JB Priestley calls in again this week at the top of the chart
As (yet another) Super Thursday lands in shops up and down the country, it is easy to be distracted by the shiny new books piling up on tables and appearing in creative window displays – but this time of year is a key time for another set of books: school textbooks and study guides.
It may not be the sexiest of genres, nor does it provide the highest volumes – the bestselling title of the year from the category, Heinemann’s edition of reading-list staple An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley, only appears in position 229 in the overall chart of the year – but it does provide consistent and reliable sales, with the same books passing through tills year after year. In fact, 41 of the entries in the School Textbooks and Study Guides Top 50 for 2025 also featured in the Top 50 at the same point in 2024.
Despite the predictability of the category, it has seen significant declines in 2025. Up to the end of September, 4.3 million books have been sold, down 6.9% compared with the same period in 2024, while value has fared even worse, slipping 10.7% to £32.5m. That is in stark contrast to the rest of the TCM where value is down 0.4% and volume has dropped 2.5%. The £3.9m missing from the School Textbooks category covers three quarters of the whole TCM’s value gap so far in 2025.
But it is not all bad news. September, worth roughly 12.1% of the category’s total annual performance, has seen a slight resurgence – in volume terms at least. The category saw sales of 746,538 books, up 1.6% on the same month in 2024 – although to balance that out value has fallen even further than the annual average, down 12%.
Despite the predictability of the category, it has seen significant declines in 2025
Some of the year-on-year difference is due to a shift in the category mix with some more specialist textbooks seeing bigger declines than their cheaper counterparts – the Vocational sub-category, which has an average RRP of £18.24, has seen value sales drop 30%, while the General sub-set, with its average RRP of £11.37, has experienced the smallest drop of just 5.8%. But both of those combined barely make up £4m of the category’s overall sales – it is the Literature, Arts & Humanities along with Maths, Science and Technical Sales sub-categories that make up 85.3% of the total revenue for the sector, and sales here have dropped 10%, slightly down on the average.
One benefit of such a static category – at least in terms of the titles that make up the sales – is that it makes a like-for-like comparison more robust. For those 41 titles from 2024 that continue into 2025’s Top 50, the ASP has dropped from £6.86 to £6.64. Meanwhile, volume has risen by 3.7%, suggesting that either retailers are discounting more or customers have become savvier shoppers and switched to cheaper outlets.
That volume rise – along with a value rise of 0.4% – indicates that those evergreen titles at the top of the charts are perhaps more essential to study than some of the more niche titles further down the chart.
Those more familiar with the category will be unsurprised to learn that, with sales of £15.7m, CGP dominates – and it has had a relatively good year with both volume and value sales down 3%, outperforming the rest of the market and with 42 of the Top 50 titles. The second-biggest publisher is OUP, with £3.9m spent on its titles – a reduction of 12.4% on the first nine months of 2024, with volume down a not-too-dissimilar 11.4%.