Julia Donaldson tops Scottish authors sales list

FORGET JK Rowling, Dan Brown and Lee Child – last year’s top selling author was the Scottish children’s writer Julia Donaldson.

Julia Donaldson is known for books such as The Gruffalo and Room On The Broom. Picture: Robert Perry

The Bookseller’s annual round-up of the Top 50 selling authors of the year has identified former children’s laureate Donaldson as the country’s best selling author, with sales of a whopping £12.8 million.

Donaldson, of Glasgow, is best known for books such as The Gruffalo, Room On The Broom and The Stickman.

She is also only the second author to surpass the £10m mark for the fourth consecutive year, the other being Rowling, who accomplished that feat between 2000 and 2003. Brown and Jamie Oliver have both had three £10m plus years three years in a row, while James Patterson has twice had consecutive eight digit years.

Donaldson had several original 2013 publications including The Further Adventures Of The Owl And The Pussycat, Sugarlump And The Unicorn, Wake Up Lydia Lou and Goat Goes To Playgroup.

Said the Bookseller: “That children’s genre is strong is not unusual in our year-end author charts, even in pre-digital years. It is growing: a third of revenue generated by the Top 50 was from the children’s sector [£63.9m or 32.8 per cent], the greatest percentage in author chart history.”

Donaldson, 65, originally wrote songs for children’s television but has concentrated on writing books since the words of one of her songs, “A Squash and a Squeeze”, were made into a children’s book in 1993.