Precipice at the Summit: Robert Harris claims his first number one in 25 years

It’s been a good week for author Robert Harris as not only has his latest paperback Precipice (Cornerstone) gone straight to number one in the official UK Top 50, the latest data from NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) also shows a big increase for the papal-related Conclave (Arrow) which has jumped nearly 600 positions in the market. 

It’s the first time Harris has made it to the top spot since Archangel achieved the feat way back in October 1999 with sales of 12,788 copies. Nearly 25 years on, Harris has beaten that performance with 13,190 copies of Precipice passing through the nation’s tills – also beating the first week of 2023’s Act of Oblivion by 34.8%.

Meanwhile, following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, the film tie-in edition of Conclave sold 2,327 copies – a 268% jump in sales on the previous week – though with sales split with the standard edition, it’s not quite enough to push it into this week’s Top 50.

This week is also the first time since 1999 that Harris has topped the Mass Market Fiction (MMF) chart, beating fellow Penguin new release Here One Moment from Liane Moriarty, which debuts in second place with 9,607 copies sold, down 51% compared with the first week paperback release of Apples Never Fall in 2022.

The coming week marks 10 years since the publication of A Court of Thorns and Roses (Bloomsbury) by Sarah J Maas – and with Waterstones celebrating with exclusive “Night Court” editions, all five ACOTAR titles have returned to the MMF Top 20 following a sales jump of 144.7% – taking total sales of the series for the week to 36,896 copies.

Despite a strong performance for these titles and the debut of 18 new releases, the Top 50 has seen a unit decline of 17% compared with the previous seven days with only two titles selling more than 10,000 copies – dropping from nine in the run-up to the Easter weekend.

Besides Precipice, the only other five-figure unit performer is last week’s number one, Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping (Scholastic), although even its 12,221 copies is a drop of 29% week-on-week. It is enough to keep it at the top of a turbulent Children’s Top 20 – which sees 10 re-entries following an exodus of Easter-themed titles.

There are several new releases making an impression on the Original Fiction (OF) chart this week – led by Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life (Viking) which, with sales of 8,944 in its first three days sees it take seventh place in the TCM chart.

Despite a 5.3% jump in the RRP, Henry has seen her sales grow slightly by 0.6% compared to 2024’s Funny Story which went on to sell 33,220 copies in hardback format.

The Hardback Non-Fiction chart sees several new releases, with an all-new top three, helping the overall top 20 to sales bump of 27.9% week-on-week. It’s led by Amy Sheppard’s Easy 10 (Quadrille) and the 2025 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. The latter has sold 4,933 copies this week – up 34.6% compared with the 2024 edition – though expect this to drop in the next seven days as sales are typically front-loaded with nearly 50% of its lifetimes sales coming in the first week.

The Paperback Non-Fiction chart sees another annual release taking the top spot with the BBC Proms Guide interesting 7,286 people in its first week on sale. This is down slightly on 2024’s 7,474 copies – a 2.5% drop that should still see it sell more than 23,000 copies across the summer.

In line with the decline in the Top 50, the TCM has seen a big week-on-week volume drop of 14.1% to 2.9 million books, delivering £27.4m – the lowest value of the year so far and a drop of 9.3% compared with the previous seven days. Volume is down 4.9% against the same week last year, with value performing slightly better, down 3.9%.