Reading the Publishing Industry

Susannah Streeter: Hello and welcome to Switch Your Money On from Hargreaves Lansdown. I'm Susannah Streeter, I'm the senior investment and markets analyst here at Hargreaves Lansdown, and I'm with Sarah Coles, our senior personal finance analyst. So, Sarah I've been packing for my holiday, and as usual trying to cram the last items into various nooks and crannies in the car, and importantly, planning a last minute trip to the book shop to get some summer reads, really essential distraction material for frequent moments of child squabbling.

Sarah Coles: Oh yes. I actually packed an extra book for the many hours I'm expecting to spend in the airport. So, I usually listen to audiobooks, but I just suddenly realised I have horrible visions of using my entire phone battery on the latest Mick Herron, and then suddenly having no power left to show my COVID pass at the gate.

Susannah Streeter: I'm a bit of a traditionalist, I love going into a bookshop and browsing, looking at the cover, reading the blurb and maybe the first few pages and inside reviews. I've got my favourite authors, but I do like taking a bit of a punt on something different, but I don't have time for a book club, certainly don't, given my distinct lack of spare time, but it is good to get a few pointers on social media.

Sarah Coles: Well yes, you, me and the rest of the country's bookworms have really helped push the publishing industry into very rude health, after a record breaking 2020, fueled by lockdown purchases, so last year was the biggest ever year for print book sales.

Susannah Streeter: The question is, will the cost of living squeeze turn the page on what's really been a robust period of growth for the industry? Will we keep splashing out on new titles and classics? We have, after all, fallen out of love with newspapers in recent years. Britain's major newspapers like The Sun, Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph have seen circulations decline sharply, although they have countered this to some extent with online subscriptions.

Sarah Coles: So, what next for books and newspaper sales, and the business of the written word? And that's what we're going to be exploring in this podcast, reading the publishing industry. We'll be speaking to Lucy George, the Mayor of Wordville, a small independent publishing house which is operating in the non-fiction area. So Lucy, are you enjoying a summer reading boom at the moment?

Lucy George: We love a bit of summer and a bit of Christmas. People like to take a book away with them, and when they've got any time. We do some little poetry pamphlets, so the small books are quite good rather than taking a huge big hardback.

Sarah Coles: Well we definitely look forward to catching up with you a bit more in the podcast, and finding out more about how the industry's faring at the moment.

Susannah Streeter: And for a chapter on the companies to watch in this space, we're going to check in with Sophie Lund-Yates, our lead equity analyst here at HL.

Sophie Lund-Yates: Yes, I'll be looking at three businesses to see if they can be the authors of their own destiny, or whether they might suffer a plot twist. I do love a pun, but yes, I'll be giving a quick round up of some stocks in the sector.

Susannah Streeter: Thanks Sophie, we'll look forward to finding out more a bit later on, plus we'll catch up with Emma Wall of course, our head of investment analysis and research, who's been speaking to James Thomson, fund manager at Rathbone Global Opportunities.

Sarah Coles: And we'll have the quiz of course, with some top facts about the world of books and publishing.

Susannah Streeter: Yes, a combination of questions on spies, wizards and ancient Egyptians in there, just to whet your appetite Sarah, but first let's talk all things books, because the publishing industry has been undergoing something of a renaissance since the start of the pandemic. Of course, we know how streaming services were in demand during lockdown, but we weren't just turning into couch potatoes in front of the box, we discovered a new love for the written word on actual pages, rather than tablets or phones. A Nielsen study during the first lockdown found that on average, we had almost doubled the amount of time we spent reading, and were clocking up six hours a week. In the UK, Nielsen said 2021 was the biggest ever year for print book sales by value. The boost to sales was led by strong performances from fiction and children's titles. Now, a few years ago, there were all sorts of worries that the advent of e-books and the rise of social media platforms could put the industry into decline, but so far, those fears appear to be unfounded. Sales instead appear to have been boosted by a new army of book reviewers on platforms like TikTok, with the hashtag booktok, and recommendations going viral, helping clock up sales. But there is now a chink of weakness being felt amid the protective arm that the pandemic helped build up. Worries about the impact of the cost of living crisis are looming for the industry, with concerns that with household incomes deteriorating, books may be seen as luxuries that could be eliminated from shopping lists.

