Bob Brown title bestselling book ever at Byron Bay Writers Festival
Collins Byron Bay bookseller Gabi Calder said the quality of the program at this year’s Byron Bay Writers Festival and the ‘willingness of the audience to engage with authors and their work’ resulted in a ‘roaring trade’ for the festival bookstore.
‘At the end of our first day Womankind Magazine was our biggest seller’, while ‘Bob Brown was the biggest seller of any festival book we’d ever had,’ said Calder. ‘Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer (Text), Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson (Jonathan Cape) and the Stella Prize-winning book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Claire Wright (Text) were also top drawcards. In fact, all of Jeanette Winterson’s books sold incredibly well all weekend.’
‘The Festival vibe was just buzzing and it is great to see patrons being inspired to buy so many books,’ said Calder. ‘In terms of sales it was our best event ever.’
The top 10 bestselling publications at the festival bookstore were:
- Womankind Magazine launch issue (ed by Antonia Case)
- Optimism (Bob Brown, Hardie Grant)
- The Daylight Gate (Jeanette Winterson, Century)
- Equal Justice (Rabia Siddique, Macmillan)
- Light Between Oceans (M L Stedman, Vintage)
- New Philosopher Magazine (ed by Zan Boag)
- Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere (Poe Ballantine, Transit Lounge)
- Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Claire Wright, Text)
- How I Rescued my Brain (David Rowland, Scribe)
- Murder in Mississippi (John Safran, Penguin).
Tickets at this year’s festival were up 21% on 2013.
Category: Local news
