The Bookseller.com

20th November 2008

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King helps drive book sales

29.01.08 Philip Stone

The book market continues to outpace the rest of the high street with January sales figures well up on 2007, the latest figures from Nielsen BookScan shows. Almost £10m more has been spent through the market in the first four weeks of 2008 than last year, with the £117.9m spent through the Total Consumer Market up 8.7% year-on-year (£108.5m).

The figures come as the latest CBI report on high street spending indicated that retailers only reported a slight growth in sales.

The market was helped by Stephen King, who got off to a strong start in what promises to be a big year for the author. Duma Key, his latest standalone thriller, topped the original fiction list in its first week on sale. The Hodder title shifted 10,040 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market last week, nestling into 21st position overall.

His previous novel, Lisey's Story, has sold a record-breaking 109,075 copies in hardback through the TCM and is King's most successful hardback to date. With Blaze (written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym) released in paperback next month and "The Gift"—a short-story within The Skeleton Crew—out in UK cinemas later this year, 2008 could be one of the biggest years yet for the American author.

It was also a big week for the thriller market last week with Harlan Coben's The Woods entering into the top 10 thanks to a 20,616 weekly sale. W H Smith and Waterstone's placed the title into Book of the Week promotions to help the Orion title. However, the top three of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury), Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (Vintage) and Lesley Pearse's Faith (Penguin) remain unchanged.

Retail Bestseller News Stephen King Philip Stone