I RECENTLY trawled through the weekly book charts for the year so far. It showed women had topped the Irish bestsellers every week of 2015 bar one — take a bow, John Connolly, for The Wolf in Winter. The sisterhood has mainly been represented by Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train, the publishing phenomenon of 2015. In April, Patricia Scanlan took over for a couple of weeks, while Harper Lee and EL James topped the charts during the summer months.
So women rule the publishing world — a fitting response to recent reports about how female authors are nominated for significantly fewer awards. Or at least that was the case until this month, when a representative of a literary group that could claim to suffer worse snubs than female authors soared to the top of the charts. Following the cinema release of Paper Towns, the John Green book on which it is based went to No 1. Of greater significance than Green’s gender is that he writes books for young people.
Though young adult (YA) authors write for teenagers, they are included in the “children’s” category for sales and statistical purposes. Publications that print the Irish book charts, such as The Irish Times, do not include children’s bestsellers. So you’d be forgiven for thinking The Girl on the Train was still chugging along in first position when, in fact, Green has outsold Hawkins for two weeks now.
There are two responses to this within the children’s book market. Most traditional media feature children’s and YA books only in round-ups, and some authors feel ignored by the mainstream in terms of award nominations and coverage. It’s not uncommon now for YA novels to be re-released as adult books — Louise O’Neill’s impressive Only Ever Yours, for example — as a way of garnering reviews.
Then there are the more long-sighted members of literature’s thriving underground collective. These authors, publishers and editors realise children and teenagers are unlikely to peruse literary supplements, or tune into arts shows, in search of reading material. Instead, sales are generated by word of mouth; children hear about books in the classroom and from publishing events, while teenagers are kept informed by blogs and recommendations on social media. Blockbuster movie adaptations don’t do any harm either but, at least in the early days, sales are secured on the grapevine.
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The volume of book sales in Ireland has dropped 0.2% year on year, while the value is up 4.9%. This discrepancy is likely due to the weak euro pushing up prices. Yet, of all chart categories, the all-encompassing children’s sector has seen the biggest growth, with value up 7.2% and volume up 3.8%.
There’s an argument for including YA book sales in the general fiction charts, given their strong crossover appeal. However, most children’s authors don’t mind where they’re placed. Whether or not you see their names in the bestseller charts, their books are still keeping cash registers busy.