Sarah Coles: Yes, households are under enormous pressure from rising prices, and the office for national statistics found that as a result, three in five of us have been cutting back on non-essential spending, so there's a real risk that books fall into this category. So, book sales come from discretionary income, and as prices rise, we're set to have less of that to go around. So, within the UK, there are some signs that sales are holding up, and recent market update from Bloomsbury publishing showed sales were up over a quarter on the previous year, with children's books and business, academic and professional books showing particularly strong growth. Meanwhile, Nielsen's book scan report showed sales in the first half of the year actually beat those in 2008, which had previously been the peak. This might have been helped by the fact the industry's keeping a lid on price rises, so in June when inflation hit 9.4%, fiction book prices were up just 4%. It's also worth bearing in mind that the unit cost of a book can be relatively low, especially for a paperback, which means people might stick with reading even in a downturn, so if people are looking for a one off spend, a £5 crime novel offers 10 or more hours of entertainment, which is several times the entertainment for around half the cost of downloading a newly released film. But elsewhere in the world, sales aren't looking so robust, so sales across the rest of Europe are starting to wane, including Germany, France and Italy, and sales are falling in the US.

Susannah Streeter: Meanwhile, the industry hasn't been immune to the supply chain challenges which have hit other sectors. Port congestion has led to cargo losses after containers full of books were damaged by bad weather, that's been compounded by a lack of capacity within the printing industry, and also of paper shortage, as supplies have been redirected to cardboard and other packaging, which has been more lucrative. There has been a bit of a reluctance to spend big on investing in new printing machines to increase capacity, as there were worries the boom in book publishing could be short lived. The experience of the newspaper industry may be partly to blame.

Sarah Coles: Yes, a UK government report warned in the Spring that a decline in newspaper circulations has led to a fall of investment in the sector, and that's led to worries that the industry's becoming less and less sustainable. The report from economic insight, commissioned by the department for culture, media and sport, warned that investors could shun the sector because of the risk they won't offer decent returns. Although some of the leading newspapers have countered falling sales of real papers with subscription models, the government is clearly worried that the declining resilience of the sector could affect plurality of thought, and lead to more mis-information, which could be damaging for democracy. The lockdown periods didn't help here. The ONS put newspapers, books and stationary into one category and looked at sales over time, and they found that despite the boom in book buying during lockdowns, this was completely offset by the collapse in the number of newspapers sold, and that even now they haven't returned to 2019 levels, so there's every chance this is a permanent change in our shopping habits. Part of the issue is that as the number of papers sold falls, prices have to rise to cover fixed costs, plus the rising price of paper, so the cost of newspapers is up 11% in a year.

Susannah Streeter: You're listening to Switch Your Money On from Hargreaves Lansdown, and if you're enjoying this podcast, please do let us know what you think, and do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. So, let's try to get to the centre of this story now, and find out just what it's like working in book publishing right now, and speak to Lucy George, who calls herself the Mayor of Wordville, I love that Lucy, a small, independent publishing house. So Lucy, tell us about Wordville, your business.

Lucy George: Well, thanks. Yes, the Mayor is a bit over the top isn't it, especially as it's self appointed, but I started a PR agency about 15 or 16 years ago called Wordville, actually. It morphed last year into a publishing company, specifically working on publishing books about the performing arts or by performing artists.

Susannah Streeter: So, how do you choose what kind of book to publish? What are you looking for?

Lucy George: It's a business, so you've got to know that there's a market there somewhere, and at the same time, you could just think, if you were just focused on what the sales looked like, you could just say, 'Okay, well we're going to publish crime novels and romance and sci fi, and cookbooks,' but for me, you know, it's got to be a passion project, it's got to be something that we really care about. A book can take a couple of years to pull together, so you're working very closely with the author, so you need to know that you're simpatico, and you're putting in huge amounts of time, much more time than you could ever get back, if you were being paid even on the lowest salary. Often if you're sending work into agents or publishers, they say, 'Look, we're really looking for books we fall in love with.' I'm a novelist myself, and I've had a novel published, but I've also had lots of manuscripts rejected, and I always worried about, 'Oh God, how do I get someone to fall in love with that book?' But now I'm a publisher, I totally see what they mean. It's almost like a kind of dating or something, you know, you've got to think, 'This is the right person, I want to work with them and this book is something I want to really spend time with and get behind.' You're investing a lot of your money as well as time, and ultimately, you want to think that if I love it, other people will love it too.

