'It's a mega year!': book trade braces for autumn onslaught of major new titles

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'It's a mega year!': book trade braces for autumn onslaught of major new titles

By Alison Flood

 

Jamie Oliver, who has been the writer of the No 1 Christmas book five times, at a signing at Waterstones in 2009. Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage

 

From Richard Osman’s first crime novel to Caitlin Moran’s new memoir, almost 600 hardbacks are due to be published on 3 September in a “massive bun fight” of new titles, as books delayed over the summer due to Covid-19 finally make it on to shelves.

 

Autumn is the busiest time of the year in books, with publishers bringing out their biggest titles in the hope of hitting the Christmas jackpot on what has been dubbed “Super Thursday” by the book trade. But this year, the closure of bookshops for more than two months due to the pandemic means that many of the titles held back over the summer are now due to hit shelves this autumn, with a series of what trade magazine the Bookseller called “mini-Super Thursdays” lining up across September and October.

 

The third of September will see the publication of 590 hardbacks, 28% up on the equivalent day last year, with new releases including Ant and Dec’s joint memoir Once Upon a Tyne, Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, Moran’s More Than a Woman and singer Will Young’s memoir To Be a Gay Man. 

 

Full Story: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/13/its-a-mega-year-book-trade-braces-for-autumn-onslaught-of-major-new-titles