U.S. Writers Help Random Dominate U.K.

U.S. writers Dan Brown and Bill Bryson helped the Random House Group increase its strangle hold on the U.K. book trade, according to a report on the top 100 fast-selling titles in 2004. The Random House Group had 31 books in the Chart?five more than in 2004?led by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code in first place and Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything in third. In total, U.S. authors wrote six of the top 10 U.K. fast-sellers; Brown three of them.

Bertelsmann-owned Random House Group, the world's largest trade publisher, generated gross sales of £126 million ($236.4 million), almost three times as many as its nearest competitor, Hachette (which includes the recently merged groups Orion and Hodder Headline), with 23 titles on the chart. In a list dominated by conglomerates, HarperCollins, which had 18 titles in the top 100, was third, and the Penguin Group, with 10 titles, in fourth.

The fast-sellers list skews heavily in favor of the kind of mass-market titles Random House subsidiary Transworld has always had great success. The publisher of Brown and Bryson, Transworld had 18 titles on the list, 13 more than its parent Random House. The fast-sellers chart, compiled annually by journalist Alex Hamilton, is based on publishers' own sales figures, including export sales, and includes only titles published during the year.