The envy of all others: Ana Huang is crowned number one
The fifth book in Ana Huang’s Kings of Sin series – King of Envy (Piatkus) – has gone straight to the top of the UK Top 50, according to NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
It is the first time the American author has taken the crown and, with sales of 19,550 copies, she has done so with a 32.2% increase compared to week one for 2024’s King of Sloth. The release of her newest also marks Huang’s biggest seven-day period haul to date, beating The Striker’s 15,612-copy total in October 2024, when it hit third place overall and bagged the Mass-Market Fiction (MMF) chart number one.
The Kings of Sin series has now delivered sales of more than 330,000 copies and £2.2m since it was initially published in 2022, though that trails far behind Huang’s Twisted titles, which have now notched up more than £6m across 867,498 books via the TCM.
Despite growth of 4.2% to 13,742 copies at the second time of asking, Robert Harris’ Precipice (Cornerstone) falls to third place in both the UK Top 50 and the MMF Top 20 – behind Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment (Penguin), the sales of which have jumped 43% to 14,241. Sales of both editions of Harris’ other book of the moment, Conclave, have dropped slightly by less than 30 copies – combined, the original paperback edition and the film tie-in shifted 3,576 units, which would have been enough to put Conclave just inside the TCM Top 40.
In its first full week on sale in mass-market paperback, Polly Barton’s translation of Asako Yuzuki’s Butter (Fourth Estate) has seen its sales jump 85.8% to 9,344, allowing it to slide into sixth place in the TCM’s Top 50 and hitting fourth in the MMF chart after missing out on last week’s Top 20 by just 100 copies. The trade paperback edition of Butter, first published in February 2024, has unsurprisingly seen its sales drop 50.5% to 624 copies, but that is a figure just good enough to still keep it in the Original Fiction (OF) Top 20, this week in 20th.
Despite a 60.2% drop in sales to 3,556 books, Emily Henry remains at the top of the OF chart for a second week with Great Big Beautiful Life (Viking) – while Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm (Piatkus) rises into second place despite a 12.4% fall in sales.
The second-highest new entry of the week – and taking the top spot in the Children’s Top 20 – is a special edition of Alyssa Villaire’s The Glittering Edge (Penguin). The FairyLoot hardback edition of Villaire’s debut has sold 12,187 copies this week – while the paperback edition (theoretically on sale in all outlets from last Thursday) has failed to make a mark in the TCM’s Top 5,000 titles.
Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? (Hamish Hamilton) is this week’s highest new Non-Fiction entry, topping the Hardback Non-Fiction (HBNF) chart and coming in at 18th in the TCM Top 50. With sales of 5,604 copies, it has achieved just over half of the first week sales of Macfarlane’s previous hardback – The Lost Spells published in October 2020.
Taking a second week at the top of the Paperback Non-Fiction Chart, BBC Proms 2025 has seen its sales drop 48.9% week-on-week to 3,881 units – it gives the musical guide total sales of just over 11,000 copies, roughly 300 copies lower than the equivalent position for the 2024 guide, which went on to sell 23,918 copies across last summer.
Following last week’s year-low the TCM has dropped even more this week, with volume dropping 3.5% to 2.8 million books, delivering a value of £26.6m – down 2.9% – and the lowest weekly value in nearly two years. Compared with the same week last year, volume has decreased by 10%, with value falling 7.7%.