Sarah Coles: And when it comes to the format of a book, say where they are publishing in Kindle or hardback or things like that for example, how does the content, the sort of structure of the book, how does that affect demand for how people want to read it?

Lucy George: There's been a big change with the print on demand model, which is what we've decided to go with. The very first book we did was a large hardback with photographs in it, which is very expensive, and one other thing I really didn't want was to just have either a warehouse full of boxes of unsold books, or my own flat and office full of books just staring at my own failure. So, I kind of was looking for something where there wasn't a huge investment. So what we did is we looked into the print on demand model, which basically means you can print a small amount for a launch event or something, and then anyone who wants a copy and is prepared to buy it online, it gets printed locally to them. If you're in South Africa or in India or in America, and you want to buy one copy of a book, it will get printed locally and sent to you. This really saves on the paper usage, because you're not printing out any more than you need, and also on the travel of that book, so just convenience of making sure that it's not expensive to ship it, but also for the environmental impact. You know, there are limits, because the book has to fit into a certain template, you can't do books that have spongey covers or ribbons, or scratch and sniff and that kind of thing, but fortunately, that's not our area.

Susannah Streeter: And I suppose that means that you can mitigate to some extent the rising cost of paper and shipping issues if you're printing locally and only printing exactly what you need.

Lucy George: But we have to watch it like a hawk. The first book that we did, which is our big notable book, it won a prize this year, it's called Stirring up Sheffield, about the Crucible Theatre, this book is currently for sale at £30. I watch every day the Amazon sales, and at the moment, we're going to have to really be very careful with that or we're going to go into we're giving a book away for free, or we might be losing money on the books. With the paper price being what it is, Amazon charging 55% commission, it doesn't take long before you're finding you're getting four or five pence a book or something. We can't do that. We monitor the price all the time and we might have to change the price.

Susannah Streeter: And you say as well that it's a real labour of love, you're putting in so many hours that you're essentially not getting back, so what drives you?

Lucy George: Oh, the love of books. I love writing and I love reading, and I love the actual having a book in my hand. My house is just completely overwhelmed with books, so I'm a bit of a bookaholic, and you kind of have to be to care enough to make it absolutely perfect. You know, there's a lot of books out there, as you said, there's people buying them, but there's also a huge amount of people writing and publishing them. So, obviously you've got the big publishers, and then you've got the smaller and the micro-publishers like us, but then the self-publishing group, you know, they're punting out a lot of books, and you're all trying to sell through similar channels, and it just means that you can get completely lost in it. Which is why the fact that, you know, we were a PR agency before, and we still are a PR agency before we morphed into a publishing company, and that really helps, because just having a book and working out a model, maybe it's print on demand or maybe it's printing small numbers etc., is not enough to separate yourself from the huge amount of books that are being published every day.

Sarah Coles: It doesn't seem like an enormously easy industry to make money in. Are there certain things you've had to do to make sure you're profitable?

Lucy George: Yes. I mean, I think the first thing is monitoring it really closely. Accounts are live, I can't sit there and think, 'Oh, at the end of the month, let's see how we've done.' If things are happening too fast, the cash coming in, you know, everybody takes a long time to pay, the wholesalers and the bookshops and everything else like that, cash flow is really, really carefully monitored, and that's important. There's a joke, you know, how do you make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a large one. We are breaking even, we're making money at the moment, but not enough to buy a house in France, I just think anybody who wants to go into publishing needs to do it because they're addicted to books. I wake up every morning with a huge grin on my face saying, 'Let's get at it, you know, let's work with books.'

