Market report: Australian publishers on Christmas sales trends and the year ahead

Each year, Think Australian’s sister publication Books+Publishing surveys publishers to see how Christmas matched up with their expectations and what they expect from the year ahead. This year, while half of publishers reported sales were up for Christmas 2025 and one sixth reported they were down, Christmas 2025 sales were nonetheless “close to expectations” for the majority of responding publishers.

Christmas trading was generally in line with expectations, with publishers balancing economic caution and unpredictable market conditions against solid programs and some growth in revenue or share.

Allen & Unwin group sales director Matt Hoy said, “Certainly there were learnings from the 2023 season which informed our decision making into 2024.” Hachette Australia sales director Lillian Kovats said, “2025 was a great Christmas for fiction. The market was missing a strong local biography like John Farnham from 2024.”

According to publishers, Black Friday is becoming a bigger structural event in the Australian book market, but in 2025, the strongest sales were still clustered later in December, with value-seeking consumers favouring established authors, brands and genres, and independent bookstores performing strongly. An anonymous publisher noticed a “trend towards trusted brands and genre fiction, which gives consumers some assurance of what they are getting. This was important in 2025 as cost of living remains an issue.”

So what were customers snapping up for Christmas 2025 in Australia?

“There were strong results across the list, with backlist performing particularly well,” said Penguin Random House Australia sales director Gavin Schwarcz. PRH’s best-performing titles included Cozy colouring-in books by Coco Wyo, Partypooper: Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman, Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Exit Strategy by Lee and Andrew Child, Atomic Habits by James Clear, Alchemised by Sen Lin Yu, along with “all things Bluey!”

At Hachette Australia, Kovats said, “Our fiction list was strong all year and dominated our bestseller charts at Christmas too. Peter Fitzsimons had his best result in years [for The Courageous Life of Weary Dunlop] off the back of a strong campaign and John Grisham also grew with a new cover look. We bookended 2025 with the biggest romantasy releases of the year in Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros and Brimstone by Callie Hart, and the BookTok category continues to perform well for us. Titles like Wedding People by Alison Espach and The Names by Florence Knapp were bestsellers all year as well.”

Australian Scholarly Publishing director Nick Walker said the strongest-performing section of his list was art history and local history. The best-performing titles included Old North Melbourne by Fiona Gatt.

Hardie Grant managing director, commercial Julia Kumschick said, “Illustrated nonfiction and kids performed really strongly, which is usual for us at Christmas since they make great gifts. We also had strong author promotional support.” Best performing titles were the cookbooks Christian Petracca On Trac by Christian Petracca, Thai by Nat Thaipun, Wolf of Wok Street by Vincent Lim, Baby Food Bible by Julia Tellidis and Lauren Skora, and Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg, as well as the children’s titles The Last Ember by Lily Berlin Dodd, Real Pigeons by Andrew MacDonald and Ben Wood, and the Claris series by Megan Hess.

At Allen & Unwin, Hoy said, “We had a broadly appealing offer this year as we always try to, and we enjoyed success across our lists.” Best performing titles included the novels The Hidden by Bryan Brown, Heart the Lover by Lily King, A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose; nonfiction books The Australian Wars by Rachel Perkins et al, The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done by Clare Stephens, There’s A Prawn In Parliament House by Annabel Crabb; and the cookbooks Eat Mamma Knows Best by Sooshi Mango, Baking and The Meaning of Life by Helen Goh; and, Hoy added, “of course our Jade Summer and RJ Timmis cosy colouring books sold very strongly.”

Official stats: Australian book market up 3.2% in 2025

The book market in Australia in 2025 was up by 3.2% in value and 1.4% in volume, according to figures from NielsenIQ BookData.

Nielsen’s snapshot of the year from 29 December 2024 to 27 December 2025 showed the Australian market was worth $1.3 billion, up from $1.29 billion in 2024. Sales by volume for 2024 totalled 70 million, up from 69 million.

The average selling price for 2025 was $19.02, up 1.8% on the previous year.

Nielsen’s snapshot shows the top three growth categories for the year were religion; children’s and YA nonfiction; and fiction-related items (including true stories and true crime).

Sales for the year included titles across 782,260 unique ISBNs (up from 757,460 in the previous year), with the three top bestselling titles being The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins (Hay House) in first place, followed by Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus) and Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic) in second and third places.

Trends for 2026

And what do publishers expect from 2026? The market expects possible format shifts towards audio, which “suits time-poor readers, and also plays to their price sensitivity,” according to one publisher.

Hoy said he expects “continued growth in the graphic novels space, people returning to known favourites and social-driven brands, more fantastic new local voices (especially from independent Australian publishers).”

Economic pressures may shape buying behaviour. As one publisher said, “Global uncertainty is likely to mean difficult economic conditions and potentially supply chain issues for imported books.”

Category: Think Australian feature