David Walliams has generated upwards of £7 million for sales of his top children’s books in the past year, making him one of the biggest stars of the literary world.
The Britain’s Got Talent judge and comedy actor shifted more than a half a million copies of his latest book Awful Auntie alone, making it the biggest children’s book of 2014 in the UK.
And his golden touch for kids’ titles saw him take four places in the top 50 bestsellers across all genres in the 12-month period, according to new figures published in trade magazine The Bookseller.
Together the books – which also included Gangsta Granny, Ratburger and Billionaire Boy – had a retail value of £7,060,788.
And those four books, each published by HarperCollins, gave David a combined sale of 1.1 million copies. When sales of books beyond the top 50 are added on the figure will be much higher.
His sales are further buoyed by TV adaptations of his books by the BBC with The Boy In The Dress shown in the Christmas schedules, with a starry cast which included Jennifer Saunders, Meera Syal and David himself. In previous years Mr Stink and Gangsta Granny have been screened.
Awful Auntie was the second biggest-selling title of the year with 553,921 copies, valued at £3,281,996 according to data compiled by Nielsen Bookscan.
The year’s biggest book was The Fault In Our Stars by John Green which shifted more than 871,000 copies.
The late Lynda Bellingham’s autobiography, There’s Something I’ve Been Dying To Tell You, also became one of the year’s biggest hits.
It was published just days before she died from cancer in October after making the decision to end her treatment.
The book had sold 23,507 copies in the 10 days before her death but by the year’s end the figure had reached 330,625, making it the second biggest hardback non-fiction title of 2014, behind the lastest edition of Guinness World Records.
Last year David’s biggest books from the top 50 generated £4.8 million in sales between them.
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