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The Girl on the Train (Transworld) has once again chugged straight into the Monthly E-Book Sales Ranking number one spot for August—shifting 41,335 copies to usurp Jojo Moyes’ After You (Michael Joseph). The top three— the aforementioned two, along with After You’s predecessor Me Before You, dominated the weekly e-ranking over the summer, and all three have charted top of the monthly chart since June.
Clare Mackintosh's I See You (Sphere), which charted 16th in July's e-ranking off two days' worth of sales after its release on the 28th, rocketed up the August chart, shifting 13,121 copies to finish fourth overall. Its digital sales almost matched its hardback sales, with a near-even split of 52-48. Mackintosh's debut I Let You Go also saw a bump, jumping 15 places up the chart to 14th. I See You is predominately set on the London Underground—could Mackintosh be tapping into the e-book-buying commuter market? It has proved to be beneficial to The Girl on the Train, after all.
But the Hawkins-Moyes-Mackintosh trifecta and their genres— domestic thriller and romance—represent digital’s biggest market of all: women. Out of 50 titles, 29 were written by female authors. It seems men also need to be more established to chart in the Monthly E-Ranking, with just two male fiction débuts—Ian McGuire’s The North Water (Simon & Schuster) and David Lagercrantz's The Girl in the Spider's Web (Maclehose Press)— hitting the chart, compared to four female ones (five if Hawkins’ début under her own name qualifies).
The 2016 Man Booker Prize longlist was announced in the last week of July, and the more obscure nominees seem to have benefited from an impulse-buy “e” boost, rather than a bump in print. Though Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project (Saraband) has now become a Top 50 stalwart after being named in September’s shortlist, before its leap into the spotlight, it shifted 3,135 digital units—almost the same as the 3,398 copies it sold in print.
However, The North Water, which missed out on the shortlist, was by far the e-book buyer’s nominee of choice, shifting 5,763 units in August—85% of its total combined “e” and “p” volume. This was at an r.r.p. of £7.99. Simon & Schuster may have been very tactical here: the title dropped to 99p for the last weekend of July, then it was straight back up to £7.99 on Monday 1st August. The residual post-offer sales were enough to propel it to 13th in the monthly chart.
The algorithms powering a certain online retailer’s recom-mendation displays were clearly working overtime in August. Jojo Moyes’ name appeared in the e-ranking four times, as her chart-topping duology was joined by backlist titles The Girl You Left Behind and The One Plus One (both Michael Joseph), shifting within 30 units of one another. Liane Moriarty’s new hardback title Truly Madly Guilty hit 12th place, with a hefty 55% of its combined “p” and “e” sales in digital, and was joined by Moriary's biggest seller The Husband’s Secret, in 35th place.
MNS | TITLE | AUTHOR | IMPRINT | E% OF MONTHLY TOTAL | E SALES | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 19 | The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Transworld | 25.0% | 41,335 |
2 | 12 | After You | Jojo Moyes | Michael Joseph | 29.3% | 37,680 |
3 | 11 | Me Before You | Jojo Moyes | Michael Joseph | 23.1% | 21,073 |
4 | 2 | I See You | Clare Mackintosh | Sphere | 48.68% | 13,121 |
5 | 4 | Cometh the Hour | Jeffrey Archer | Macmillan | 32.6% | 9,832 |
6 | 1 | Three Sisters, Three Queens | Philippa Gregory | Simon & Schuster | 20.8% | 8,546 |
