Do the biggest and brightest in bookselling know what you are buying this Christmas? We asked for predictions from Amazon, Foyles and Mr Bs, to name a few; see what they predicted and how sales are faring in the lead-up to the Christmas rush
The publishing industry is waiting with bated breath to find out which of the Autumns titles will top the sales charts for the year - and safeguard their flagging fortunes for another year. The busiest day of the year for publishing is Super Thursday, deemed to be the optimum day for new releases to hit shelves and maximise Christmas sales. Its not a new phenomenon in recent years, there has consistently been an observable spike in new Christmas titles coming out on Thursdays in October but 2014 was the first year the day was celebrated by bookshops. With good reason; over 315 new hardback titles came out on October 9 2014 in the UK, all earmarked for top spots in our Christmas stockings.
When the first official Super Thursday arrived, we decided we wanted to monitor the impact of the day on sales this year. Would the titles published on that day perform better than others this Christmas? To know that, we needed to know what bookstores and retailers were expecting to fly off shelves before the Christmas rush began, so we contacted stores, websites and individuals and asked them to predict what the top 20 bestsellers this Christmas would be.
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