Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Jamie Smart, london book fair

London Book Fair 2025: British Kids Get £20 Million Of Comics A Year

Ahead of London Book Fair, we get the word that British kids are buying - or having bought for them - a record £20 million of comics a year

This week sees the London Book Fair launch in the capital, filling the Olympia conference centre across the halls and around the galleries; also home to Toy Fair and London And Film Comic Con at other points in the year. And that's where the Observer newspaper comes in today, with Arts & Media Correspondent Vanessa Thorpe, after they have noticed there seem to be all these comic books around the place. And the well-timed news that sales of children's comics and graphic novels have reached an all-time peak of almost £20 million in Britain. and quoting Philip Stone, media analyst at NielsenIQ BookData, "Over the last decade, we've seen a significant rise in sales of graphic novels for both the adult and children's markets.  Superhero books have been a reliably big feature, probably boosted by all the screen superhero movies. A lot of manga series are doing very well again, and this may also be linked to screen versions. What we really need now is some deep-dive research into the impact of graphic and comic fiction as a gateway for young people into reading. We certainly suspect it's true."

Bleeding Cool previously reported that best-selling  Bunny Vs Monkey comics creator and British Book Awards winner Jamie Smart had been confirmed as the first-ever Creative of the Fair for London Book Fair in March, where he will host an interactive draw-along where guests will be able to recreate his characters. As Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market charts show, Jamie Smart is the ninth biggest-selling author in Britain in 2024. Smart is quoted as saying, "As a creator, comics are one of the greatest ways to tell a story. You get to show the reader everything that's inside your mind, how a scene looks, who the characters are, what they're doing, all the subtleties and nuances of their behaviours, and you hold all that within the space of a single panel. Then you do it again, and again, propelling the story forwards, unfolding entire worlds in front of your audiences. And when you're given that freedom to tell a story exactly how you imagine it, I think readers really respond to that… A good story well told is worth its weight in gold, and comics are no exception," said Smart. "We're seeing that now, especially with younger readers and reluctant readers, who are all drawn in by the bright visuals and funny characters, before becoming carried along by the stories, and then forming lifelong bonds with these books. Something quite magical is happening at the moment. It's really exciting to see."

I look forward to seeing it too. The London Book Fair kicks off on the 11th of March for three days, and Bleeding Cool will be very present.

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