The Bookseller Fantasy League: WEEK XII

For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, when I blew out the oil lamp, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say to myself "I wonder if I set the alarm?" or check the curtains to see whether or not my forceful blow had accidentally sprayed scorching hot oil all over them and set my house on fire. And I would awake with a start, some considerable time after I should have stirred from my slumber, to discover that I no longer had any eyebrows, or any other hair for that matter. And that my dear old pussycat, Timmy, looked and smelled like crispy duck...

These days, however, I do not go to bed early. Instead, I go to bed in the EARLY hours. Because I find it incredibly hard to get to sleep when my mind is racing with questions such as "Why on Earth didn't I pick Where's Stig??", "Why on Earth did I spend £1.1 million on John Grisham's Ford County?" and "Will there ever be an end to Catherine Neilan's reign at the summit of the top of the 'Overall Leaderboard'?"

Of course, the answer to the first two questions is the same: "Because I'm an idiot". The answer to the third question is, quite obviously, "42". Whereby the number "42" represents, in the words of General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett VC DSO KCB, "a pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face".

***

Basically, for those of you that don't know, the UK book market has been turned upside down in recent weeks (click for the low-down and some humorous "Comments" by anonymous readers and The Bookseller's own useless-at-fantasy-bookselling charts editor, Philip Stone). History dictated that October would mark the month when book-buyers up and down the land would start spending millions and millions each week on thousands upon thousands of copies of hardback non-fiction books. Except that this year, well, umm..., that kinda hasn't happened.

By this point last year, Paul O'Grady's At My Mother's Knee... had sold almost 275,000 copies, while the celebrity memoirs of Michael Parkinson, Julie Walters and Dawn French had sold 480,000 copies between them. This year, the bestselling celebrity memoir is Ant & Dec's Ooh! What a Lovely Pair, with sales of 110,000 copies. Second on the list is Peter Kay's Saturday Night Peter, with sales of 90,000—half the 180,000 figure that his first memoir, The Sound of Laughter, had posted by this point in 2006. Even Guinness World Records, guilty-pleasure Jeremy "The Power" Clarkson, and Jamie "Pukka" Oliver are struggling to match last year's performance.

Conversely, and (IMHO) partly because of it, the fiction market is performing better-than-expected—thanks to big works by some big authors such as Poo Brown, Terry Discworld, MartinEastender Cole, Stephen "You're Giving me Nightmares!" King, ScarPatricia Cornwell, Hilary "Man Booker winner" Mantel, and The Stieg Larsson to name but seven. And the kids market ain't doing too shabbily at all, what with that lass Stephenie Meyer and all (well, I'd much prefer the yoof of today spent their pocket money on teen vampire love trash than crack cocaine, but then I am an ol' fuddy-duddy).

Anyway...what all the above means is that the inaugural The Bookseller Fantasy League is WIDE OPEN. Anything can happen.

Oh, what I mean is, "anything can happen"..."except anyone other than Catherine Neilan and her 'When the Cat's Away...' winning" (she's had another good week)...

Yup, thanks to solid sales of Guinness World Records, Poo Brown's The Lost Symbol and Martina Cole's Hard Girls, Neilan's "When the Cat's Away..." is once again the "Team of the Week". And just like last week, Tom "Boston" Tivnan's "Some Books ARE Just for Christmas" takes second position and Nicola "Chinny, Chin" Chin "Chinny"'s "Read This and Weep" takes third.

This week's "Heatseekers" list is topped by Len Whiteread thanks, principally, to the release of Stephen "Horror" King's Under the Dome—a novel in which a small town finds itself cut-off from reality. He must've visited Doncaster. Patterson Fielder's "Door Stoppers" takes third position for the same reason, while Morgan Adebayo's "Late Bloomers" sits second thanks to a strong full week in the bookshops for Andre "I took drugs. I'm an American sportsman—what did you expect?!" Agassi's memoir, Open.

The gap between Neilan and Tivan at the summit of the "Overall Leaderboard" is now an eye-popping 84,010 points/sales. Still, not quite as horrific as the 490,243-point gap between Len Whiteread's "If you're above me you suck" in 32nd position, and Neill Denny's "History in the Making" in 33rd position. Yep, Whiteread did pick Poo Brown. Yep, The Bookseller's editor-in-chief Neill Denny did not—and therefore has to settle for top spot in the "I'm too snobbish to have picked Dan Brown" sub-league — a league that I like to call "The Losers League".