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Travel books and Prince Harry’s memoirs: Global book market is growing
The book market is also growing in Germany. Social media trends like #Booktok contribute to this.
© Chris Emil Janssen / Imago Images
The book market is growing in almost every country in the world. This is shown by current figures from GfK Entertainment and Nielsen Book Data. Biographies and travel books are particularly popular at the moment.
Travel books and autobiographical works such as the memoirs of Prince Harry is driving the global book market this year. This is the conclusion of the book market report published by GfK Entertainment and Nielsen Book Data on Tuesday. Accordingly, the book market recorded an increase in sales in the first eight months of the year in most of the 16 markets examined, which was accompanied by significantly higher prices.
Book market is growing almost all over the world
The book markets in India (plus 8.7 percent) and Mexico (plus 10.0 percent) were particularly booming. There were single-digit sales increases in France (plus 1.3 percent) and Great Britain (plus 1.8 percent). Only a few countries, including Australia (minus 1.9 percent) and South Africa (minus 0.2 percent), ended up in the red in the first eight months of the year.
For Germany, which was examined separately as part of the evaluation based on the half-yearly data from Consumer Panel Services GfK, sales climbed by 5.1 percent compared to the same period last year. This is mainly due to the 2.6 percent increase in average price, while sales only increased by 2.4 percent.
Prince Harry’s memoirs are a worldwide bestseller
Prince Harry’s memoirs, which were published in German under the title “Reserve”, became a bestseller. The book was one of the five best-selling non-fiction titles in twelve countries during the first eight months, as reported by GfK Entertainment. It was even the most popular book overall in Great Britain, Ireland and Italy. The novel “Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt” by the late Lucinda Riley and her son Harry Whittaker as co-authors was also in high demand. It was the most successful book in New Zealand and the Netherlands, among others.
Travel books also experienced an upswing after the corona pandemic. “The travel book segment is booming and will be one of the fastest-growing genres in 2023,” it said. Half of all 16 book markets analyzed even reported double-digit increases in sales for this product group. In contrast, comics and especially manga suffered significant losses after a few very strong years.
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When looking at the international bestseller lists, market researchers noticed the increasing importance of social media communities like BookTok. Their best-known author Colleen Hoover conquered the fiction top 5 in ten countries with her box office hits “It Ends with Us” and “It Starts with Us”.