Analysis David Walliams


BOOKS PER YEAR


C


ast your mind back to 2008: banks were being bailed out, Barack Obama was elected to his first term and the world of books had an auspicious début, with David Walliams publishing his first children’s


title, The Boy in the Dress. Today, Walliams is not just the king of kids’ books, but a charts phenomenon. For the past five years, his books have shifted more than £10m annu- ally and in the past two years he has been the UK’s top-selling author. Not bad for a guy who, when he was first published, was met with a general reaction of incredulity: “You mean the fella off ‘Little Britain’ has written a children’s book?” His success is mind-boggling. His


last 11 books have shot to the top of the UK charts in their first week on sale. He has notched 141 weeks as the children’s number one. Laid end to end, the 15.9 million copies he has sold in Britain would stretch 1,737 miles—or from London to Ankara, Turkey. Stacked on top of each other, they would reach 330 miles into the sky—or the average orbit of the Hubble Telescope.


2008 98 009 1 1 1


SALES PER YEAR 2008 20 2009 2010 2011 2012 201


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