Breaking News: Prince Harry is set for multi-million pound windfall from memoir Spare after raking in up to £22million from sales of the hardback, bestselling author Richard Osman claims

Prince Harry has already made £22million ($27million) from his book Spare despite it only being out in hardback, fellow bestselling author Richard Osman has claimed.

The Duke of Sussex’s controversial memoir became the UK’s fastest-selling non-fiction book ever after being published by Penguin Random House in January 2023.

Harry was understood to have clinched a £16million ($20million) advance as part of a £32million ($40million) four-book deal in June 2021 following a bidding war.

The 39-year-old royal’s headline-grabbing book saw him accuse his brother Prince William of pushing him into a dog bowl in a row over his wife Meghan Markle.

It also claimed William teased Harry about his panic attacks, that King Charles put his own interests above his second son and saw Harry reference taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms and his enjoyment of the TV show Friends.

Now, Osman – author of hit crime novels including The Thursday Murder Club – has used his publishing industry knowledge to estimate Harry’s income from the book.

Speaking on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, Osman said: ‘The book that Harry wrote, it’s impossible to overestimate how much money that has made.

I mean, it’s been one of the most successful books. The fastest selling non-fiction book of all time.

‘I’ve done some back of the envelope calculations because I like to. I know what you get paid per book. Got a $20million advance. Thing with an advance is, you get paid in advance, $20million in that case, you do not make a penny until your publisher makes back their $20million.

‘And once they’ve made back their $20million, and there’s all sorts of sliding scales about how that works, what they get, what you get, once you’ve made the $20million, then you get your royalties

I think – and his book has not come out in paperback yet. So this book is purely hardback. I reckon he’s made $26, $27million. So he’s earned out an advance of $20million on the hardback of his first book alone. Forget rights to other things and audiobooks and what have you. He has earned that out already. When the paperback comes out, it’s just money rolling into the Sussexes.’

A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House confirmed to MailOnline today that there is still no release date for the paperback version of Spare.

Osman added that Spare had become the ‘biggest hit of the last ten, 20 years’ and had ‘made everybody an enormous amount of money’.