‘RecipeTin Eats: Tonight’ is Australia’s number one Christmas bestseller
Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Macmillan) tops the 2024 Australian Christmas bestsellers list having sold 27,916 copies in Australia in the week ending 14 December, according to data from Nielsen BookScan.
Nielsen said Maehashi’s title ‘shattered records’ by selling over 77,000 copies in its release week and topped the charts as the most-purchased book nationwide during Black Friday 2024. Since its release in mid-October, the book has spent seven weeks at number one on the bestsellers chart. Its predecessor, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, published in October 2022, was the Christmas number one that year and has now sold 577,766 copies Australia-wide. To date, Australian consumers have bought over 825,480 copies across Maehashi’s titles.
While Maehashi’s sales have soared, overall sales in the Australian Book Market have declined. Nielsen reported that for the year to date up to the week ending 14 December, the market was down 3.8% in value compared to the same time the previous year. The year 2022 had the highest recorded sales in BookScan records and in 2024, as with 2023, there continued to be a slight correction on performance, however ‘the market is still tracking with sales above 2021, 2020 and pre-pandemic 2019 levels’, says Nielsen.
A sector that continues to grow is the adult fiction category, with Australian book buyers purchasing 18.5 million books at a value of $380 million for the year to date up to 14 December 2024. This represents a +5.6% increase in volume and +7.3% uplift in value, translating to an additional 974,000 fiction books and close to $26 million being purchased compared to the same period in 2023.
Nielsen said: ‘The Christmas season, as is the case for the rest of retail, remains a critical trading period of the year for authors, publishers and retailers of all sizes. Whilst a typical week might only account for about 2% of the year’s sales, the four weeks leading up to Christmas contribute around 14% of yearly revenue. This is a significant lift in sales when compared to an average four-week period which usually hovers around 7%, highlighting just how important Christmas is to the Australian book industry. This Christmas sales week, Australian book buyers purchased 135,407 different book titles, highlighting the remarkable variety of unique titles bought by shoppers in just one week.’
Said Nielsen BookData Australia general manager Bianca Whiteley: ‘Although 2024 is a continued adjustment on record sales of recent years, Australian book buyers continue to turn to books as a source of information, escape and perhaps a great budget-friendly gift choice.’
Top 10 Australian Christmas bestsellers list*, 2024
- RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan), 27,900 copies
- Bake with Brooki (Brooke Bellamy, Penguin), 14,585 copies
- The Voice Inside (John Farnham & Poppy Stockell, Hachette), 11,316 copies
- Big Jim Begins (Dog Man #13) (Dav Pilkey, Puffin), 11,306 copies
- Here One Moment (Liane Moriarty, Macmillan), 10,448 copies
- In Too Deep (Jack Reacher #29) (Lee Child & Andrew Child, Bantam), 9352 copies
- RecipeTin Eats: Dinner (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan), 8748 copies
- Quicksilver (Callie Hart, Hodderscape), 7798 copies
- Guinness World Records 2025 (Guinness World Records), 7501 copies
- Hot Mess (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #19) (Jeff Kinney, Puffin), 6269 copies.
Australian Christmas number-one bestsellers* in the past decade
- 2024: RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan)
- 2023: Heartstopper Volume 5 (Alice Oseman, Hachette)
- 2022: RecipeTin Eats: Dinner (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan)
- 2021: Apples Never Fall (Liane Moriarty, Macmillan)
- 2020: A Promised Land (Barack Obama, Penguin)
- 2019: Wrecking Ball (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #14) (Jeff Kinney, Puffin)
- 2018: The Barefoot Investor (Scott Pape, Wiley)
- 2017: 5 Ingredients (Jamie Oliver, Michael Joseph)
- 2016: Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #11) (Jeff Kinney, Puffin)
- 2015: Old School (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #10) (Jeff Kinney, Puffin)
- 2014: The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #9) (Jeff Kinney, Puffin).
*Data sourced from Nielsen BookScan’s Australian Book Market panel, measuring print book sales in Australia through its defined panel. Weekly data is 8 to 14 December 2024. Year-to-date is 31 December 2023 to 14 December 2024.
Category: Local news