Susannah Streeter: It's interesting how linked it is to your PR business, because this is where social media is really coming to the fore now isn't it, and just how essential it's become, because you have to really build up a social media profile don't you? Particularly if you're in the business of self-publishing.

Lucy George: Absolutely. Really, really important. Today I've got two people working with me on Wordville's social media, I can't sit back and just think, 'Is it going to grow really slowly and see what happens?' We've got to get out there and really see that we're addressing the trends and being in the right place. Because we have a performing arts background, you know, a lot of the authors that we're working with already have a following. One of the books we've put out is called The World Is Going To Love This, and it's by the producer of The Strokes, the band. You're tapping into already existing communities on social media, fan clubs, music producers, there's lots of different ways of going about it, rather than just, putting up updates of, 'Here's my book cover, please buy it.'

Susannah Streeter: So, does the idea of a potential recession worry you? Some of the books that you describe, they're nice to have aren't they? They're not necessarily essential reading, but do you think our pandemic habits of reading more will help continue to buoy sales?

Lucy George: I absolutely hope so. I mean, look, I'm a little bit long in the tooth, I started a business in 2007, went into the recession, now I've morphed the business to start another one, and here we go, we're facing down a recession. Our books are not going to go out of date, they are very unique. So I think that, in a way, helps, because we're not trying to, just trying to rise up a ladder where there's so many people there and therefore we're just going to get forgotten in it, because someone who might have bought ten books a month are now going down to buying one book a month because they can't afford it. You know, our books are not cheap either, so they are going to be seen as a bit of a luxury. I hope we can find different ways of bringing in income and getting exposure for our authors. You know, we have a podcast, we do events, and so there's other ways.

Sarah Coles: I said earlier on that I'm quite an audiobook fan. Do you see the print medium really holding its own against some of these other channels?

Lucy George: They all benefit each other. The way I see it, I don't think Kindle or audio rivals us. I mean, we have one Kindle book and we are doing an audiobook. It's a different audience, and sometimes we've found that people will buy both. One of the things, we have an office in Barcelona and we're hoping to do a book in Spanish, and people buy in English and then they buy it in Spanish if they love the book, so we're not too worried about that.

Sarah Coles: Okay, well Lucy, thank you so much. It's been really fascinating to get a deep dive into your industry and all the challenges you're facing at the moment, and the opportunities. It's a really interesting time for the industry, certainly a time of change.

Lucy George: Thanks so much for having me.

Susannah Streeter: So, it's time now to bring in Sophie Lund-Yates, our lead equity analyst at HL, to take a look at some of the beneficiaries of that change, and find out more about what's being affected at some of the quoted companies in the sector. So. Sophie, let's start with Informa.

Sophie Lund-Yates: Hi Susannah. Yes, so looking at Informa first and foremost, in Informa's own words, it's a leading international events, digital services and academic knowledge group, connecting businesses and professionals with information. So, to you and me, that means it's a publisher and event organiser. Some of our listeners won't have heard of Informa, but it's no small fish. I mean, it has over 10,000 members of staff across 30 countries, so certainly not a small operation. More recently, market sentiment has been positive, especially after it was announced back in mid-July that the group has bought Industry Dive, which is a specialist content and audience development platform, and that was for $389 million. It also confirmed that it's selling its non-core fund flow business, known as EPFR, to a private equity firm for a further $193 million. Shareholders were also likely pleased to hear that the group has brought dividends back after they were suspended in the pandemic, so for now, the group plans to pay out 40% of its earnings. Please remember that no dividend is ever guaranteed. There was also positive news elsewhere, with revenues recovering in the first half of the year, with underlying revenue growth of 47.6% reported in those half year results. I would say there is a bit of uncertainty around the group's Chinese events and exhibitions, as you can imagine with the conditions in that part of the world at the moment, it's hard to map exactly when things will be fully back to normal. I should add, this isn't something that's going to derail the business, but it's starting to get some attention whenever the company does release results.

