13 August 2024

Children’s middle-grade fiction has seen a shift in recent years, with increased interest in graphic novels & comic strip fiction; in fact, the top fiction author this year is Dav Pilkey, creator of Dog Man, followed by Bunny vs Monkey writer and illustrator Jamie Smart at third. Both have moved up two places compared to a year ago and have seen their sales increase by more than £1m. Also rising up the ranks is John Patrick Green and his Investigators, with sales more than doubling year-on-year (helped by a featured World Book Day title) to boost him from 25^th in the author ranks to 13^th.

The growth in graphic novels has helped to balance a decline seen in wider children’s fiction, although plenty of top names are defying that decline. Representing the illustrated children’s fiction side, we see growth for long-established authors as well as emerging ones, with Jeff Kinney, Katie Kirby, Liz Pichon, Harriet Muncaster, Rachel Renee Russell and Andy Griffiths all up to varying degrees. And then there’s the fantasy adventure side, seen in Rick Riordan within the top ten and Katherine Rundell and A.F. Steadman closing out the top 15, all with increased sales vs a year ago, shown below.

So graphic novels, humour, fantasy, adventure, the fiction market is covering a lot of interests this year! And serving varied ages, if we look at who the books are being bought for according to results from our Books & Consumers survey. While they write two different types of fiction, Jeff Kinney and Rick Riordan have an older readership in common, perhaps reflecting those that have grown up with their longstanding series: both have at least 40% of their books bought for readers aged 17+, nearly 60% in Riordan’s case. Liz Pichon and Rachel Renee Russell see one in four books bought for 17+, but the largest group is 9-12, at 40%, although Pichon is slightly more 9-10 while Russell goes higher in 11-12. The share of David Walliams books bought for 9-12s matches theirs, but his also skew a bit more toward the age bands above and below. Numbers are still on the low side for Katie Kirby but early results show a definite 9-12 audience.

Dav Pilkey, Andy Griffiths and Jamie Smart (also a low sample so far so just an early indication) each have about a quarter of their books bought for 9-10s, but they’re more likely filling the shelves of 7-8 year-olds, along with Harriet Muncaster, who also caters to the early readers aged 5-6. Altogether that shows that within the top growing authors in 2024 so far, basically ages from five upwards are covered.

While different authors will be targeting different ages, there are plenty of similarities for what those ages look for in fiction, according to results from our annual study Understanding the UK Children’s Book Consumer. Given the prevalence of funny stories among the top names, it’s no surprise to see ‘makes them laugh’ as the most important attribute for 5-13s, and within the top five for 14-17s. Adventure, excitement and escapism are also widely looked for, and, especially as readers grow older, surprises and plot twists. Commonalities are highlighted in the table below, but it’s also interesting to see the unique factors: 5-7s remain more visual as they move up to independent reading, 8-10s like to talk about what they read (don’t we all?) and 11-13s value the familiarity that a series brings. And we can certainly see that last factor in the names featured above, with the majority of leading authors driven by series, some of which have surpassed ten books and even a few with 20 entries now! Giving readers an extensive world to escape into for years to come.

Based on data from the Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market (TCM) to 3 August 2024, the Books & Consumers survey to April 2024 and the Understanding the UK Children’s Book Consumer 2023 report (preview here). Please contact infobookresearch@nielseniq.com for more information.