Australian authors largely miss out in bumper book sales
Australian readers have bought an astonishing 50 million books in 2022, up 10 per cent on even the bumper Covid years, but local writers are largely missing out.
Booksellers, rejoice: Australian readers have bought an astonishing 50 million books in 2022, up 10 per cent on even the bumper Covid years.
Unfortunately for Australian writers, it’s mostly not their books they’re buying.
Nielsen BookScan data for the year-to-date, released exclusively to The Australian this week, shows that just one Australian novelist has to date cracked this year’s Top 10 for fiction: Melbourne’s Jane Harper, whose Exiles has sold 91,000 copies.
By contrast, an incredible six of the novels in the Top Ten to date were written by just one woman: the Texan juggernaut, Colleen Hoover.
Hoover, 42, who lives in the small town of Sulpher Springs in East Texas, started her career in 2012 with a self-published book called Slammed, which she wrote while raising three boys and working as an infant nutrition counsellor.
She has since written an astonishing 23 books, with sales taking off in 2022 after fans on TikTok decided to “promote the heck out” of her.
Hoover’s top seller in Australia, It Ends With Us, has sold 178,000 copies since it was released in January; the follow-up, It Starts With Us, which tells the same story from the perspective of a different character, has sold 94,000 copies since it was released in October.
Four of Hoover’s other novels are also in the year-to-date Top Ten.
According to the data, which captures sales between 2 January and 12 November, a book had to sell 66,000 copies to make the Top Ten, and while Harper was the only Australian able to do it, Liane Moriarty was hot on her heels, selling 64,000 copies of Apples Never Fall.
In the top 10 for Australian fiction, there were two debut success stories: Dirt Town by the former director of the Wollongong Writers Festival, Hayley Scrivenor, which has sold 38,000 copies this year; and Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Sydney-based literary agent Benjamin Stevenson, which has sold 30,000 copies.
Australian writers have done far better in the nonfiction category, with Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Dinner (Pan Macmillan) breaking the record for the highest selling title from a debut Australian author with 37,000 sales sold in the first week.
That said, the best-selling nonfiction book in the country - at least until 12 November - was American James Clear’s Atomic Habits - how make or break good or bad habits – with 114,000 copies sold.
It will lose the top spot when sales of Scott Pape’s Barefoot Kids gets factored into the charts: it has sold more than that (128,000 copies) in its first week (Pape’s sales are not captured in the charts on this page because the book is so new.)
Also selling well in the nonfiction category: Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (45,000 copies.)
While the Top 10 in fiction is dominated by one author, the top 50 has more diversity: 22 per cent of novels in the Top 50 were by Australian authors, including Liane Moriarty, Matthew Reilly, Dervla McTiernan, Pip Williams, Hayley Scrivenor, Michael Robotham, Trent Dalton, Benjamin Stevenson and Geraldine Brooks, who has sold 30,000 copies of Horse to date.
Children’s comic strip fiction and graphic novels are up an astonishing 95 per cent, led by Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper (Hachette) series, which has been adapted by Netflix.
Top 10 adult fiction titles, January-November 2022
Where the Crawdads Sing* (sales include the edition published in 2017): Delia Owens, 184,000
It Ends With Us: Colleen Hoover, 178,000
Verity: Colleen Hoover, 122,000
Ugly Love: Colleen Hoover, 115,000
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: Taylor Jenkins Reid, 106,000
It Starts with Us: Colleen Hoover, 94,000
Exiles: Jane Harper, 91,000
The Love Hypothesis: Ali Hazelwood, 76,000
November 9: Colleen Hoover, 72,000
All Your Perfects: Colleen Hoover, 66,000
Top 10 Australian fiction
Exiles: Jane Harper, Macmillan, 91k
Apples Never Fall: Liane Moriarty, Macmillan, 64k
Cobalt Blue: Matthew Reilly, Macmillan, 42k
The Murder Rule: Dervla McTiernan, HarperCollins, 42k
The Dictionary of Lost Words: Pip Williams, Affirm Press 39k
Dirt Town: Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan, 38k
Lying Beside You: Michael Robotham, Hachette, 36k
Boy Swallows Universe: Trent Dalton, HarperCollins, 34k
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone: Benjamin Stevenson, Penguin 30k
Horse: Geraldine Brooks, Hachette, 30k
Top 10 non-fiction
Atomic Habits: James Clear, Penguin, 114k
RecipeTin Eats: Dinner Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan 74k
The Happiest Man on Earth: Eddie Jaku, Macmillan 66k
The Barefoot Investor: Scott Pape Wiley, 62k
Love Stories: Trent Dalton, HarperCollins, 57k
The Fast 800 Keto: Michael Mosley, Hachette, 54k
Atlas of the Heart: Brené Brown, Vermilion, 48k
12 Rules for Life: Jordan B. Peterson, Penguin, 45k
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse: Charlie Mackesy, Ebury 43k
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F..k: Mark Manson, Macmillan 43k
Australian non-fiction top 10
RecipeTin Eats: Dinner: Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan, 74k
The Happiest Man on Earth: Eddie Jaku, Macmillan, 66k
The Barefoot Investor: Scott Pape Wiley, 62k
Love Stories: Trent Dalton, HarperCollins, 57k
The 10:10 Diet: Sarah Di Lorenzo, Simon & Schuster, 42k
The Boy from Boomerang Crescent: Eddie Betts, Simon & Schuster, 29k
She’s on the Money: Victoria Devine, Penguin, 27k
The 10:10 Diet Recipe Book: Sarah Di Lorenzo, Simon & Schuster, 27k
The Resilience Project: Hugh van Cuylenburg, Penguin, 24k
Lisa: Lisa Curry & Ellen Whinnett, HarperCollins, 24k
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