Susannah Streeter: So Sophie, let's now focus on national and regional news publishing with Reach. What can you tell me about Reach?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Reach PLC is a UK based national and regional news publisher, so it's a slightly different angle when compared to Informa in the publishing space. Its main distribution channels include paid for and ad-free newspapers and magazines, and there's also an international distribution through multi-platform digital sales. The company's national brands include things like The Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Record and Daily Star, then there's a reasonable slate of regional tabloids too, and it's also responsible for the Northern Irish and Irish editions of The Daily and Sunday Mirror. Other big names include things like OK magazine, so definitely some names that I'm sure our listeners are aware of. Annual revenues are in the region of about £600 million, and are moving in the right direction. It's hard to overstate the group's reach, that pun was not intended, but there it is. The vast majority of local news consumption comes from one of Reach's names, and I'm also supportive of the work that it's doing to invest in marketing, data and digital. As traditional media comes under pressure, these seem to be the right moves. That said, by the group's own admission, market conditions are very tough, which has led the group to announce a redundancy programme, and one of the issues when you think about it is that traditional newspaper readers are a mature client base, and younger generations aren't picking up the slack. Reach is facing strike action from some journalists too, which adds pressure. There are challenges in this industry, so I can't sugar coat that, but I do think it's fair to say that Reach is in a reasonable position for now, simply thanks to its scale.

Susannah Streeter: Okay, so that's Reach, so what about Pearson, what's your take on this educational publisher?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Yes, Pearson has been through a great deal in recent years. As it grapples with structural declines in visible textbook sales, especially in the US, I'm the first to admit there have been times that I've been sceptical of turnaround efforts at Pearson, but things are actually going quite well. It's pulled off some well managed and well suited acquisitions, and even better is the organic growth through the group's own efforts are coming through as well, and we are starting to see digital make up a bigger part of the whole, and that's largely thanks to accelerated demand for virtual learning and exams brought on by the pandemic. So, a good point to mention is that Pearson is a lot more than a publisher, it offers exams including things like English language tests and professional qualifications through the VUE brand, I'm having flashbacks now to my theory test, but a digital focus is a great move, and should lead to longer term recurring revenue. The transformation isn't totally over though, and a lot of the group's business is still anchored to physical teaching and testing, and that's the publishing side, plus huge investment means margins are set to stagnate in the short term. Ultimately though, progress has been better than expected. Where things stand right now though, I would keep in mind that what ifs are still circling.

Susannah Streeter: Okay, thanks Sophie. It does look like it's a really mixed picture, but some potential bright spots to watch for. Now, I'd like to bring in Emma Wall, our head of investment research and analysis here at Hargreaves Lansdown. She's been talking to James Thomson, fund manager of Rathbone Global Opportunities.

Emma Wall: Hi James.

James Thomson: Hi Emma.

Emma Wall: So, we've been hearing in this podcast about publishing, and when I think about publishing, I think of the great disruptor, and that is Amazon, a stock that you have in the portfolio, but the reasons why you like Amazon now are probably not the reasons that people first started investing in Amazon, are they?

James Thomson: You're absolutely right. Back in 1994, Amazon started life as an e-retailer of books, purely. It took a few years to get off the ground, but initially, everyone viewed it as a threat to the traditional brick and mortar book retailers. And then as so many times for Amazon, they've morphed, and now authors can self-publish using Amazon, in fact Amazon is now the fifth largest publisher in the world. And I think their business strategy here is to try and control or have a piece of the whole reading experience, whether it's Kindle or listening on Audible which they also own, and then using those rights to turn books into TV shows and movies and video games, and they actually own some physical book stores as well now. They've also gone into textbook distribution in schools and universities, really as a sort of gateway for young customers to become Prime members, offering them cheap second hand textbooks and textbook rentals. But obviously Amazon is in the cross hairs at the moment, it's very much a Marmite stock for investors and consumers, as we're entering more difficult times in the economy, is it recession proof? And I think the answer is no, it's not recession proof, but it is probably more resistant than people think. Look at the main part of Amazon's business, that's not e-commerce, it's actually cloud computer, they have 33% growth there recently, and many analysts and strategists think that the move to cloud that so many businesses are undertaking at the moment is a deflationary activity, it saves companies money, and turns CapEx into OpEx, but yes, the e-commerce part of Amazon is vulnerable to recession. But despite some of the rising inventories that a lot of retailers have suffered, they aren't having to deploy the sort of heavy discounting that you're seeing elsewhere in the retail sector. Amazon's probably less vulnerable there because they have more space and they don't need to clear shelves in order to create space. Yes, there is pronounced weakness in demand for high ticket items, but investors often underestimate the amount of sales from consumable everyday items, fast moving consumer goods and consumer staples that Amazon sells, so if consumers are tightening their belts, maybe the Amazon value proposition resonates even more.

