Times Newspapers exerted a big influence on the bestseller lists last year. According to The Bookseller, Jeremy Clarkson’s The World According to Clarkson, from his Sunday Times column, was the bestselling new paperback of 2005, selling 843,645 copies; at No3 was The Times Su Doku by Wayne Gould (595,757). And they sandwiched The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (652,015).
* * *
Advertisement
The list excludes titles published in previous years — if it had not, Dan Brown would have occupied the first four places. But it is just as well that his backlist keeps selling because his next novel seems further away than ever: even the working title, The Solomon Key, is now in doubt. Brown’s US publisher says: “No title, no content, no publication date, no nothing.”
* * *
Advertisement
Who were the winners and losers on the Bookseller list? Marian Keyes, at No 4 with The Other Side of the Story, is the queen of romance, outselling Maeve Binchy and Danielle Steel, whose appearance at No 45 suggests a slide in sales. Jodi Picoult and Kate Long are among the new stars. Of titles not on the list, The Bookseller picked out as especially disappointing We Are Family by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees and, harshly, The Tinder Box by Minette Walters. This is a novella and its modest sales are further evidence of the public’s wariness of shorter fiction. You probably also missed Michael Moore’s Will They Ever Trust Us Again? – “one book too far”.
* * *
Advertisement
Five years ago, Kerr MacRae, the managing director of Headline, bought some turf from the old Wembley Stadium — as you do — thinking that it might come in useful some day. Now it has: it will become an incentive to purchase World Champions by Geoff Hurst, hero of England’s 1966 World Cup victory. Flecks of the grass are to be woven into the endpapers.