The Bookseller.com

6th July 2009

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Beedle goes straight to number one

09.12.08 Philip Stone

J K Rowling's Harry Potter charity spin-off The Tales of Beedle the Bard shot straight to the top of the bestseller charts with sales of 368,000 copies in three days, at an average discount of 46%. But the launch failed to spark the wider book market, with the data showing the biggest weekly year-on-year decline since July this year.

The Potter launch on 4th December meant that it had less than half a week to rack up sales (before 6th December), but nevertheless still knocked the longstanding number one Guinness World Records from the top spot. But the performance of the spin-off title was way off previous Harry Potter launches: the record for which is held by the final title in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which sold 2.65 million copies in one day following its Saturday launch in July 2007.

However, it comfortably became the fastest-selling book of the year, beating the likes of Delia Smith's How to Cheat at Cooking (Ebury), which sold 49,000 copies in 48 hours in February this year, Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care (Penguin 007) which sold 44,000 copies in four days in June and Christopher Paolini's Brisingr (Doubleday) which sold 41,000 copies in 24 hours in September.

Guinness World Records (Guinness) is relegated to second place overall with a seven day sale of 73,236 copies—just 1,566 short of breaking its own weekly sales record set back in December 2002. Paul O'Grady's memoir At My Mother's Knee. . . (Bantam Press) sits in third position having sold 68,073 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market last week.

Also performing well in the children's market is Stephenie Meyer, ahead of the release of the silver-screen adaptation of the first book in her teen vampire series, Twilight (Atom). She takes four positions in this week's Official UK Top 50 with the mass market edition of the original novel taking 20th position overall.

During the seven days to 6th December, £60.2m was spent through BookScan's TCM, a 17.8% increase week-on-week, with a £1.4m contribution from The Tales of Beedle the Bard alone. However, for the seventh consecutive week, revenue through the market remains down on last year. The £60.2m figure is down 6.9% on the same week last year—the biggest weekly decline since July this year when the market was affected by the hardback release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the comparative week in 2007.
 

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