Emma Wall: Now, you're a global investor, so you invest in companies listed all over the world. You're also, like many professional investors, looking medium to long term, so what's happening in the next eighteen months, shouldn't completely change your investment philosophy, but you can't ignore it either can you? And things are looking pretty dicey for the rest of 2022 and through 2023 in terms of growth expectations, inflation expectations. Where else are you seeing potential resilience in your portfolio?

James Thomson: We are seeing daily changes in the outlook, and that's why I think in an environment like this, rather than withdrawing, as is the temptation for so many investors, actually if you can have a medium to longer-term view, thinking about five years plus, there are very good reasons to stay invested, but perhaps now balance is more important than ever. Rather than putting all of your eggs in a single type of strategy, looking for growth or value or re-opening, or cyclical versus defensive companies, I do think you need a balance in order to navigate what is going to be a very choppy time in the markets. And actually, this takes me back to 2008, where I ran this fund in 2008, and I learned some lessons from that year, and having balance and diversity, and some companies that are less economically sensitive, less closely linked to GDP growth, not the first port of call when investors want to raise cash and sell their holdings, they often provide a good buffer for the fund during more difficult times. And a lot of those companies this year, during the pain that we've experienced, have held up much better than others across the fund.

Emma Wall: Nothing is guaranteed, but are there certain sectors that do display those characteristics that you're talking about, or is it very much stock specific?

James Thomson: Well, I think it's quite stock specific, and you could use consumer discretionary as a good example of that. Consumer discretionary is the typical retailers that run the gambit really from apparel to hard and soft goods. That is a classic sector that investors sell if it appears that we're heading into recession, but actually if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, you can see that some retailers are a lot less vulnerable than others. And I'm thinking of an example of LVMH, the most diversified of all the luxury goods companies, with strong leading positions across several sectors, leather goods, wines and spirits, jewellery, fragrances and cosmetics distribution, but its key fashion and leather division, which is over 70% of profits, includes two of the most desirable luxury brands, Louis Vuitton and Dior, and it's proven highly resilient in past recessions. During the great financial crisis, LVMH's fashion and leather sales only went negative for one quarter, and analysts that I speak to say that in tougher periods, luxury consumers trade less rather than trade down. This trading less implies a flight to quality, meaning that a core buyer of leather goods will continue to buy products from brands with the highest desirability, the must haves, but they'll postpone buying the just nice to have products. Many consumers see it as an investment, and the re-sale value of, say, Birkin bags from Hermes and other stock I own, is a testament to this. This stock market draw down has given me quite a few opportunities, and I intend to seize them.

Emma Wall: James, thank you very much.

James Thomson: Thank you, Emma.

Susannah Streeter: And that was Emma Wall, our head of investment research and analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, talking to James Thomson, fund manager of Rathbone Global Opportunities. And please bear in mind that these are the views of the fund manager, and are not individual stock recommendations. So now, it's the moment you've all been waiting for, the quiz, and I've been delving into the bookshelves for a bit of inspiration.

Sarah Coles: Well, as long as it's covering either crime or some of Mick Herron's spies, I should be able to answer at least a couple of these.

Susannah Streeter: Well, you're not a million miles away with spies. John le Carré, one of my favourite authors, best known for his spy novels of course, so my question is, did John le Carré work for MI5, MI6, or for British Army Intelligence Corps?

Sarah Coles: I'm fairly sure I know this one. I have a feeling he was MI5.

