Minecraft tops One Direction as top selling annual

Publisher Egmont has announced that Minecraft has knocked One Direction off the top spot as the best selling annual in the UK.

The annual based on Mojang’s hugely popular construction game is now the third best selling children’s title while companion book – The Beginner’s Handbook – is the fourth.

Following this success, Egmont has printed over 1m copies of the Minecraft Annual as well as other books in the range like The Beginner’s Handbook and The Redstone Handbook.

We knew that the game was huge. But we could not have imagined the appetite for the Minecraft books,” said Egmont’s group sales director Gillian Laskier. Their enormous success is down to a uniquely on-brand design and editorial that is written with the Minecraft fan firmly in mind.

Our customers have been fast to recognise that copies were selling out at a rate not seen for many years – and we have had to ration copies as more and more print runs have been authorised, printed and dispatched. And this is only the start.”