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Publishers have paid huge sums of money for the personal stories of well-known figures over the years, from controversial to beloved to mysterious.


ELLING over 400,000 print copies in its first week on sale, Prince Harry’s Spare has claimed the record for


the fastest selling Non-Fiction book in the UK since Nielsen’s records began in 1998. Long have stories about celebrity memoir acquisitions topped the publishing news outlets. Publishers have paid huge sums of money for the personal stories of well- known figures over the years, from controversial to beloved to mysterious. But is public interest in this sector waning? And when we visit the library instead of the bookstore, does the allure of reading about celebrities wear off entirely in the face of other options?


Non-Fiction has struggled in recent years. Peaking in 2019 with 71 million book sales recorded through Nielsen, 2022 has seen a nine per cent decline compared to this, whereas for the same time frame Adult Fiction has seen a 29 per cent increase in unit sales. Within the Biographies & Autobiographies category specifically, the decline is steeper at 15 per cent, but its share of the Trade Non-Fiction category has remained relatively stable in both sales and loans according to Nielsen data, between 16-18 per cent. This makes it the most popular Non-Fiction category in both bookshops and libraries. Therefore, the decrease we are seeing may not be due to a loss of interest in just memoirs specifically, rather an overall sign of a decline in Non-Fiction reading. This could be down to a many factors, including the availability of free information on the internet in an increased variety of outputs – written, audio and visual.


In terms of who is writing our favourite Biographies & Autobiographies, this is where loaning and buying trends begin to diverge. Looking at the table below of the most bought and most loaned titles in this category in 2022


January-February 2023


according to Nielsen data, a pattern begins to emerge; nine out of 10 spots on the sales chart are occupied by celebrities (indicated by an asterisk), compared to four in the loans chart. The top titles in libraries seem to favour more personal and emotional accounts of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances, such as Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path. In the library, there are no paid-for window displays or shiny half-price stickers to influence a person’s choice of which book to pick up. While some celebrity names hold similar influence in both library and bookshop – Michelle Obama, Miriam Margoyles and Bob Mortimer in particular, the most consistent author in this category since 2018 for both libraries and retailers is actually Adam Kay. When combining loans of hardback and paperback formats, the most loaned Biography & Autobiography title since 2018 is the same as in sales: Adam Kay’s account of his time as an NHS junior doctor, This is Going to Hurt. Whilst the title propelled him to relative stardom (and a BBC miniseries!), Kay was not a public figure before his book published.


Highest Book Sales 2022 Title


1 Diddley Squat: ‘Til the Cows Come Home


2 And Away ...


3 This Much is True 4 Taste


5 Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing


6 Undoctored 7 The Storyteller


8 The Light We Carry 9 Gloves Off


10 Diddly Squat


Suzy Warnock is Account Manager at Nielsen BookData.


This is an intimate account of a far less glamorous job than many of the celebrity figures sharing the charts with him.


Whilst celebrity memoir releases are often exciting, no matter your opinion on the celebrity themselves, when the initial fervour wears off, whose stories do we return to consistently over time? The titles that have the most staying power, especially in libraries, are more about our shared humanity, understanding those with different life experiences and real stories of overcoming hardship. IP


Author Jeremy Clarkson Bob Mortimer 3 This Much is True Myriam Margoyles


Stanley Tucci Matthew Perry


Adam Kay Dave Grohl


Michelle Obama Tyson Fury


Jeremy Clarkson


4 And Away ... 5 This is Going to Hurt 6 Windswept & Interesting


7 The Wild Silence (Hardback)


8 Reason I Jump


9 The Wild Silence (Paperback)


Bob Mortimer Adam Kay


Billy Connolly Raynor Winn


Naoki Higashida Raynor Winn


10 The Boy with the Topknot Sathnam Sanghera INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 47


Highest Library Loans 2022 Title


Author


1 The Salt Path 2 Becoming


Colleen Hoover Michelle Obama Myriam Margoyles


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