Prince Harry’s memoir Spare has taken a significant downturn in the second-hand market, becoming the most returned biography for the second year in a row, according to the second-hand book retailer We Buy Books.
In 2024, the website reported purchasing 567 copies of the Duke of Sussex’s autobiography, marking an increase from the 459 copies traded in the previous year, GB News.
Despite its initial success, the memoir has seen its value plummet in the resale market. Hardback versions, originally priced at £28, are now being offered for just £3.38, while paperbacks are even less, with a trade-in price of only 50p.
This dramatic depreciation contrasts with the book’s continuing availability at full price in stores such as Waterstones and Amazon.
The shift in the memoir’s market value is stark compared to its record-breaking debut. When Spare was released in January 2023, it achieved the largest first-day sales for a non-fiction book from Penguin Random House, selling over 1.4 million copies across the US, Canada, and the UK.
This success made it the fastest-selling non-fiction book at the time, surpassing Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land.
In the UK, the memoir sold nearly 470,000 copies in its first week, establishing it as the quickest-selling non-fiction book in the UK since Nielsen BookData started tracking sales in 1998.
Despite its promising start, the book’s second-hand market journey paints a much less favourable picture, reflecting a stark contrast to the buzz that surrounded its initial release.
