means someone who has a combination of things: they are experts who are explor- ing interesting fields of study, but can also write for the general reader and have a track record of engaging broader audiences.”


Perhaps part of the


recruiting authors from academia is that becoming one himself. (Indeed, when we meet he does


part of the reason why Francis is successful in ia is that he contemplated des


have the look of a slightly rumpled junior humanities professor, complete with an elbow-patched jacket and skinny black jeans tucked into work boots.) Yet aſter doing his undergraduate degree at King’s College, London Francis decided he needed some real-life experience, puting off doing a PhD in English Literature to work as an assistant for Caroline Dawnay, then running the books department at PFD. A few months into agenting, he was hooked: “One of the


interesting things about working for [Dawnay], and what drew me into the industry, was seeing someone who was just as engaged with the world of literature as the academ- ics I worked with, but was also a merchant at the interface between the intellectual and the commercial. I found agenting really fascinating. There is that whole challenge


TheBookseller.com m


The past 12 months have been pre y agency as a whole. Among the eye-catching deals were Odgen having one of the smashes of this year’s London Book Fair, with Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s first adult novel going to Sophie Jonathan at Picador; Carter sold Olivia Laing’s début, Crudo, to the same imprint and it subsequently became one of the literary hits of summer; while Conrad had one of the biggest pre-Frankfurt deals, selling two crime books by début author Kate Weinberg to Bloomsbury in the UK and Putnam in the US. The are no real plans to grow the agency to match the US parent, Francis says. “We’re not really looking to hire more agents. We have 30–40 clients each and the ethos is not to take on very many clients, but to be very sure you can sell who you do take on. But we are backed up by a company in New York that has been in existence since the 1970s, has a tough legal department with great boilerplate contracts. I think that can be seductive when we are trying to sign new clients—it feels as if we have the muscle and deep experi- ence of a much larger agency, but in a smaller office, where the whole company can get behind an author.”


been prety fruitful for the d


ls were


t RCW, succeeding who leſt to head the


whomov use p ce on the stice on the stree us pri tin 1977 Ass 1989 1989 989


Janklow & Nesbklow& Nesbit is created when Lted when Lynn Nesbit joins the firm.


bit is 2000


Janklow & Nesbit UK founded, with Tif Loehnis heading the agency.


2002


Claire Conrad joins Janklow UK. She is made a director in 2004


2013


Will Francis is made Janklow UK m.d.


de 2015


US restructure with Mort Janklow and Lynn Nesbit stepping back from management; Luke Janklow is named agency president.


Phi


abo high s formed


d his view of bookse T  1 13 24


Philip Jones @philipdsjones


14th December 2018


h ough the life anh the life and career o t d b theold by he f under of t


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h Face Pres h


throug th chain. I d ca old by the founder


chain. i a remarkable ac ount f perhaps, the most kselli g but also a


genuinely arresting portrayal of the m n behind it. “The more I wrote, the more I remembered,” Waterstone says. It


to face the ugly stuff, particularly around y


important recent period in British bookselling, but alsol an behind


It is a remarkable account o ,of, perhaps, th bookselling, b


rkabl account


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eriod in B itish b


book begins with Waterstone’s father—returning briefly t the family home during the Second World War and meet- ing his reluctant son at the door—and it is his shadow that looms large over everything. Their relationship was not a happy one. “Not once,” writes Waterstone, “in all the years of my childhood did he as much as touch me. Nor did he express affection for me in any other manner. Not once did he give me praise. Nor, if it comes to that, did he do so in my adulthood. Not once.” Yet the bookshop chain carries his name—“Waterstone’s was me having the last word on him. It was proof of my worth.” It is litle wonder he has tried to buy the chain back so many times—having first


says “It was very cleansing to write, but also ll around my father.” The bi fly to


by th founder of the eponymnythe pf the eponymous bookous bookshop perhaps, the most


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that laid the foundations for Waterstone’s. “What I got from her was the ambition t sell the books. She just loved them, and there was this real drive behind it.” More a browser than a buyer, Waterstone soon began deliver- ing books via bicycle, before being replaced by a van. Nevertheless, the bookselling bug had been caught. From delivery boy, Waterstone’s route into bookselling was circuitous. Cambridge first, then to India, followed by a marketing job with Allied Breweries in London before finally landing in the books business with W H Smith. Was Waterstone just conducting research? Of course he was. “This seemed to me to be one final piece of experience


knowledge of her customers that laid the foundations for s theambition to


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est in book t a few—bu Club, loca ugh. Run b


arly 1990s—and that he It is more than a business. ks began not at home— ut in an independent ated in the East Sussex by the “dauntingly severe Waterstone it was the qualit eting outreach, her personal and the warmth of the shop,


ym


ton mou rly


ne us years


that would serve me very well indeed when the time fo Waterstone’s came along, for it would also give me an inside look at [W H] Smith’s book retail operation, wh was going to be interesting,” he writes. Waterstone st at WHS for nine years, before being axed aſter an un cessful expansion into the US. WHS chair Simon Ho parting advice was not to open up a chain of bookshops in competition. “That, we would stop,” Waterstone was advised.


Of course, it was the £6,000 redundancy that unlocked the finance for the first Waterstone’s, on Old Brompton Road, in 1982. There were hiccups, of course. Waterstone leſt the first day’s takings on the Tube, for example. But the plan—long in gestation— was solid. He says: “I knew exactly what I wanted to do—very heavy stock-holding, with very literary staff. What was unusual about the plan was th model, with money raised on a shop by shop Occasionally we raised enough for three bran mostly it was branch, by branch, by branch.” The trade was not helpful. Publishers wer reluctant to take a bet on this upstart, with i funding model and demand for unprecede stock, while the Booksellers Association re its membership. As the UK’s biggest books held huge power in the trade—even if its o was hampered, says Waterstone, by a feud “embarrassingly deferential” manageme However, with Penguin and Oxford Un


side, Waterstone’s began building, hirin Hatchards, including the influential Juli as a steady line of booksellers new to th since built careers in the business, from Mitchinson, Paul Baggaley and Will At publisher), to the chain’s longest-serv Latham, to serial rebel Robert Toppin David Mitchell, to the well regarded D now c.e.o. of the Irish postal service A recruits, says Waterstone, who built on the DNA. Nobody ever had to say got on top of it, and most of them ra businesses. They liked the responsi nobody above them apart from me financial controller.”


It was an exhilarating period, w tive and competitive, not just with independents, many of which we moribund. Where there was a rea bookseller in existence, Watersto but others were less lucky. “We d in some ways, we went for every around with prices, but we did aggressive and, of course, the p deeply unpopular [in the trade In 1990 Waterstone accepte from WHS that culminated in


TheBookseller.com


I knew ex what I wa to do—ve heavy st holding very lite staff. W unusua the pla the fu model


Photography: Robin Gillanders


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