Susannah Streeter: I'm sorry, this is a trick question I'm afraid Sarah, it was all of the above, and it's why his novels are considered to be so accurate, I think, about cold war spying activities. It was during the 50s and 60s that he worked for the agencies, and in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the upper class traitor named Gerald, who was the mole hunted by the character George Smiley, was based on Kim Philby, the real life infamous double agent, so there we are. Okay, moving on, we can't have a book quiz without referencing Harry Potter of course, given that the tales about the young wizard and his friends are the best selling book series of all time, having sold over 500 million books around the world. So Sarah, my question is which of the books sold the fastest? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Sarah Coles: Well, I'm pretty confident I know this, but then I was fairly confident about the last one. But I was one of those adults who was awake at midnight waiting for the Deathly Hallows, and I'm sure their popularity built, so the final book sold fastest. Do you know I actually read my copy through the night. I was so tired I could hardly remember any of it, so I actually had to read it again as soon as I'd finished.

Susannah Streeter: Yes, you are right, it was number three, certainly know your titles, your Harry Potter titles. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last novel in the series sold around 15 million copies worldwide in its first day, and set the new world record for the fastest selling book. And actually, if we talk about recurrent revenue, my eight year old's just got into it again, so it just keeps going, that series. Okay next, the papyrus roll of ancient Egypt is considered to be the direct ancestor of the modern book, given that it resembles papers made from the reedy plant that flourishes in the Nile valley. Some of the scrolls have survived through the millennia until today, but just how much are they worth Sarah? Go on, give me a guess. I'll lay out three options for you though, I'll be kind, so can you estimate how much you think a rare papyrus scroll, which was inscribed with the text of the ancient Egyptian book of the dead, went for at auction back in October 2018? Was it 550,000 euros, 1.3 million euros, or 13.7 million euros.

Sarah Coles: Oh blimey, I haven't a clue. I know book collectors will pay a small fortune for a first edition of Harry Potter, so they'd probably pay a large fortune for something like that, so I'll go for 1.3 million euros.

Susannah Streeter: No, it was an even bigger fortune, it was 13.7 million. Quite a sum. Okay, onto the last one. Who was the best selling author in the UK in 2021, Sarah? Was it David Walliams, Delia Owens, who is the author of Where the Crawdads Sing, or Richard Osman?

Sarah Coles: Well, this is one I definitely know, because I am a huge fan. It's Richard Osman.

Susannah Streeter: Yes, you're right, it was in fact Richard Osman with The Thursday Murder Club, and the second book in the series, The Man Who Died Twice, came in at number four according to Nielson book scan. I've read them both and I can see why they are so popular. I particularly like the Elizabeth and Joyce double act.

Sarah Coles: Ah, whereas I'm a big fan of Bogdan. I think it's his willingness to do DIY that impresses me the most.

Susannah Streeter: It's one of those books people really have taken into their lives, but the others on that list were also major sellers. David Walliams and Mega Monster was in at number eight, while Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, came in at number ten, though it's now being released as a film, so I expect it'll stay among the top spots this year too. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get Richard Osman to help write our quiz one week?

Sarah Coles: I would be up for that, although I'm not sure you and he would be able to pose for a promotional photo without the use of a stepladder.

Susannah Streeter: I'll remember that when I put the quiz together next time. That's all from us for this time, but before we go, we need to remind you that this was recorded on August 9th, and all information was correct at the time of recording.

Sarah Coles: Nothing in this podcast is personal advice, you should seek advice if you're not sure what's right for you. Investments rise and fall in value, so you could get back less than you invest, and past performance isn't a guide to the future.

Susannah Streeter: Yes, this is not advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any investment. No view is given on the present or future value or price of any investment, and investors should form their own view on any proposed investment.

Sarah Coles: And this hasn't been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research, and is considered a marketing communication.

Susannah Streeter: Non-independent research is not subject to FCA rules prohibiting dealing ahead of research, however HL has put controls in place, including dealing restrictions, physical and information barriers, to manage potential conflicts of interest presented by such dealing.

Sarah Coles: You can see our full non-independent research disclosure on our website for more information, so all that's left is for me to thank our guests, Lucy, James, Sophie, Emma, and our producer, Elizabeth Hopson.

Susannah Streeter: Thanks so much for listening.

Sarah Coles: We'll be back again soon, goodbye.