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Darcey Bussell and Anna Wilson's World Book Day flip-book, Magic Ballerina/Kitten Chaos (HarperCollins/Macmillan), has retained its position at the summit of the Official UK Top 50, in the strongest week for sales so far this year.
The £1 two-in-one title sold 38,261 copies at UK book retailers last week, some 7,081 copies more than the next most popular World Book Day tome, Thomas to the Rescue (Egmont), which takes fourth position.
In total, £30.5m was spent through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market, up 5.2% on the previous week, up 4.5% on the same week last year, and up 2% on the comparative week leading up to Mother's Day last year (ending 21st March). Last week was only the second week of year on year growth in 2010.
This was partly driven by World Book day, with continued strong sales for the likes of Stephenie Meyer, L J Smith and Rick Riordan. However the six £1 titles sold 173,403 copies, down 17% on the comparative six in the same week last year, although the sales-per-title average of 28,901 was up 6% on 2008's nine-strong crop in the same week.
Growth also came from Mother's Day sales. Numerous hardback non-fiction titles enjoyed big week-on-week boosts in the seven days leading up to Mothering Sunday, including the Hairy Bikers' Mums Know Best (Weidenfeld—up 77%), The Masterchef Cookbook (DK—up 142%), Alison Maloney's Mums' Book (Michael O'Mara—up 200%), and the "Loose Women" trilogy of The Little Book of Loose Women (Hodder—up 101%), Lynda Bellingham's Lost and Found (Ebury—up 75%) and Coleen Nolan's Mum to Mum (Sidgwick & Jackson—up 185%).
But last week wasn't just about mums—the two Piggyback Interactive strategy guides to the latest instalment in the Final Fantasy video game franchise sold well enough to enter the bestseller lists. Final Fantasy XIII: Collector's Edition Guide and Final Fantasy XIII: Complete Official Guide sold a combined 11,447 copies last week, taking £162,000 through UK book retailer tills.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate) takes second position in the Official UK Top 50 having sold 35,718 copies in its first full week on sale, but only by virtue of the fact that sales of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus) were split between its original mass-market edition (20,377 copies sold last week) and the new film tie-in version (17,752). The two editions of the first instalment in the late Swedish author's Millennium trilogy sit separately in 12th and 16th positions in the chart.
Danielle Steel's One Day at a Time (Corgi) climbs seven positions week-on-week and into third place overall. Her new hardback, Big Girl (Bantam Press), is the new number one in the Original Fiction charts—her first in three years.
To download a PDF edition of The Bookseller's bestseller lists, containing 13 different charts all based exclusively in Nielsen BookScan data, please click here.