From tales of alienation to comforting novels set in bookshops, Japanese authors have written nearly half of this year’s bestselling translated novels in the UK. What’s their secret?• Read an an exclusive Q&A with Haruki MurakamiAnyone who has been in a bookshop in the last few years will have noticed that Japanese fiction is experiencing an extraordinary boom. In 2022, figures from Nielsen BookScan showed that Japanese fiction represented 25% of all translated fiction sales in the UK. The dominance is even more striking this year: figures obtained by the Guardian show that, of the top 40 translated fiction titles for 2024 so far, 43% are Japanese, with Asako Yuzuki’s satirical, socially conscious crime novel Butter topping the list. Butter also won the breakthrough author award at this year’s Books Are My Bag readers awards, which are curated by booksellers and voted for by the public.The popularity of modern Japanese fiction is not a new phenomenon in the UK, of course. In the 1990s, two writers broke through and became cult hits in this country. Haruki Murakami, a worldwide literary phenomenon, took off in Britain when Harvill Press published The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in 1998. Scott Pack, who ran Waterstones’ buying team in the early 2000s, is a big Murakami fan and remembers giving him “lots of attention. Whatever books of his came out, we got massively behind.” This week, Murakami publishes his 15th novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, about a man who travels... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-11-23 09:00:37 UTC ]
Headline has signed two more books by author and Daily Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon, including one looking at mental illness. Gordon is the author of The Wrong Knickers, also from Headline and about Gordon’s 20s, which has sold 45,225 copies through Nielsen BookScan to date. Her first new... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sphere is to release a new book by Kevin Pietersen this autumn, focussing “squarely” on events on the pitch. Pietersen’s KP: The Autobiography, released last year, has sold 106,654 copies through Nielsen BookScan to date. In the book Pietersen criticised a number of his former England cricket... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E L James has retaken the Official Top 50 number one from Harper Lee, as Grey (Arrow) sold 17,171 copies to Go Set a Watchman's (William Heinemann) 15,476 in the chart this week. Grey’s sales were down 25.8% week on week, but Watchman dropped further, with a 42% decrease in volume. Despite... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Waterstones is set to open a new three storey bookshop on London’s Tottenham Court Road in October. At 7,000 sq foot, the shop will be the largest Waterstones to open in the capital since the Oxford Street Plaza branch in 2009 and will stock the largest selection of new fiction titles in London... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After its historic first week of sales last week, Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' sold roughly 220,000 print copies for the week ended July 29, according to the outlets that report to Nielsen Bookscan Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Boris Johnson is to write a biography of William Shakespeare for Hodder & Stoughton for October 2016. The publisher has confirmed the deal, which was reported in the Sunday Times to have been done for £500,000. The newspaper reported that Johnson’s advance was almost seven times his salary... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-07-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Go Set a Watchman' sold over 746,000 copies in its first week on sale at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. The numbers easily made the Harper Lee novel the #1 title on PW’s bestseller list, topping 'Grey' by E.L. James. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’s novel has now been top of the UK hardback book chart for 20 weeks, outlasting even Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol• How Paula Hawkins wrote ‘the new Gone Girl’A record set six years ago by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was broken this week by Paula Hawkins’s dark thriller The Girl on the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sales of print books for the first six months of 2015 were running just about even with the same period in 2014 at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. Units inched up 0.3% in the period, to more than 286 million. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pavilion imprint Batsford has a 500,000 first print run for colouring book Millie Marotta's Tropical Wonderland, to meet retail orders around the world. The book, released today (25th June, £9.99), is the follow-up to Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom, which has been translated into 30 languages... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book sold more than 350,000 copies in just three days on sale, according to Nielsen BookScan, which records roughly 80% of print units. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E L James’ Grey (Arrow) has become the fastest-selling adult paperback in the UK since records began, smashing the previous record by almost 270,000 copies, while selling nearly 650,000 physical and digital units in just three days on sale. Grey shifted 385,972 print units Thursday through... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Authors and book reviewers have hit out at national newspapers for shrinking the amount of editorial space given over to children’s books, despite huge growth in the market. In the UK, the children’s sector (including teen and YA titles) is the fastest-growing area of the market: sales grew... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Victoria Hislop has retained the top spot on the UK Official Top 50 for the second consecutive week while Paula Hawkins continues to close in on Dan Brown’s record for most weeks as an Original Fiction number one. Hislop’s The Sunrise (Headline) sold 28,450 copies last week through Nielsen... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Victoria Hislop proved tougher than the American Sniper, with the British author’s newest release seeing off a single-channel promotion to earn her first number one in six years. Hislop’s The Sunrise (Headline) sold 26,055 units through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market in its first week... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Marian Keyes has notched her tenth UK Official Top 50 number one, returning to the pole position for the first time in over two years. Keyes’ The Woman Who Stole My Life (Penguin) sold 24,139 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, an impressive 27% rise on its first week... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-06-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Green’s "The Fault in Our Stars" was the top-selling ebook in 2014, according to data just released by PubTrack Digital, a unit of Nielsen BookScan. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-05-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Green's The Fault in Our Stars was the top-selling ebook in 2014, according to data just released by PubTrack Digital, a unit of Nielsen BookScan. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-05-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Despite the much-discussed 15% drop in Christian fiction print unit sales from 2013 to 2014, as reported by Nielsen BookScan, publishers aren’t sounding the category’s death knell yet. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Clinton Cash' and 'Selfish' both landed in the top 15 adult nonfiction bestsellers, according to data released by Nielsen BookScan on Wednesday. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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