BookTrack Australia Announces Book of the Year Awards

It will be no surprise that J K Rowling's 'Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone' made No.1 Best Selling Title and Children's Title in Australia in 2001, and that positions 2, 3 and 4 were also dominated by the other three Potter titles, according to BookTrack's Australia's inaugural annual Top 5000 bestseller chart.

'But it wasn't all about the little wizard in 2001', points out Kirsty Ward, client service manager, BookTrack Australia. 'Pamela Stephenson's biography about her husband, Billy was BookTrack's best selling Non Fiction title in 2001, an impressive result for HarperCollins Publishers given the title was only released three months ago.'

'And popular Australian author, Bryce Courtenay, did exceptionally well with his new title, 'Four Fires', surging past 'Bridget Jones's Diary' to take the BookTrack award for the best selling Fiction title in 2001', Ward continued. 'Courtenay's earlier title this year Smoky Joe's Cafe was also a runaway success, selling half as many units, however ranked No. 5 on the annual Fiction bestseller list.'

Popular chefs Jamie Oliver and Donna Hay fought it out for 2001's best selling Food & Drink title with Australian, Donna Hay, pipping Jamie to the post with her popular new title 'Off The Shelf : Cooking from the Pantry'.

Whilst Harry Potter dominated the Children's award there were some other strong performers coming in behind J K Rowling's success. The performances of titles such as 'The Day My Bum Went Pyscho' by Andy Griffiths, 'The Bad Beginnings' by Lemony Snicket and '1001 Jokes' with Don Spencer, are often overshadowed by the success of the Harry Potter series.

BookTrack Australia's Annual Top 5000 bestseller chart was compiled from results taken over a 52 week period to 29th December, 2001. In 2001, BookTrack recorded $517m of book sales, equivalent to 25.9 million purchases of 185,000 different titles. Of this, the Top 5000 titles represented almost 60% of total revenue, emphasising the value of the best selling titles to booksellers and publishers.

Over the Christmas four week period, book sales surged this year compared to last recording a 21% increase in sales value. Whilst a significant proportion of the increase can be attributed to Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Four Fires, by excluding these titles and comparing the two Christmas periods, a healthy growth rate of 12% was experienced in the Australian book trade this year.

BookTrack is a joint venture between ACNielsen and J Whitaker & Sons, operator of the BookTrack service in the UK. BookTrack Australia collects transactional sales data from over 1000 booksellers nationwide and produces a weekly Top 5000 best seller chart for the Australian book industry.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

• Nielsen Media Research Australia
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