The forecasts promised a record Sant Jordi and this Monday the Gremi de Llibreters de Catalunya confirmed it in a statement, estimating the increase in sales at 6% compared to last year. There were many booksellers who explained to this newspaper on April 23 that people had taken to the streets en masse and that they had the sensation of having sold more than other years. A perception they shared with many authors. Javier Castillo himself, who is also confirmed today to be the best-selling author that day in fiction in Spanish, confessed that day that “it seems that it has not been celebrated for years, due to the number of people who have come to visit the authors. “I remember it more intensely than other years.”
In total, 1.98 million copies were sold for Sant Jordi, with a total turnover of 25.4 million euros accumulated during the week. Some “good sales figures” that Cambra itself celebrates and that it already predicted days before they became a reality, partly because this year the celebration fell on a working day for the first time since the pandemic and many readers chose to move forward your buy.
The readings were very varied, as people took home more than 70,250 different titles compared to 60,000 last year. Of these, 52% were in Catalan and 48% in Spanish. As far as genres are concerned, those that have grown the most since last year are fiction, in both languages, and comics in Catalan.
As for the best-selling books, after processing data from more than 230 bookstores and street stops, the ranking maintains Ramon Gener (History of a piano, Columna) and Joël Dicker (Un animal salvatge, La Campana) in the first positions in fiction in Catalan; and Javier Castillo (The Crack of Silence, Suma) and Eduardo Mendoza (Three Enigmas for the Organization, Seix Barral), in Spanish.
In non-fiction in Catalan, the leadership goes to Carles Porta, with Tor. Foc encès (La Campana), followed by Ments preclares (Avant-garde Books), by Quim Monzó, which has risen from fourth to second position. This same category in Spanish is chaired by Marian Rojas Estapé (Recover your mind, reconquer your life, Espasa), which has been dominating the lists in the last three Sant Jordi. It is followed by Atomic Habits (Diana), by James Clear.
No less important is children’s and youth literature, which this year has had more notoriety if possible with the writer, actor and comedian David Walliams, who claimed in the proclamation the importance of reading among the little ones: “It is important that “Children read for pleasure or as adults they will never read.” In this category, the phenomenon Blood Wings (Planet), by Rebecca Yarros, consolidates itself in first position; and The mysterious and surprising house of l’avi (Comba), by Meritxell Martí, does the same in Catalan.
