Market report: Australian publishers on Christmas sales trends and the year ahead

Each year, Think Australian’s sister publication Books+Publishing surveys publishers to see how Christmas matched up with their expectations and what they expect from the year ahead. This year, while one third of publishers reported sales were up for Christmas 2024 and another third reported they were down, Christmas 2024 sales were nonetheless ‘close to expectations’ for the majority of responding publishers (63%).

For some publishers, expectations were low due to economic conditions, while for others, a particularly successful Christmas in 2023 meant a sales drop was anticipated in 2024. What most publishers concurred on was that the Black Friday sales promotion that has migrated online from the US to Australian retailers in recent years has strongly affected shopping habits in the lead-up to Christmas.

One publisher, reporting that sales were up almost 25% for the quarter while being much more modestly up for December, reflected wider feedback that Black Friday promotions cause weakness in December sales – as well as during the lead-up to the sales event, according to Kerian Rogers, sales director at Affirm, the independent Melbourne publisher recently acquired by Simon & Schuster. Rogers is not a fan: ‘Black Friday sucks all oxygen for the week before and after,’ he said. ‘I detest this promotion.’

At Hachette, sales director Lillian Kovats agreed that ‘Black Friday continues to change the way Australians shop at Christmas’, but said that, while customers ‘wait for the sales to start their gift buying’, this was ‘also making the last weeks of the year bigger and bigger as customers head into stores for last-minute gifts’.

So what were customers were snapping up?

What was selling for Christmas 2024 in Australia?

One sales trend noted by the representative of a multi-national respondent to the survey was a ‘big drop-off from the number-one selling book to the next level across all categories’, and the standout title of Christmas 2024 was undoubtedly RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (alongside author Nagi Maehashi’s now perennial bestseller RecipeTin Eats: Dinner), which continued to rule charts.

While nonfiction topped the charts, fiction was the category most cited by publishers as performing best for Christmas 2024, while one multinational pointed to nonfiction as the standout. Various publishers highlighted Australian fiction, crime fiction (‘Christian White – he’s a superstar’, said Rogers) and ‘BookTok romance and fantasy categories with high-performing backlist’ as star performing genres.

At S&S, where the publisher had ‘continued success with Colleen Hoover backlist titles and the movie tie-in following the movie It Ends with Us’, the strongest performing category was nonetheless children’s/young adult fiction, according to Simon & Schuster sales director Elissa Baillie, who cited ‘success from Lauren Roberts, Lyn Painter and Shannon Messenger’ in the category. (Roberts’ second book, Powerless, published in 2023, ‘was our second biggest selling title this year across all formats, which shows the audience is increasing’, said Baillie.)

Also successes for S&S were The Chairman’s Lounge (Joe Aston), We Are the Stars (Gina Chick), Sarah Di Lorenzo’s My Mediterranean Life, and the first release from Anita Heiss–led imprint Bundyi – Stan Grant’s Murriyang.

At HarperCollins, A Periodic Tale (Karl Kruszelnicki) was a stand-out, alongside Not Everything Counts But Everything Matters (Ivan Cleary), Highways and Byways (Jimmy Barnes) and Cher, the pop star’s memoir (‘part one’).

At Penguin Random House, sales and operations director Gavin Schwarcz highlighted In Too Deep (Lee Child), Bake with Brooki (Brooke Bellamy), Orbital (Samantha Harvey), We Solve Murders (Richard Osman), Juice (Tim Winton), Hot Mess: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney), Atomic Habits (James Clear) and Bluey books as stand-out titles for Christmas 2024.

At Hachette Australia, Kovats highlighted John Farnham’s The Voice Inside, ‘the number-one biography for 2024 by over 60,000 copies’, and Peter FitzSimons, as well as Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley), Quicksilver by Callie Hart, and Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson.

At Allen & Unwin, Hoy cited Intermezzo (Sally Rooney), By Any Other Name (Jodi Picoult), Things Will Calm Down Soon (Zoë Foster Blake), The Valley (Chris Hammer), Brainstorm (Richard Scolyer), All Fours (Miranda July), Landovel (Emily Rodda) and Salad for Days (Alice Zaslavsky) as stand-outs for the publisher.

And at Pan Macmillan, alongside its nonfiction stars (RecipeTin Eats: Tonight and Guinness World Records), the publisher had success with fiction titles To Die For (David Baldacci), Dusk (Robbie Arnott), Molly (Rosalie Ham) and Here One Moment (Liane Moriarty).

As for the non-wrappable formats, publisher reports of the percentage of Christmas sales coming from audio (for those who receive revenue from these) ranged from 5% to 15%, while the percentage of Christmas sales attributed to ebooks ranged from 4% to 18%.

Trends for 2025

And what do publishers expect from 2025? While some predicted a continued importance for backlist and a decline for nonfiction, most highlighted the (likely related) continued influence of TikTok and the ongoing strength of romantasy.

‘Despite threats to the TikTok platform BookTok, categories will continue to run strong, especially highly anticipated new releases from established authors like Rebecca Yarros, as this community of readers is committed beyond any single social media platform,’ said Kovats at Hachette.

Another publisher pointed to ‘continued strength in romantasy and special edition hardbacks’, while at S&S, Baillie agreed that we could expect more ‘special editions, including extra content, exclusive covers, edges, etc.’. ‘We expect to see [these] continue to rise as we see fans purchasing all and every physical book available from their favourite genre authors,’ added Baillie.

While Baillie did note that ‘with Booktopia recovering, it will be interesting to watch the online share of the market in 2025’, and while she also predicted ‘continued spread of sales across digital formats’, she returned to the main theme: ‘The romantasy category will be one to watch with a new Rebecca Yarros book launched in January and our own Lauren Roberts with Fearless in April.’

‘Sigh – it still seems to be romantasy,’ concurred Rogers at Affirm.

Category: Think Australian feature