JK Rowling’s new book failed to reach 2025 bestseller lists

JK Rowling’s newest book failed to reach any major bestseller lists in 2025 nearly a year after she was replaced as the UK’s top author by volume.

The author, known for creating the Harry Potter series and who has since become notorious for her views on trans rights, fell just short of acclaim last year with her latest book, The Hallmarked Man.

Penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, the crime fiction novel is the eighth in Rowling’s Comoran Strike series, which follow the titular named detective and his partner, Robin Ellacott, in solving a murder.

Despite landing in the UK’s Top 50 upon its release, becoming the top-selling book in the series, it failed to reach the top 10 spot of the Sunday Times’ bestselling list for 2025 overall, nor any other major bookseller in the UK.

Galbraith’s name was notably absent from UK sales charts published by Amazon, Goodreads, the Times’ bookshop, and TGJones, formerly WHSmith.

The book did appear in Waterstones’ 2025 bestsellers list, but fell just short of the top 30, landing at number 32.

JK Rowling replaced as UK’s top author in 2025

Just weeks into 2025, Rowling was knocked off of the UK’s all-time top author spot by volume, replaced by children’s author Julia Donaldson.

The 77-year-old author, known for her imaginative books such as The Gruffalo and Zog, skyrocketed to the top of Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) – a weekly tracker of print book sales in the UK used to create the Sunday Times bestseller’s list – after selling over 3.1 million copies in 2024.

Avid bookworms were reminded of Donaldson’s historic triumph as 2025 came to a close, with the year-old news circulating around social media once again.

One user described Donaldson’s books as an “absolute joy” which they said “always feature imagination, sound morals, and are a genuine pleasure to read out loud”.

Another said they were “really glad” to see Donaldson reach the top spot, calling her books “so genuinely wonderful for kids”.

While Donaldson is currently the UK’s top selling author, the statistics only go as far back as TCM records began. The best selling author in the UK is estimated to be either William Shakespeare or Agatha Christie.

Rowling has spent much of the past few years promoting her ‘gender-critical’ views, including through the controversial JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF).

The private funding organisation, which comes from from the author’s own pocket, aims to fund legal cases that it claims are “fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights”.

Rowling has previously funded the ‘gender-critical’ group For Women Scotland (FWS) after it filed a legal case which resulted in the Supreme Court defining the word “woman” in the 2010 Equality Act as purely biological.