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Delia returns to the top

18.03.08 Philip Stone

World Book Day titles sold a combined 245,268 units last week, but no single title was able to prevent Delia Smith returning to the top of charts.

Smith's How to Cheat at Cooking (Ebury) sold 47,525 copies through BookScan's Total Consumer Market over the seven days to 15th March - an increase of 11,001 week-on-week - to take the top spot for a fourth week since its launch. It has now amassed 276,816 total sales in just 30 days, since its embargo was lifted on 15th February.

Apart from Smith's return to the top, the fastest mover within the chart last week was Lee Child with the paperback edition of the 11th book in his Jack Reacher series, Bad Luck and Trouble (Bantam). It sold 39,725 though the TCM to take second place, ahead of Dav Pilkey's World Book Day tie-in, Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets (Scholastic), which outsold Martin Handford's Where's Wally (Walker) by 32,631 copies to 30,930.

The highest new entry crown this week went to the final "Richard & Judy" pick to go under the book club spotlight, Peter Ho Davies' The Welsh Girl (Sceptre), which sold 12,030 copies, entering the overall charts at 23.

Meanwhile, for the first time this year, revenue fell behind last year's performance. The £29.5m spent through the BookScan Total Consumer Market last week was down 0.4% on the same week in 2007, when Mother's Day fell on March 18th.

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