Book Festival enjoys record book sales over opening weekend

We are delighted to announce that this year we enjoyed one of our busiest opening weekends, taking record sales in our adult and children’s bookshops. With sell out events from the likes of historian Anthony Beevor, Joanne Harris, Corries singer Ronnie Browne, Prize winning authors Ali Smith and Marilynne Robinson and the Fields Medal winning French mathematician Cédric Villani, the Book Festival got off to a great start.

Sales in both of our bookshops topped 10,000 books in the first two days of the Festival with the top sellers being The Shed that Fed a Million Children by Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow, How to be Both by Ali Smith and Julian Clary’s first children’s book, The Bolds.

James Shaw, Head of Book Sales & Retail at the Book Festival, said “It’s a great start to what is going to be a very exciting festival.”

Nick Barley, Director of the Book Festival said “These extraordinary sales figures prove that books are vibrant, exciting and inspiring. Stories cross borders, cross cultures and cross languages and books are the vehicle through which we can make sense of the world we live in today.”

The Book Festival continues until Monday 31 August with our most international programme to date, with authors from 55 countries travelling to Charlotte Square Gardens. Tickets are still available for events across the programme, including George The Poet, Helen Lederer, Howard Jacobson, A C Grayling and 2015 Man Booker Prize nominees Anna Smaill, Andrew O’Hagan and Anne Enright.