Bookish Peeps Book of 2014 - The Stats

I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at the stats for the recent Bookish Peeps Book of 2014 vote - full results here.

15 of the top 30 were debut novels! Of the other 15, the two authors who'd written the most books before were Neil Gaiman (The Sleeper and the Spindle, illustrated by the also-prolific Chris Riddell) and Jonathan Stroud (Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase).

21 of the books in the top 30 were stand-alones, with 6 being series starters, 2 (Pea's Book of Holidays by Susie Day and The Dark Wild by Piers Torday) being later books in series, and 1 (Five Children on the Western Front) being a sequel to a novel written by a different author.

Random House were the most successful publisher, with 5 books spread over various imprints. Hot Key had 4, Quercus and Bloomsbury 3 each, and Walker had 2. Another 13 publishers had 1 book each, so there were a total of 18 publishers represented!

Of the top 30, 24 were written by UK authors, 5 by US authors, and 1 by an Irish author. (Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill.)

The only non-fiction book in the top 30 was 12th placed This Book Is Gay by James Dawson, who was also the only author to be in there twice - Say Her Name finishing even higher, in 8th.

The list covered a huge range of genres, with historical crime, feminist dystopia, sci-fi, horror, and We Were Liars (which I'm not even going to BEING to categorise!) all featuring in the top 10 alone, along with several contemporaries.

Other Bookish Peeps related things.

We've just launched a Q and A feature on Bookish Peeps; the fabulous Joanna Nadin is going to be popping onto the forum next week to answer some questions. If there's anything you'd like to ask her, please post a question. 

Also, we're doing a 'classic children's tournament' and asking 16 people to write a paragraph about their favourite classic children's book, then running knockout-style match-ups where people vote on which book they prefer, leading to us crowning an overall winner. If anyone wants to champion a book, or vote on them when matches start in a couple of weeks time, check it out here.