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John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars has grabbed the number one book chart spot, ahead of the general release of the film tomorrow (19th June).
In its 79th week registering sales through Nielsen BookScan, The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin) has climbed one place to claim the number one spot in the UK Top 50.
The novel made its BookScan debut back in December 2012, selling just one copy, but despite having a January 2013 publication date, the moving novel about two teenage cancer patients who fall in love sold 3,411 copies before the end of that year. It went on to sell 248, 656 copies in 2013, including 12,387 units in the run-up week to Valentine's Day 2013 (w/e 9th February) - its best week of the year. In 2014, the bestseller, which is currently the number one Fiction paperback of this year, has already outsold 2013's figure in just 24 weeks. Since January, 278,795 copies have been sold including 25,395 units in the seven days to 14th June-its best week overall so far. The film begins its theatrical run on Thursday (19th June).
After five weeks at the top, Inferno (Corgi) has slipped two places to the third position. Karin Slaughter's Unseen (Arrow) has climbed to number two and outsold Dan Brown's bestseller by the slimmest of margins - just 140 copies (22,687 copies).
In the run-up to Father's Day, total sales were up 6.8% week on week but coinciding with the start on the World Cup last Thursday, sales were inevitably down on the same week last year-by 7.9% after two weeks of growth above 2%.
The top selling authors in all of the adult charts were men - John Green and Stephen King in Original Fiction with a second week at the top for Mr Mercedes (Hodder) selling 9,049 copies. Meanwhile, Guy Martin and David Jason topped the Non-fiction hardback and paperback charts respectively with Guy Martin: My Autobiography (Virgin) selling an additional 14,676 copies and Jason's My Life (Arrow) selling 15,362 copies. Both titles also climbed into the overall top 10 at eight and six respectively.
All of the titles in the Non-fiction paperback Top 10 are written by men this week with titles split between sport, biography, humour and (military) history. There was a similar pattern in the hardback 10; cookery titles aside, there was one notable exception - Hillary Rodham Clinton debuting at two with Hard Choices (Simon & Schuster) selling 5,587 copies. The former US Secretary of State (one of just three women to have ever held the post) has not formerly announced any intention to enter the race for the White House in 2016 but many reviews of the memoir, which covers her four years in the post as America's top diplomat, noted the release of the book as an indicator of her likely intention to do so.
Overall, 3.1m book sales registered through Nielsen BookScan last week.