Clarkson races to pole sales position

Published on Friday 3 October 2008 21:33

BRITAIN'S bookworms are into crime, cars, cookery and … glamour model Jordan, aka Katie Price, according to a new list of the country's best-selling authors for adults.

Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson has sold more books for adults than anyone else in the UK in the past three years.

But the top ten also shows the wide range of reading from historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, creator of the Sharpe series, to the unlikely literary giant formerly known as Jordan.

Price's back catalogue includes autobiographies, novels and books about horses, in many cases produced with the help of a ghostwriter.

Jeremy Clarkson has sold a staggering 3.8 million books since his first, The World According to Clarkson, was released in May 2005. It is a collection of newspaper articles in which he shares his thoughts on subjects from Concorde to cricket.

In second place is fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series, ahead of Alexander McCall Smith, whose works include the 44 Scotland Street series that first appeared in The Scotsman.

They are the only others in the list to have sold an average of a million books or more per year since 2005.

Penguin, Clarkson's publisher, said: "'We have always thought Jeremy was one of the most entertaining writers around, and we felt sure that there were lots of people who agreed with us.

"But never in our wildest dreams did we imagine the kind of phenomenal sales his books have achieved. It's been incredible to be part of it."