7 | 2 | 15th Affair | James Patterson | Cornerstone | 14.9% | 8,026 |
8 | 2 | Where My Heart Used to Beat | Sebastian Faulks | Vintage | 21.3% | 8,001 |
9 | 4 | Fool Me Once | Harlan Coben | Cornerstone | 24.2% | 7,803 |
10 | 5 | Get Even | Martina Cole | Headline | 20.60% | 7,516 |
11 | 2 | The Couple Next Door | Shari Lapena | Transworld | 50.3% | 6,898 |
12 | 3 | The Girls | Emma Cline | Vintage | 42.0% | 6,531 |
13 | 1 | Mightier than the Sword | Jeffrey Archer | Macmillan | 86.3% | 6,303 |
14 | 12 | I Let You Go | Clare Mackintosh | Sphere | 42.85% | 6,040 |
15 | 2 | Truly Madly Guilty | Liane Moriarty | Michael Joseph | 55.0% | 5,977 |
16 | 1 | The North Water | Ian McGuire | Simon & Schuster | 85.3% | 5,763 |
17 | 5 | The Road to Little Dribbling | Bill Bryson | Transworld | 20.9% | 5,750 |
18 | 1 | Voices In Summer | Rosamunde pilcher | Sphere | #REF! | 5,512 |
19 | 12 | Make Me | Lee Child | Transworld | 25.4% | 5,469 |
20 | 5 | One with You | Sylvia Day | Michael Joseph | 62.6% | 5,330 |
21 | 2 | The Kept Woman | Karin Slaughter | Cornerstone | 41.7% | 5,071 |
22 | 11 | Career of Evil | Robert Galbraith | Sphere | 50.30% | 4,844 |
24 | 6 | Even Dogs in the Wild | Ian Rankin | Orion | 19.77% | 4,767 |
23 | 4 | Coffin Road | Peter May | riverrun | 16.19% | 4,741 |
25 | 1 | I Am Pilgrim | Terry Hayes | Transworld | 44.7% | 4,661 |
26 | 1 | Late Summer in the Vineyard | Jo Thomas | Review | 35.38% | 4,618 |
27 | 2 | The Muse | Jessie Burton | Picador | 35.8% | 4,357 |
28 | 7 | The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet | Michael Mosley | Short | 27.7% | 4,193 |
29 | 1 | Miss You | Kate Eberlen | Mantle | 70.4% | 3,977 |
30 | 9 | The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) | David Lagercrantz | MacLehose Press | 29.84% | 3,974 |
31 | 2 | Bullseye | James Patterson | Cornerstone | 28.8% | 3,925 |
32 | 1 | When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery | Peter Robinson | Hodder & Stoughton | 17.87% | 3,864 |
33 | 6 | A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara | Picador | 35.3% | 3,808 |
34 | 1 | I Found You | Lisa Jewell | Cornerstone | 69.2% | 3,808 |
35 | 1 | Prime Suspect | Lynda La Plante | Simon & Schuster | 89.7% | 3,753 |
36 | 6 | Rogue Lawyer | John Grisham | Hodder & Stoughton | 11.84% | 3,659 |
37 | 2 | Dead to Me | Lesley Pearse | Michael Joseph | 42.3% | 3,621 |
38 | 7 | The Lake House | Kate Morton | Mantle | 20.0% | 3,601 |
39 | 4 | Sweet Caress | William Boyd | Bloomsbury | 19.6% | 3,513 |
40 | 1 | The Girl You Left Behind | Jojo Moyes | Michael Joseph | 69.2% | 3,432 |
41 | 1 | The One Plus One | Jojo Moyes | Michael Joseph | 49.9% | 3,403 |
42 | 1 | A Leap of Faith | Trisha Ashley | Transworld | 44.6% | 3,384 |
43 | 9 | Lean in 15 | Joe Wicks | Bluebird | 8.2% | 3,383 |
44 | 1 | Exposure | Helen Dunmore | Cornerstone | 17.5% | 3,342 |
45 | 1 | Never Never | James Patterson | Cornerstone | 48.8% | 3,289 |
46 | 17 | The Husband's Secret | Liane Moriarty | Michael Joseph | 42.0% | 3,166 |
47 | 1 | Playing with Fire | Tess Gerritsen | Transworld | 9.6% | 3,164 |
48 | 1 | His Bloody Project | Graeme Macrae Burnet | Contraband | 48.0% | 3,135 |
49 | 12 | My Brilliant Friend | Elena Ferrante | Europa Editions | 29.4% | 3,101 |
50 | 1 | Speaking in Bones | Kathy Reichs | Cornerstone | 7.6% | 2,902 |
Date is for month ending 31st August 2016
Titles with a digital list price of less than £2 are excluded. Participating publishers: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster, Faber Factory, Canongate, Walker Books and Bonnier Zaffre.
MNS months in chart