Jacqueline Rayner's Doctor Who novel is on course to be the series' bestseller
The announcement that Random House has acquired a majority stake in BBC Books focused on the wealth of non-fiction potential in the deal. It is in fiction, however, where the corporation's publishing arm has had one of its most notable successes of the past 12 months.
Jacqueline Rayner's Doctor Who: The Stone Rose is the clear market leader among the third tranche of novelisations, with its £6.99 hardback formula — minus a further £2 taken of fin discounts on average -proving more and more popular. The novel posted the highest weekly sales figure since the series returned to our screens, back in April, and has been on the rise again as Doomsday looms for Billie Piper's character Rose on 8th July.
Life sales have reached 32,357, around 5,000 more than the third series' books by Stephen Cole and Justin Richards, with the former's The Monsters Inside the overall sales leader on 38,923. That book, and others from spring 2005, was still selling more than 200 copies a week at the beginning of June, so Rayner's should easily overtake it.
Revenue from the series as a whole, including non-fiction BBC tie-ins (Penguin has others for younger readers) has now exceeded £1.7m, on sales of 321,230 books.
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