9 January 2025

The print book markets in the UK and Ireland both decreased in 2024, with value sales dropping 0.6% and 5.4%, respectively, and volume down 1.7% and 5.5% compared to 2023. Adult Fiction was the strongest performing sector, as it was in 2022 and 2023, although purchases did drop in Ireland by just 0.4%, equivalent to 14k books, while volume in the UK grew 6%. Consumer spending on fiction print books increased 2% in Ireland and 10% in the UK, adding up to the highest value ever measured in both countries. Adult Non-Fiction unfortunately saw less success, posting decline in volume (-7% in the UK and -9% in Ireland) and value (-6% UK and -8% Ireland), with Children’s, Young Adult & Educational following suit, tracking behind 2023 by 7% in volume and 0.8% in value in the UK and 7%/8% in Ireland. (For the latter, changes in the educational market have affected the stats in recent years; if we remove School Textbooks & Study Guides, the Children’s & Young Adult market in Ireland saw more moderate decline of 4% volume and 3% value.)

The strength of fiction in 2024 is evident across the top titles in both markets, with the sector taking nine of the top ten spots in the UK and six of the top ten in Ireland. Only one of those titles overlaps, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, which has made the top ten in both countries for three years in a row now. Outside of that, the fiction bestsellers in Ireland all come from Irish authors, led by Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan making an appearance in the top 20 in Ireland for the fourth consecutive year; you can see the novel’s path to number one in this animated bar chart. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman topped the UK chart for 2024, overtaking his latest paperback The Last Devil to Die as of December, which you can watch happen in this visualisation.

One non-fiction book appears in both top ten lists, with Guinness World Records 2025 reaching seventh in the UK and eighth in Ireland. That makes it the non-fiction bestseller in the UK for the first time in a decade, but it was second to Obsessed by Johnny Sexton in Ireland, which was the runner-up for the overall market. Another major difference between the two lists comes from children’s books: The Scarlet Shedder by Dav Pilkey and Hot Mess by Jeff Kinney both made the top ten in Ireland for 2024, and while the latter was the bestselling children’s book in the UK, it doesn’t come into the overall chart until 20th, with The Scarlet Shedder at 30th. If we look at bestselling authors based on cumulative volume sales, however, Kinney and Pilkey do make the UK top ten, at seventh and eighth, and shift up to third and second, respectively, in Ireland. Pilkey was second only to Julia Donaldson in Ireland, who was once again the bestselling name across both countries. Two more authors appear among the top ten overall names on either side of the Irish Sea: Colleen Hoover (who was the bestselling fiction author in Ireland for the third year running but dropped to third in fiction in the UK) and Sarah J. Maas. Freida McFadden led fiction authors in the UK for 2024, jumping up from 48th in the previous year, and was second in the total market to Donaldson; the crime author was outside the overall top ten in Ireland but was fifth in the fiction-specific author list. Overall, the UK top ten was made up of six fiction authors and four children’s, with that reversed in Ireland, pushing non-fiction out of the top ten for either. 

On a category level, there was widespread growth across the fiction market, with Romance & Sagas, Historical & Mythological Fiction and Science Fiction & Fantasy all seeing record value sales in both the UK and Ireland, along with Graphic Novels: Manga in Ireland (with 2022 ahead for Manga in the UK). General & Literary Fiction brought in its highest value since 2010 in Ireland and 2011 in the UK, while Crime, Thriller & Adventure revenue was only behind 2009 and 2010 in the UK (but down in Ireland in 2024). The leading fiction authors in both countries show a mix of fantasy, romance, crime & thriller and, especially in Ireland, literary fiction, highlighting how robust and varied the interest in fiction is right now.

While the growth wasn’t as universal in other sectors, a few non-fiction categories managed to defy the general trend and grow in both countries, including True Crime, Puzzles and Handicrafts, Arts & Crafts, so a pattern of success more on the leisure reading and activities side; Poetry Texts & Poetry Anthologies also grew in value in the UK, setting a new lifetime record, and only trailed 2022 and 2023 in Ireland. Two children’s product classes grew in both countries: Pre-School & Early Learning, which helped to balance the decline seen in the larger categories of Picture Books and Novelty & Activity Books, and Children’s Comic Strip Fiction & Graphic Novels, which saw record sales in the UK and Ireland, led by the success of Dav Pilkey and Jamie Smart and growing authors like John Patrick Green. If we combine that with Children’s Fiction, overall middle-grade sales were still down, but with a number of emerging authors rising up the charts and the expanding interest in graphic novels, it does look to be heading in a positive direction. Shifting older, Young Adult Fiction achieved growth in the UK, calling back to growing fiction areas like fantasy and romance, but the category declined in Ireland. 

Despite the overall market stats for 2024 being negative, digging into the titles and authors and categories paints a more optimistic picture. If we look at 2024 in the context of the longer term trend, the last time that spending on print books declined in both countries was 2013, but back then, value in Ireland dropped 14% vs the previous year, and in the UK, 7%, so the latest year was a more moderate decline, after record sales in the last few years. Nearly all corners of the print book market have had some element of growth over the last five years or so, which has created a solid base for years that feature a dip in sales. And it’s always important to remember that the stats included here are just print books; results from our Books & Consumers survey show that both e-books and audiobooks were in growth in the first half of the year in the UK, so the overall outlook is positive. In print, the momentum is certainly with fiction right now, and that’s being helped by word of mouth and social media activity, but it’s not just ‘the latest TikTok phenomenon’ climbing the charts, it’s all different types of books. Readers are embracing both familiar and unfamiliar authors, frontlist and backlist books, keeping the fiction shelves healthy and the bestseller lists fresh. Here’s to more of that enthusiasm about books in 2025!

Based on data from the BookScan UK Total Consumer Market (TCM) and Irish Consumer Market (ICM), to 28 December 2024.