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Richard Osman returns to first place as We Solve Murders claims a fourth week
After a brief one-week visit to second place, Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Viking) has returned to the top of the Official UK Top 50, according to the latest data from NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
After a relatively slow start from Osman – week-one sales were down 39% compared with the first week of The Last Devil to Die in 2024 – things are starting to speed up, with volume sales of 18,478 copies for the past seven days down just 5.9% compared with the fifth week of his previous paperback. It gives the paperback edition of We Solve Murders lifetime sales of 140,520 units – 20.2% lower than the 176,155 copies The Last Devil to Die chalked up in its first five weeks.
Chloe Walsh’s Releasing 10 (Piatkus) – which topped the charts in the previous week – has fallen 25 places following a 79.9% drop in sales to 5,006 copies. With Walsh, Stephen King’s Never Flinch (Hodder) and David Walliams and Adam Stower’s The World’s Worst Superheroes (HarperCollins) all dropping out of the Top 10, there is room for some of the latest paperbacks to move up.
Bob Mortimer’s The Hotel Avocado (Gallery) jumped from fourth to second place in the Top 10 with sales of 15,161 copies, though that represents a drop of 17.9% compared with the second week on sale.
Similarly, Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber) and Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin (Orion) both climb a spot in the Top 10 despite seeing double-digit percentage contractions in sales.
The biggest new paperback is Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast (HarperCollins) which, with 9,891 copies sold in its first week, managed to take sixth position in the TCM. It is the thriller writer’s first new paperback in three years, but that wait has not diminished Foley’s appeal with first week sales up 4.8% compared with September 2022’s The Paris Apartment.
The highest-ranked new entry into the charts is Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere (Hutchinson Heinemann) which debuts in third place with 11,609 copies sold. First-week sales are up 36.3% compared with Reid’s last hardback – 2022’s Carrie Soto Is Back – which went on to sell 38,347 copies, her second-best hardback performance behind Malibu Rising which has shifted a total of 45,590 copies.
The only other “new” entry into the TCM Top 10 this week is the 2019 mass-market paperback edition of Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path (Penguin) which benefits from increased exposure thanks to the recently released film of the same name.
Combining the original mass-market paperback with the film tie-in for Winn’s debut resulted in sales of 14,143 units, a rise in 21.9% week-on-week and a figure that would see The Salt Path walk easily into third place on the TCM.
As it is, Winn’s two editions are at 10th and 17th place in the overall charts and Winn retains the Paperback Non-Fiction chart number, but the film tie-in concedes second place to indie bookshop favourite, Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare (Canongate) which has seen its sales jump 155.3% to 7,334 copies in its second week on sale.
In a good week for the Hardback Non-Fiction chart – seven new titles have helped sales of the Top 20 rise 19.4% week-on-week – Duncan Ferguson’s memoir, Big Dunc (Century) has kept hold of the top spot with only a slight sales rise of 2.3% to 4,340 copies.
It is an opposite picture for the Children’s Top 20 which has seen sales collectively drop a quarter in the week following half term in England and Wales. After two consecutive weeks at number one, Walliams and Stower have slipped to fourth place with The World’s Worst Superheroes allowing Coco Wyo’s Cozy Corner and Cozy Cuties (Penguin) to take the top two slots – the first time taking the children’s number one slot for Coco Wyo – despite both experiencing a sales decline of more than 20% week-on-week.
Overall sales in the TCM have dropped 2.6% to 3.2 million books – accruing a total of £30.4m, down 1.3% compared with the previous seven days. Volume is up 0.6%, down on the same week last year, with value rising slightly more by 2.7%.
