SelfMadeHero’s Emma Hayley wants the UK to be more French about their comic books
Article Summary
- SelfMadeHero founder Emma Hayley says UK publishers must treat comics as serious reading for adults, not just kids.
- Britain’s children’s graphic novel boom is creating comics-literate readers who will soon demand stronger YA and adult lists.
- SelfMadeHero highlights rising UK graphic novel sales, but says growth still relies on a few breakout hits and manga.
- Emma Hayley urges the UK to learn from France and invest in comics culture, training, visibility and long-term support.
The boom in children’s graphic novels is creating a generation of comics-literate readers, but adult publishers risk failing them if they don’t step upwho also got me to write and draw a strip for the Count Binface comic. Writing for The Bookseller, she argues that British publishing must learn from France’s mature bande dessinée culture and treat comics as a serious, lifelong reading form rather than something children grow out of
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“We’ve got young readers hooked on graphic novels – but where will they go next? The recent surge in popularity of graphic novels for children signals a new golden age for the comics medium.” Emma Hayley points out that British children have long loved comics, citing the Beano‘s near two-million weekly sales in 1950. What’s changed, she says, is the format and the perception. Today’s young readers mainly encounter comics as books, and they are learning that “visual storytelling is not some guilty pleasure, or a stepping stone to ‘proper’ reading. It is reading.” That shift, she argues, should force adult publishers to act. “If children’s publishing has spent the past decade normalising comics for young readers, adult publishing now has to ask what it is offering those readers next. We shouldn’t be surprised if a new comics-literate generation seeks out more sophisticated YA and adult titles in the same medium.”
Emma Hayley, who founded SelfMadeHero in 2007, has watched the market transform over the past 2two decades. Adult graphic novel sales reached £52.8 million in 2025, up from £48.7 million in 2024, while children’s comic-strip fiction and graphic novels hit £25.9 million, up from £20.3 million. Combined, the sector was worth £78.7 million in 2025, a 13.9% rise year-on-year and roughly £46 million more than in 2019. Manga now accounts for almost half of adult graphic-novel sales in the UK.
Yet growth remains concentrated around a handful of breakout titles such as Heartstopper, Dog Man, Bunny vs Monkey, Persepolis, Fun Home and Blankets. “If those books can become bestsellers, others will follow,” Emma Hayley says, “but only if we build a more confident culture of greater visibility and awareness around the form.” She looks enviously across the Channel. France’s bande dessinée market sold 68 million copies in 2024, generating €837 million, around £700,000,000 or almost a billion US dollars. “Why can’t we be more French?” she asks. “Not by slavishly reproducing their titles, but by unapologetically accepting the larger lesson that comics can be part of adult reading life. They can be just as literary, political, satirical, romantic, experimental, enjoyable, profound as any work of traditional prose – and should stand beside them as equals, not beneath them as curios.”
There are encouraging signs. This year saw the first Graphic Novel category at the British Book Awards, won by Jamie Smart‘s Bunny vs Monkey: Intergalactic Monkey Business!, alongside a dedicated Comics & Graphic Novels Day at the Hay Festival. The Comics Cultural Impact Collective is also pushing the form’s cultural and economic case. Still, Emma Hayley insists real progress requires more than isolated awards or hits. “Publishers, retailers, festival organisers and reviewers will all have a role to play,” she says. As a judge on the First Graphic Novel Award, the only UK prize for works in progress, she sees abundant British talent ready for publication. She also cautions that graphic-novel publishing is specialised work demanding expertise in layout, lettering, pacing and the interplay of words and pictures. “Serious investment in the form must include education, training and genuine respect, much like that granted to the film industry.”
Ultimately, Emma Hayley frames the children’s boom as a direct challenge to the industry: “These readers are already buying, borrowing, reading, recommending and re-reading our books. So, the issue is not whether they will all grow up to consume adult graphic novels. It is whether, as an industry, we can build the lists, the editorial expertise and the confidence to receive and satisfy the eager expectations of the many who do.” Who else will step up? No, David Walliams, not you…
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