Pan Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton have pulled Russell Brand’s books from sale after he was convicted at Southwark crown court of rape and sexual assault. The move was confirmed on Thursday, the same day the verdict was handed down, and it means titles once central to Brand’s publishing profile are now being taken out of circulation.
For readers searching for Katherine Ryan, the reason is the immediate commercial fallout from the case. Brand was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women, while a separate set of charges did not lead to convictions. The publishing response was swift enough to leave Waterstones removing title listings from its website almost at once.
Pan Macmillan identified Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, published in 2017, and Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped, published in 2019, as the two books it is withdrawing. The company said it had no existing stock because neither title had been reprinted, which means the practical effect is not just a pause on sale but the end of fresh supply from that publisher. Hodder & Stoughton also confirmed that it has withdrawn Brand’s books from sale.
That still leaves a knotty question around the rest of Brand’s catalogue. My Booky Wook, published by Hodder & Stoughton and once a Christmas No 1 bestseller in 2007, was used during the trial, while Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal was published by HarperCollins in 2010. Canongate said The Pied Piper of Hamelin has been out of print and unavailable in all editions since September 2023, and Century’s Revolution is also out of print. In other words, several earlier books were already fading from shelves before the publishers’ withdrawals began.
The friction is at the edge of the list: Brand’s most recent book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, remains available to buy. Published in May by Tucker Carlson Books, it sits outside the purge now hitting his older titles. Waterstones said only a handful of copies remain in shops and will be returned to the publisher in due course, so the immediate answer is that the books are going back out of circulation, while any further royalties to Brand or his company from the withdrawn titles remain unresolved in public terms.
That is the sharpest commercial consequence so far from Thursday’s verdict. Brand was convicted after a trial over allegations involving six women between 1999 and 2009, and he remains under investigation over two further rape allegations. The court result has now reached beyond the criminal case and into the shelves, where the next question is not whether the books stay up for sale, but how much of his back catalogue will be left standing at all.
