Guinness settles in first place: A second consecutive week for the record breakers
With two weeks to go until the big day, the UK’s book market has settled down somewhat with no movement in the top four at the top of the Official Top 50, according to Nielsen IQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
While there may not be much movement in position, the sales numbers are at least increasing with the Top 50 seeing its volume rise of 18.4% compared with the previous seven days. That is down 8.4% compared with the same week in 2024, but that is easily accounted for the absence of a new release from Nathan Anthony’s Bored of Lunch brand, plus earlier releases this year for Callie Hart and Dav Pilkey.
No movement at the top means the 2026 edition of Guinness World Records continues at the summit for another week. With sales of 35,790 units, it experienced a modest rise of 6.4% compared with the previous week, but it is still tracking down 8.5% against 2024.
Charlie Mackesy’s Always Remember (Ebury Press) sticks in second place, but it is closing the gap on Guinness as its sales climb 15.4% to 30,728 copies this week.
While Osman’s 2025 release, The Impossible Fortune (Viking), cannot quite match his 2024 performance – his sales are down 6.4% year on year – he bags a jump of 16.5% week-on-week to take third place in the TCM and top the Original Fiction Top 20 for the second week in a row and grab a sixth non-consecutive number one.
With the biggest percentage rise in sales of the big three, Osman is keeping the overall Christmas number one firmly in his sights – but is almost certainly on course to take his sixth consecutive year at the top of the Original Fiction chart in the biggest trading week of the year.
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One person who may have ruled themselves out of the race for the coveted top spot is Joe Wicks. His first release with Bonnier imprint LEAP has sold 19,156 copies in its first week to give him fifth place in the TCM Top 50. That is a nice 51.2% leap compared with the first week of his previous hardback – 2023’s Feel Good in 15 (HQ) – but if it follows the same shape, it will just scrape 15,000 copies in Christmas week.
Perhaps another title taking itself out of the race for Christmas number one this week is The 1% Club Quiz Book Volume 2 (Bantam) – with 12,270 sales this week it comfortably keeps itself at the top of the Paperback Non-Fiction Top 20, but it drops to 13th place in the UK Top 50 as its sales contracted 17.9% behind the equivalent week for 2024’s volume one.
Pushing himself back into the race – possibly – is Jamie Oliver. Eat Yourself Healthy (Michael Joseph) was the chef’s fastest selling book when it was first released in September but had seen its sales drop considerably since. This week he has seen his sales rocket up a very healthy 176.8%, taking him to 15,629 copies in the first week of December.
The second-biggest release of the week comes from the Mass-Market Fiction chart as Harlan Coben interests 11,271 readers with the paperback edition of Nobody’s Fool (Cornerstone). That is up 53.6% compared with the first week of 2024’s Think Twice, though that was released in the slightly quieter shopping period at the beginning of November.
The children’s market slightly bucks the trend this week – the only four titles to see their sales slip backwards come from the Children’s Top 20, led by Jeff Kinney’s Partypooper (Puffin). The latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid title has seen its sales decline 4.2% to 20,746 copies – though it is enough to keep it in fourth place in the TCM and at the top of the Children’s Top 20.The first week of December sees overall sales in the TCM climb 14.1% to 6.5 million books, with value jumping 18.1% to £64.5m. Compared with the same week in 2024, volume is down 3.1% with value 2.6%.
