You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
David Walliams has once again secured the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, with The Midnight Gang (HarperCollins Children's) shifting 81,216 copies for £467,852, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The blockbuster children’s title has now sold well over 300,000 copies, its weekly volume jumping 2.8% on the previous week. In four weeks on sale, each of its seven-day volume totals have been higher than any other Walliams title has achieved before, and it is yet to drop below 75,000 copies sold per week.
J K Rowling’s screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Little, Brown) leapfrogged Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan (Bluebird) to search out second place, as the film hit UK cinemas. It rocketed 30% in volume on its launch week to 72,478 copies and is now just a scant 29 copies away from being the second bestselling Drama Texts, Plays and Screenplays title of all time—runner-up to, of course, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown), which itself got a boost back into the top 10 last week.
Lee Child’s Night School (Bantam) reached the Original Fiction number one for a third week, Wilbur Smith and Tom Cain’s Predator (Harper) swiped the Mass Market Fiction top spot from The Girl on the Train (Black Swan), Guinness World Records reclaimed the Hardback Non-Fiction pole for a sixth week total and Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan gripped the Paperback Non-Fiction number one—making 42 weeks out of 47 for Wicks in that category's top spot this year.
With only 25 shopping days to go before Christmas, both the Ladybird Book for Grown-Ups series and the spoof Famous Five series fluttered up the chart. Five on Brexit Island (Quercus) is still the frontrunner, soaring 37% in volume last week to 29,060 copies. It has now outsold How it Works: The Grandparent (Michael Joseph), by 26%—a vastly bigger percentage than the actual referendum—despite the Ladybirds having two extra weeks of sales under their belts.
However, the Ladybirds have strength in numbers, with five of the new series charting in the Top 50 and veterans How it Works: The Husband and How it Works: The Mum joining them. Other likely stocking filler The Little Book of Hygge (Penguin) also got a bump upwards, cresting 10,000 copies sold in a week for the first time, and the Private Eye Annual 2016 entered the Top 50—what with the source material this year has provided, it could be set for a vintage Christmas.
The market continued to demonstrate its almost sickeningly good health—jumping 15.2% in value week on week, the second week in a row of double-digit growth. It also posted a 22.7% rise in value year on year.