Bear Alley: Comic Cuts

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Comic Cuts

A quick follow-up to the bestselling British annuals piece from earlier this week. The Bookseller's Top 50 chart for the week ending 27 December shows a number of annuals continuing to sell well, including The Beano Annual (#17), The Official Doctor Who Annual (#19), High School Musical: The Annual (#28), Hannah Montana Annual (#33), In the Night Garden Annual (#38), Disney Princess Annual (#42), Match! Annual (#46), Oor Wullie Annual (#48) and Viz: The Last Turkey in the Shop (#49).

To make it into the Top 50 this week, all titles sold over 11,500 copies in the preceding week. Not surprisingly, annuals do very well at this time of year, being heavily discounted in most shops and often available for as little as £1.99. The titles in the highest positions (Beano and Doctor Who) probably sold around 30,000, High School Musical about 21,500, Hannah Montana around 18,500, In the Night Garden around 16,500 and Disney Princess Annual around 15,000.

Talking of sales... Amazon.co.uk recently announced their own best-sellers of 2008 in all catagories and the #1 position was taken by the Mamma Mia! DVD, followed by J. K. Rowling's latest book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and, third, The Dark Knight DVD. Mamma Mia! was Amazon UK's biggest-selling Christmas product of all time, and their biggest-selling DVD of all time, jumping ahead of The Star Wars Trilogy in a matter of days after release. Dawn French's autobiography, Dear Fatty, was their second highest-selling book.

UPDATE: 3 January 2008
The Times (3 January) carries a list of the Top 50 Bestsellers of 2008, which includes two children's annuals: Disney's High School Musical Annual 2009 at #24, with sales of 284,806, and The Official Doctor Who Annual 2009 at #48, with sales of 225,096. The bookselling year ends 27 December.