A Trip Down Quality Street

I am grateful for all my readers, but I’m surprised by how many UK readers I have.

Mathematically, it is surprising. Based upon which statistics you read, the UK has about 25 to 20 percent of the total population of the US. So you’d think that my UK book sales would be only about 20 percent of my US sales, but that isn’t the case. So far for December 2025, the US made up 58% of my sales, but the UK did 34%.

I think the reason for that is fantasy is generally a more popular genre in the UK than it is in the US. Like, numerically speaking, the US probably has more fantasy readers, but the population’s overall percentage of fantasy readers seems higher in the UK. (Of course, maybe I’m completely wrong, since the US and the UK are very different places even if they both speak mostly English.)

Anyway, before I started self-publishing in 2011, I knew practically nothing about the contemporary UK. Like, I couldn’t have told you if the UK was on the Euro or the pound. However, in the 15 years since I’ve absorbed a fair few facts by osmosis.

One of them is Christmas chocolate boxes. I didn’t know this until recently, but apparently Christmas chocolate boxes are very popular in parts of the UK, with frequent debates about the best brand, quality, etc.

This was only an abstract fact for a while, but some nice person got me a Quality Street chocolate box for Christmas.

It was pretty good. I liked the purple ones and the green triangles.

-JM